The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 168: A Hooker You Can Trust

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Call her what you will--the lady had vision.

The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean teaches us how our choices impact even the deepest places. The ocean connects us. Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. This is the way I heard it. Ed had no reason to lie, none whatsoever. And yet, he did. Time and time again, Ed stretched the truth,

even when his far-fetched fabrication serve no purpose. A horseback encounter with a bear during a summer job evolved into a series of harrowing adventures. There were knife fights in railroad yards. There were tentmates killed by falling trees. There were terrifying rides through Indian country. But there were no witnesses to support any of this. During World War II, Ed claimed that OSS director Wild Bill Donovan wanted him on a secret mission to parachute into occupied France. as the leader of a seven-man team of assassins.

Ed also claimed that Hitler sent a U-boat to kill him. While Bill Donovan confirmed none of this. When he applied to the University of Chicago, Ed claimed to have been practicing law in Kentucky when, in fact, he'd been teaching high school and coaching basketball, a pointless prevarication that very nearly ruined his career. But the tall tale he told in 1925 top them all,

a strange story of an unearthly encounter on a remote hilltop in Los Angeles. What exactly did Ed see on that fateful night in the hills? Was it a ghost? A bigfoot? A UFO? No. It was something else. Something truly unbelievable.

And this time, there was a witness on hand to, corroborate Ed's incredible story, a witness who just happened to be a hooker. One thing, with respect to hookers, you might not immediately associate their testimony with that of a reliable witness, and that's understandable. But this hooker had a camera, a fact that any number of other men could easily confirm. Men like Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, Aldous Huxley and William Randolph Hurst, all of whom paid multiple visits to the hilltop in question. Also, interesting. General George Patton's grandfather provided this hooker with a home, and Andrew Carnegie spent a small fortune making sure that the home was well taken care of.

Point being, this was a very popular hooker, a hooker you could trust. Anyway, on the night in question, Ed approached the Hooker's home as he always did, filled with a mix of passion and anticipation. Inside, he was greeted in the usual fashion and directed upstairs. It was a clear night, but cold. It was always cold up here, thought Ed, but once they got down to business, he knew his enthusiasm would keep him warm. Ed greeted the Hooker with a smile.

and got right to it. There was no need for words. They had done this dance many times before. But on this particular night, somewhere in the midst of their pairing, Ed opened his eyes and glanced up. And that's when he saw it. Not a ghost, not a Bigfoot, not a UFO,

but something truly unbelievable. One more thing before we discuss the details of what Ed observed on that fateful evening. It should be noted that Ed's wife knew all about Ed's obsession with the hooker on the hill. Grace understood his inclinations, and she passed no judgments. In fact, Grace sometimes accompanied Ed on his evening visits, later writing that she enjoyed watching him doing what he loved. I point this out only to reinforce the curious nature of their 30-year marriage and Ed's predilection for fantasy and excitement.

For instance, after returning from a trip to Oxford, Ed began wearing knickers and capes and using phrases such as Splendid Fellow and ripping, leaving friends and colleagues deeply confused. Grace, however, found it endearing. On the other hand, Ed never allowed his wife to meet any of his relatives, not one. And when he died, in 1953, Grace burned all of his personal notes and buried his body in a secret location. In other words, Ed had many secrets, but his relationship with the hooker was not among them. Which brings us back to the evening in question and Ed's remarkable observation. If not a ghost or a Bigfoot or a UFO, what inexplicable thing did Ed witness from the Hooker's house

high on a remote hilltop in Los Angeles? The answer was a tiny twinkle of light deep in the night sky. At first, Ed paid it no mind. This wasn't the first time the Hooker had made him see stars, and, God willing, it wouldn't be the last. But this star was not a Nova, as Ed initially assumed, nor was it a quasar, or a neutron, or a blue giant, or a red dwarf, or a proto-star. This was a sepheid variable, a very unusual star,

that turned out to be much farther away from Earth than any astronomer believed possible. It took Ed some time to process the enormity of what he was witnessing, but once satisfied, he used the hooker's camera to capture the image. Then he told the world a truly incredible story. The story of how the Milky Way was not, in fact, the only galaxy in the universe. Ed believed there were others, maybe lots of others. He then surmised to the shock of scientists the world over that every single thing in our observable universe was at one point in time, one point in space. A truly mind-boggling concept that would have surely been dismissed as pure fantasy, if not for a photo, taken from the roof of a hooker's home high on a remote hilltop in Los Angeles. A hilltop named for General George Patton's grandfather,

Benjamin Wilson, who forged a trail to the pinnacle way back in 1864. The same hilltop were a man named Andrew Carnegie, later built an observatory for a powerful new telescope. A telescope armed with a camera and named for the man who paid for it. John D. Hooker. It was the Hooker Telescope that provided Ed with the first observable proof that we live in an expanding universe, a photo that captured the most important discovery in modern astronomy, taken by a raconteur with a reputation for stretching the truth. A brilliant but complicated scientists whose insatiable appetite for answers eventually led to the converseal.

construction of another telescope a bit more advanced than the one he used atop Mount Wilson way back in 1925. A telescope that recently confirmed the presence of no less than two trillion separate galaxies, all of which appear to be moving away from each other at incomprehensible speed, precisely as they have been doing ever since our universe exploded into existence 13.7 billion years ago. A space telescope named for a teller of tall tales

whose long nights with a famous hooker finally paid off with a really big bang and made him the most important astronomer in modern times. Edwin Hull. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. The ocean delights us. Some marvel at the colorful world below the surface.

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