The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 203: There's a Hole in Daddy's Arm

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

This is a sad one. But also a funny one. And frankly, a weird one. There's sentimentality and singing. Nosebleeds and narcotics. Letters from beyond the grave, and perhaps most surprising, the sudden appearance of a giant scrotum. Probably easier to just listen.

Hey guys, it's Mike Crow. This is The Way I Heard It, episode number 203. And it's called, There's a hole in Daddy's Arm. There's a hole in Daddy's Arm. We start with the saddest story that I have ever heard. A story so sad the first time I heard it, I thought to myself, damn, somebody ought to write a song about this. Well, I didn't write a song, but I did write a chapter in my book about the saddest songs I'd ever heard, as sung to me by the men of the chorus of the Chesapeake. These were the guys who I mentioned earlier in the book who introduced me at the tender age of 18 to a breathtakingly depressing collection of lamentations, set to four-part harmony, unlike anything I've ever heard. You think tears in heaven by Eric Clapton is sad?

You think he stopped loving her today by George Jones. Is a tear jerker? You ain't heard nothing yet. I'm talking about songs so sad you can't help but laugh even as you cry. After that, I chat with Chuck about why it is so many of us are drawn to misery set to music, and I share with him the details of a nightmare I endured earlier this week, a three-day nosebleed that was preceded by the surgical correction of a deviated septum. This is a nosebleed that deserves its own saddestown. song since it kept me up pretty much around the clock for three days and nearly drove me insane. It's a very strange conversation that includes the sudden swelling of my father's scrotum

and my mother's reaction to it, which incidentally ought to be set to music as well. I call this episode, there's a hole in daddy's arm in deference to a cheerful little tune called Sam Stone, which just might be the saddest song ever written by the late great John Prine. Stick around. I'll hum a few bars for you. It's guaranteed to put a smile on your face. This is episode number 203 of the way I heard it. And it all starts right now. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources?

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Chapter 25. His last letter home. The postman snapped the rubber band off the envelopes and slid another stack of mail through the slot in the front door. Ingrid heard the squeal of the tiny hinge, the chirp of tin-on-tin, and the soft whoosh of a new stack of mail landing on an old stack of mail. Those were the sounds that she tried to ignore. the sounds that ushered in a new day of grief. Hungry, mommy! Hungry now!

That was a sound she couldn't ignore. In the kitchen, Ingrid spread peanut butter on toast for her two-year-old son as the telephone jangled in its cradle. Hello, she whispered. Yes, this is she. Yes, he would have been 31 in January. You're welcome. Ingrid left AJ to his peanut-butter toast and wandered back to the front door.

With a bare toe, she pushed aside the catalogs and bills and regarded the dozens of sympathy cards, a literal pile of pity she couldn't bring herself to read. But there, buried in the condolences, Ingrid saw the unmistakable handwriting, his handwriting, and a postmark that read September 23, 1973, It was a letter from her husband, a letter from beyond the grave. Fort Jackson, South Carolina, September, 1966. Ingrid's husband is just another private, waiting in line to make a phone call home. Thanks to what the Army called his issues with authority, this particular private has managed to fail basic training, and that means another six weeks away from his new bride.

Ingrid will not be happy. As he waits his turn to deliver the bad news, the young private does what he always does. He studies the people around him and makes up stories to pass the time. That guy with the soggy shoes and the hang dog expression, for instance, maybe he's just come back from the carwash pool where he's been ordered to clean a fleet of muddy jeeps. And the guy with the arm tattoos that read, hey, and baby. Maybe he is a new father. That or a committed ladies' man who wishes to proclaim in indelible ink,

his unshakable belief that women come and go, but tattoos are forever. The private smiles to himself. Ingrid will love that one. Truth was, Ingrid found all of his stories delightful, but she never thought they would make her rich, and she never imagined they would make her a widow. All the same, six years had gone by, and now here she was, her grief temporarily suspended by the shock of seeing a message from the husband she had buried five days earlier. With trembling hands, she opened the envelope, removed the pages, and began to read her husband's last words, the very words she hoped and prayed he would one day say.

Moments later, a wash, an unspeakable grief. Ingrid tried to place a long-distance call to her mother, but when the operator heard Ingrid's last name, she hesitated. I hate to ask, but are you any relation? Ingrid sobbed. Yes, he was my husband. Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. All the girls down here.

We just loved him. You know that right. We were his biggest fans. Ingrid sobs some more. I know, she said. He loved all of you, too. Back in line, Ingrid's husband turns his attention to the soldier immediately in front of him, the red-rimmed eyes, the hunched up shoulders, the balled up fist,

gently tapping against the fresh crew cut. He's on the wrong end of a dear John call, no doubt about it. Ingrid's husband imagines the girl on the other end. A deceitful girl, a girl who was cheated on the soldier. with his best friend. The call ends, the phone slips from the soldier's hand and dangles in mid-air. Ingrid's husband is close enough to hear the operator say, Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. Are you still there? Would you like to place another call?

Blinking back a tear, the soldier grips the receiver and pours his heart out to the operator. Ingrid's husband doesn't eavesdrop. He simply watches the soldier's face. and dreams up a little story just to pass the time. Eventually, Ingrid's husband makes it out of the army and back home. Briefly, he keeps writing stories, but when AJ arrives and money becomes more of a concern, the former private begins telling his tales to anyone who might pay to hear them. Turns out, Ingrid isn't the only one who likes them. People say they feel so real.

They say his characters remind them of their own neighbors. And so the former private takes his tails on the road, and before long, the money begins to roll in. But being away from his family is painful. Ingrid misses her husband, A.J. misses his dad, and the man who used to write stories, just to pass the time, begins to agonize over the days he can never get back. Once, after an all-too-brief visit home, he writes the story of a lonesome troubadour who yearns to relive his favorite days over and over again.

People like that one, too. A lot. Then, just as his career is taking off, Ingrid's husband does the unthinkable. He quits. In his last letter home, the young writer promises to start writing different kinds of stories, novels and scripts. plays anything that doesn't have to be told night after night over and over again. He ends his letter with this. Remember, baby, it's the first 60 years that count, and I've got 30 more to go. I love you. Later that same day, he drops the letter in the mail and boards a private plane that crashes moments after leaving the runway.

Five days after that, the postman on English. Ingrid's porch delivers the best possible news at the worst possible time. We still remember the characters Ingrid's husband described. The kid in the soggy shoes with the case of the car wash blues. Rapid Roy, the stock car boy, with one tattoo that said baby and another one that just said hey. We still remember the roller derby queen, the poolroom hustler. No one messed with. The baddest man in the whole damn town.

and, of course, the anonymous telephone operator whose sweet voice calmed a heartbroken soldier at the lowest point in his life. We remember these characters not only because they feel real, but because the man who brought them to life never made it home, because his death catapulted his stories to the top of the charts, even as the characters he created ensured his own immortality. Naturally, Ingrid still has his last letter home. It's kept in a box just for wishes and dreams that will never come true. It is perhaps the ultimate love letter,

a promise made from beyond the grave by a homesick troubadour who yearned to save time in a bottle, a teller of stories and a singer of songs named Jim Crocey. Late one Tuesday night in the back room at Johnny's, my high school friend Chuck and I, listened as old men from the chorus of the Chesapeake sang the saddest songs ever written. As always, the men were broken down into foursomes, harmonizing around the square tables that held bowls of peanuts and pictures of draft beer. Things began with Danny Boy, as they always do, but then moved on to a song I'd never heard before.

Little pal, an impossibly maudlin tale of a man who must say goodbye to his young son before heading off to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Little pal, if daddy goes away, promise you'll be good from day to day. Do as mother says, and never sin. Be the man your daddy might have been. The men stared into each other's faces as they sang and wept unashamedly. Good Christ, Chuck said. That's got to be the saddest song ever sung. But Chuck was wrong. As little pal came to an end, another toe-tapper called Old Folks began. Everyone knows him as old folks, like the seasons he'll come and he'll go, just as free as a bird and as good as his word. That's why everybody loves him so. The song goes on to describe a world where all the old people suddenly dropped dead.

It is beyond depressing and very powerful. This song actually made me miss my grandparents, which was weird since they were alive and well at the time. Once again, the old men wept as they sang. But before anyone could mourn the death of old folks, another pitch-bite blew and another lamentation began. Are you familiar with the peppy tune called The Little Boy that Santa Claus forgot?

No? Neither was I. Christmas comes but once a year for every girl and boy, the laughter and the joy they find in each new toy. I'll tell you of a little boy who lives across the way. This little fellow's Christmas is just another day. I'll cut to the chase. The little boy writes to Santa, asking for a soldier and a drum. He's devastated when he gets neither. In fact, the little boy who Santa forgot, gets nothing at all for Christmas. Zero. Zilch. Why? Because his father was killed in the war. You see, the laddie hasn't got a daddy. Chuck stifled a nervous giggle. Sweet Jesus, he said. Who the hell writes a song like that? I had no answer to give him,

but I did notice that many of the older men who'd been listening were smiling too, even as they wept. Some actually chortled. Interesting. There's nothing funny about orphans and death, shell shock, and prison, but when old men sing about pain and loss and four-part harmony, the imagery becomes exponentially more intense, so much so that the songs collapse under the weight of their own mockishness, leaving you with little choice, but to laugh at the unbearable tragedy of it all. Somewhere across the crowded room, someone blew another pitch pipe, and we were treated to the story of an old man living alone for the first time in his life, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. At her grave sight, he says, Dear old girl, the Robin sings above you. Dear old girl, it speaks of how I love you. The blinding tears are falling as I think of my lost pearl, and my broken heart is calling. calling for you, dear old girl.

The quartet of men who sang that song were all widowers, but there they sat, weeping and smiling and drinking beer and singing into their grief. In the far corner, another pitchpite blew, and the room was treated to a jaunty rumination on crib death. I'm not even kidding. It begins with a father who walks into the nursery many months after his little girl's death.

I had opened wide the shutters of the long-deserted room, and a flood of golden sunshine chased away the dreary gloom. While gazing round with tenderness where baby last had laid, I chanced to see her fingerprints upon the window-pane. How the silent tears were falling, foolish tears, I wept in vain, but my heart forgot its pains as I kissed away the stains, kissed away those fingerprints off the window pane. This was an impossibly depressing tableau,

yet even more laughter rang out in the back room at Johnny's as fingerprints came to its weepy conclusion. That's when it occurred to me that those men didn't sing sad songs to reconnect with sadness. They sang them to let the sadness go. That's when I understood that those sad old, songs took real heavy feelings and helped distribute their weight. And that brings me to the saddest song I heard on that particular night. A song my old quartet still sings when we get together

every decade or so. A song, So Sad, Chuck can't get through it without giggling. Playmates were they, girl and lad. She's home today. Ladd feels sad. Doctor who calls whispers low when the last autumn leaves fall, then she must go. Lad, with a tear, climbs a tree. I'll keep her here, murmurs he. Big man in blue sternly cries, what are you doing there? Lad replies, I'm tying the leaves, so they won't come down, so the wind won't blow them away. For the best little girl in the wide, wide world, is lying so ill today. Her young life must go when the last leaves fall. I'm fixing them fast so they'll stay. I'm tying the leaves so they won't come down, so Nellie won't go away. Can you picture it? A little boy, desperate to keep his playmate from an early grave, tries to prolong

her life by tying leaves to a tree. They just don't write them like that anymore. When I learned about Jim Croce's last letter home and the family he left behind, I thought about the little boy up there in the tree, tying the leaves so they wouldn't come down, and I wondered if one day they might sing a song about poor Ingrid in the back room at Johnny's. God knows, her story's sad enough. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth?

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That is it. I can't. Oh, way. I can't do it. I can't do it without laughing. It's too sad. It's simply too sad not to laugh at. Oh, God.

Well, hello, everybody. This is Mike and Chuck. the second half of the podcast known as two dudes talking. Is that what we're calling it now? I don't know. Some people have picked that up. Yeah, I've been reading a little bit about that. Two dudes, one of whom has a weird-looking nose right now

and is wrestling through a narcotic haze of ambivalence and malaise. And then there's Mike. No, actually, I was going to say there's a little Carl Malden thing going on. When your nose is tilted up just a little bit, I'm like, man, there's a lot. lot of nostril there, way more than there used to be. Fans of my Facebook page know that last week I finally bit the bullet and got my septum put back into the middle of my face for the last 40 years or so. It's been not where it should be.

And so getting it fixed was a thing. It was called an open septoplasty. And they cut my face open and they shaved my turbinites and they put my, septum back where it belonged and that all happened six days ago. And this is really the first day that I've been completely off the medication. I'm healing. My nose looks different. But most importantly, Chuck. Wow. That is the sound of air going through both nostrils, something I've really not experienced since Kevin Randallette hit me in the face with that history book back in junior high. Well, I'll tell you, it's got to be a great feeling for you to be able to breathe because I can't imagine how you did it before. I mean, I remember the one time when you were showing me the example and you held one nostril, you held the good nostril and tried to breathe through the bad one and you sounded like a goose. I know. Being shot. It was terrible.

Well, it's more like the frog in the boiling water. It's been bad for a long time, but it got progressively worse to the point where it was so bad, I didn't even realize it. until I got a cold. And whenever I got a cold over the last 20 years or so, sleeping was very, well, it was impossible. I'm not claustrophobic, but when I can't get in any air at all, I can't lie flat. My mind immediately goes to the premature burial, the cask of a mantalado, everything Edgar Allan Poe ever wrote. And the claustrophobia and terror that comes from being buried alive completely overruns my brain and I have to sleep sitting up. And so I just decided I know, that's just no way to go through the rest of my life. So now I can breathe, but dude, I'm telling you, man, this was a very, very difficult week.

And while I'm positive, it's going to be worth it in much the same way a woman is positive. She's going to grow to love the child that she's currently humping out of her uterus. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm going to get there. No, listen, I, I bore witness to only a tiny piece of this, just, but I could tell the sound of your voice that you were not in a good way, man. You are not in a good way. Well, you know what? I'll tell you the short version of the story just to share it with the gang, because if somebody wants to write a sad song, which of course is what I really want to talk about. But if somebody wants to write a sad song about my nose, I'm officially putting it out there. right now. I would I would gratefully gleefully commission something that

that sums up in music what happened to me on Thursday night because the short version is, you know, this is major surgery. Your nasal cavity. You know, it's not just your nose. It's a fist-sized chunk

of space in the middle of your head. And what they did to me was they They cut me under the nose. Dr. Seth did. Brilliant physician. Made a few incisions on the inside, on each side, and then peeled my whole nose back and moved the septum and then shaved the turbinus.

I was under four and a half hours. So when I came out of the general, he gave me some of this hydrocodone acetaminophen. I was like, look, don't let the pain get ahead of you because it's very, very difficult to catch up. You know, take these as directed, which I never do, Chuck. As you know, I never take, I take half the pain medication. I don't mind pain as I understand it. But I don't like the feeling of being completely out of my head. But three days in, you know, I had taken two of these things as directed every four hours.

And three days in, I was still bleeding. Not a lot. I was dripping. And the doctor said there'd be dripping. He said if it's a stream, like from a faucet, you know, call me, go to the hospital. But you should expect some dripping. It's a very vascular part of your head and you're a bleeder anyway, whatever that means.

So I said, all right, you know, and I'm woozy and I get home and I'm kind of medicated and the snot starts. And when I say snot, I don't even, it's not the snot you're thinking of. This is not my grandfather's snot. This is not your great-grandfather's snot. This is not the snot. The homo sapian, you know, ought to be created. This is a combination of, God, mucus, blood.

It just so much of it, man. And it accumulated in both nostrils very, very quickly. And it formed like a red brick wall, impenetrable. And yet, through that wall, the dripping, it never stopped. For three days, I was wearing like this gauze mustache. I would change it every 15 minutes because it would get soaked with, with blood. It's just soaked with blood. And, you know, blood blooms when it hits a tissue or a piece of gauze. So I'm telling myself, I, it looks worse than it is. But after three days, every eight

seconds, drip, drip, drip. It's like the telltale heart, you know, I just couldn't get it to stop. And by Thursday night, I was worried. So I called the doctor. Now, at this point, it's every six seconds. I'm like, doc, every six seconds, man, there's a big fat drop of blood coming out of my knows. And I'm starting to worry. I FaceTime and I rip off my gau's mustache and I show it. And dude, it looked like, I mean, it looked like the blood in there looked like intrals from a small animal. The way it was coagulated and awful and just, it was just everywhere. You know, and he said, ah, yeah, okay. So you're, you know, it's not a steady stream. I'm like, I told you you were a bleeder. How do you know it's not a steady stream? It's like there's a wall of stuff

and somehow the blood's getting through. So in my mind, I'm imagining there's a giant pool of blood up behind my eyes. And it would be a steady stream, but it can't be. So it is what it is. An hour later every three seconds. So I call him back. The bathroom has over a hundred pieces of tissue paper all bright red bloody rags everything everything it looks like the last real from carry right I mean it's just it's awful and and I'm panicking like an anxiety attack I'm not I'm just not in my right mind and and I realize as I'm talking to him I'm holding this piece of tissue and the blood that comes out hits the tissue and I can hear it it goes And that's when I realized, oh, God, I'm hallucinating.

I'm I'm so high on hydrocodone that I can hear the sound that the blood is making when it hits. Long story short, he's like, look, you can go to the hospital if you want. This is worse than normal, but it's not unprecedented. You just got to get through the night. And so I sat there, Chuck, all night watching documentaries listening to the sound of my blood, drop by drop hitting the tissue paper, completely high on hydrocodone. Went in the next day, he met me at 9 o'clock. And what he pulled out of my nose, just I'll wait for somebody to write the song that sums it up.

Because it was just unspeakable. I got these splints in my nose, right? One in each nostril. These giant cap-sized hollow devices. And all of this stuff accumulates around them. It just, I just can't tell you, man. It was six days, three days of absolute hell, one day of absolute ambiguity, followed by two days of, okay, I can just, I can get through this. So they took the splints out yesterday.

And here I sit before you today with a new nose, maybe some new content for a chapter of a new book and hopefully a catchy melody for a new sad song. Well, I'll tell you, I was a little worried. worried about you because you didn't sound so good. But you are you, it sounds to me now like you are very close to being back to normal. You, you look about 90%. Definitely. I mean, it's funny, but I can see that your nostrils are more open. Oh, yeah. Which seems really weird, but, but I can see it. He said it'll go pretty much back to the way it was. My nose will be straighter. It already is straighter, but it is bigger than it was right now because it's still swollen. And he said, look, don't freak out.

But over the next week, it's actually going to swell up inside some more as it heals. And so you're not going to be breathing as well as you were, you know, when I took the splints out. But that's fine. I just, whoever writes this song, make sure there's a verse in it that captures the majesty of suddenly having so much air. When he pulled those splints out, which I might auction off from MicroWorks, by the way. Oh, my God. When he pulled those splints out, the air that rushed into my brain through both nostrils literally made my eyes cross.

It was so delicious, so delightful. And so, you know, it's like, I can't describe it. It's like trying to describe blue to a blind person. Right. It was just really good. Like a cool drink of water on a warm summer day. All right, that works. All right.

A cool drink of water on a warm summer day. The air rushed in like that. How did music play a part of your trauma? Did you listen to much music? You know, actually, this is not a good story. Because I knew that you and I were going to talk about, this chapter. And I knew I was going to have to postpone it. We were going to do it over the weekend. In real time right now, this is, what is this Tuesday morning? Yeah, the podcast is late by about

four or five hours. Yeah. And so at the height of my fever dream, at the very height of my drug-fueled hallucinations where I was listening to the blood land, I was thinking of sad songs. I didn't play anything. I really didn't listen to much music. But I got this chorus stuck in my mind, Chuck, from an old song by John Prine, famous country singer. And he wrote back in the early 70s, he wrote a tune called Sam Stone. Sam Stone came home.

Tell us a story about a veteran comes home from Vietnam. He's addicted to heroin. And it, John Prine has a way of, like the sad or the sentiment, the happier the melody sometimes. And he's got this voice that it doesn't make anything sound sad, which makes it super weird when it is. But the chorus of Sam Stone goes like this. There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes. Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose. Little pitchers have big ears.

Don't stop to count the years. Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios. Now, the thing that got stuck in my crawl, though, was just, There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes. I couldn't stop hearing it. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, take a moment and Google Sam Stone and listen to it. It is one of the saddest songs, in my opinion, ever written. And aside from Barbershop, of course, nobody does it better than country.

With the possible exception of the blues, an entire genre dedicated to it. So, you know, there's nothing new regarding sad songs if we're going to talk about their impact on society. but for whatever reason, that little hook and that little thing was running through my mind for about six hours as I sat cross-legged on my bed watching something on the history channel, listening to the imaginary sound of my blood hit the Kleenex. The forest from Sam Stone. Google it, man. I'm telling you. Actually, don't do it because if it gets in your crawl, it will resurface at a dark. moment in your life and that will become the soundtrack.

Well, it's tough to shake an earworm, particularly one that is depressing like that. But I knew that you weren't fully, fully there. Some of the texts I got from you because we're just like, I'm like, what? Where you say, yeah, I don't think we're going to be able to do the podcast today. This was Friday. I'm like, we never even talked about doing the podcast on Friday. So it was just such a. It was just such a weird thing.

Yeah, I'm sorry, buddy. You know. I was going, I was toggling back and forth between various levels of lucidity. Yeah, I'm sure. You know, I was never completely, well, that's not true. I was out of my mind Thursday night. But then after that, it was all just variations on a theme. And, you know, the doctor, he took me off the hydrocodone and then put me on something

called Ativan, which is really just more of a sedative. and less of a narcotic. So I was never fully asleep and never fully awake. It was like that time in Georgia Farm, working at QVC. It was like when I was at shift work. Except I also had these two giant objects jammed deep into my nostrils. So I'm just walking around in a fog, muttering sad songs, thinking, oh, yeah, I was supposed to talk to Chuck about that today.

Can't do it. Can't do it. Sorry, Chuck, can't do it today. I have to push it. I wasn't expecting you to call or us to do it. There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes. Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose. Oh, my God, are you kidding me? Stop it.

Oh, yeah. The question is, what happened to us back in 1984 with those old men in Johnny Jones when we were overcome with fits of laughter at a time that was, I just, I think I know the answer, but that combination, that weird combination of masculinity and unapologetic sentiment, tears and laughter, it all came back to me with a little help from the narcotics. My guest today, Tom Albanyse, is an American giant, and I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining,

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Yeah, it was. It was 82. Yeah, that sounds about right. You were just out of high school. You graduated in 81. I was in 80s? So we were there in 81, 82. Yeah.

Our 40-year reunions are this year. Shut up. Yours was last year. God, yeah, they canceled nine. I'm sort of full going on. No, no, we got postponed. Ours are combined now. Oh, that's right.

They're doing it in Ocean City. Ocean City, yeah. We should go. I'm thinking I'm going to, yeah. You know what I'd love to address the graduating classes of 1980 and 1981 with a little tune that goes like this. There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes. I mean, just that image, man, of like from a kid's point of view is, you know, obviously this is a cocaine problem. No, I'm kidding.

It's a heroin problem. Yeah. But the idea of a kid, you know, just making sense of it, there's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes. God. Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose. That's like tying the leaves, you know? That's exactly it. And it's like Ingrid, right? These songs, my favorite sad songs anyway, all attempt to unpack a moment, you know, a moment in time. The good ones. Now, there's some great sad songs. that tell big epic stories. But my favorite ones start with, okay, the letter came through the mail shoot and landed. And the widow recognized the handwriting as that of her dead husband recently buried. Yeah.

So now, I don't think anybody's written a song about that moment either, but somebody should. Wow. Somebody should. because it just, it blooms like blood on a tissue. It just stretches out further and further and it keeps going. And you can go deep. You can go as deep as you want, you know. But it's all in the service of unpacking that moment.

A little boy sees his heroin addicted veteran dad take what should be their dinner money and shoot it into the hole in his arm. What do you do with that? You know, you write a song. A little boy tries to keep his playmate alive by tying the leaves in a tree so they don't come down. Are you freaking kidding me? Because the winter comes, when autumn's over, she's going to pass away. That's right.

I'll just keep autumn here. Right. It's not because of the leukemia. It's not because of the cancer. It's because the leaves are going to drop off the tree. So in that childlike way of thinking, you can correct the problem by tying the leaves up there. So that moment gets distilled and it turns into a song. It's the same thing with fingerprints.

The silent tears are falling. Foolish tears I wept in vain. But my heart forgot its pain as I kissed away the stains. Kissed away those fingerprints upon the window pain. The moment the guy walks in. He's not sure. Can he get on with his life or not? His little girl's been dead for six months.

And there he sees her fingerprints. Yeah. He can't wipe them away, but he can't leave them there forever. It would drive him mad. So he kisses them away. And then he writes a song about it. Are you kidding me? There were so many, so many of those.

I mean, it really was just a plethora of songs that we heard as kids that were so sad, you couldn't help but giggle. I would say, yes, a plethora. At times ago, it felt like an assault. Because those old men and Johnny Jones, there were 130 people in the course of the Chesapeake back in those days, and many of them all knew the same songs. In fact, they all knew the same songs.

So any foursome at any time could break away and woodshed harmonize with... That's it. We'd hear the sound of a pitch pipe, and then the next lamentation would begin. And so it just, I wanted to write about it because I wanted to try and find a way to parse the unspeakable sadness with the inappropriate laughter. And it wasn't just you and I being a couple of dicks laughing at something inappropriate. It was the men themselves who laughed. Yes. As they sang, because they, too, couldn't quite fully shoulder the weight. What did I call it?

The mockishness. The mockishness. Yeah, great word. Yeah. Well, they were expressing, as Edgar Allan Poe might say, melancholia. Yeah. Right? We don't use that word anymore, but it's a feeling that we love to feel.

People love to feel. You know, you think of sad songs. Is that an Elton John song? Sure. They say so much. What are the other ones? I wrote them down somewhere. I don't think I have on here.

They're only a gajillion. Song sung blues. Song, song, blue. Everybody knows one. Yeah. And it's precisely true because everybody's lived one. Yeah. You know, we know sad songs because we live sad songs.

But melancholia, as I understand it anyway, is different than melancholy. Melancholia was what in Pose Day, they would call what we now call depression. You know, if you were in a state of melancholia, you were predisposed to depression and were therefore often depressed. Melancholy is a little different. Come to me, my melancholy baby. cuddle up and don't feel blue. All your foolish fears are fancy maybe, right? That word actually appears in a lot of the old songs

because the feeling melancholy as opposed to feeling depressed is sometimes cathartic. Right. And that was the other point I was trying to make. There's a difference between wallowing in grief and self-pity and affirmatively choosing to sit down. and have yourself a good cry for the purpose of just being released from something.

Yes, I want to, that reminds me of, I want to correct something that you said about how we were laughing as we were singing. The way I remember it is that these guys leaned into the melancholy, leaned into the sadness. They had tears down their eyes. They were feeling every model and moment of it. But they were also aware that this was, they found something to laugh at in the midst of that feeling.

Well, the point that I was going to make is that they would finish the song. They would embrace the sadness wholeheartedly, but the minute that they hit the last chord, that's when the smiles, the chuckles, the giggles, and the jokes would come in. Remember what we did at the end of? I'm tying the leaves, right?

Oh, playmate, come out and play with me. Nelly, don't go away. And then she died. Because it's like, you know something, if you're going to write a song that makes me feel that sad, that's right. Then I'm going to hit something back over the net that says, hey, man, I don't appreciate being manipulated like that, even though I kind of do.

No, I loved it, man. I love those. I remember how earnest Fred could be. Fred King, our mentor and music teacher, you know, where, I mean, he felt it. He would give those speeches before we would go to compete. He would give a speech to the chorus. He was like Patton. And he would, you know, tears would stream down his face.

He'd be all emotional. and everything. And then we would lose. And then he would be like, ah, well, you know, we'll get him next time. Well, it's the, it's, it's the, it's the unapologetic sentimentality combined with the undeniable presence of masculinity that for me was the most interesting thing about the course of the Chesapeake. And interestingly, The Boy Scouts, for me, your experience might vary. You know, Boy Scouts are very different troop to troop. In the old days, my Boy Scout troop had a boxing ring and mandatory shooting lessons,

and it was run by a retired drill sergeant. Right, right. You know, there are lots of barbershop courses out there that smear on the pancake, make up and sing zippity doodah, and it's like, well, whatever. But the course of the Chesapee, those dudes, many of them fought in the Second World War, Korean War, the Vietnam War, they stood shoulder to shoulder. They loved it when Fred King made him cry. They loved to be sentimental. But they were manly men among men. And, you know, woe unto thee who crossed them. Yeah. These were guys who could laugh as heartily as anybody and who also could cry, just depending upon the moment.

They just, they played the full gamut. And that to me is what I learned, you know, what about, I don't know about you, but my dad, Like, I don't think my dad when I was a kid told me that he loved me. I think Fred King was the first adult man that told me that he loved me. Yeah. You know, um, wow. That was different. Yeah. No, I didn't know that about you.

Yeah. You know what? My dad told, told his sons he loved them. But he always did it with a weird kind of, what do you call a caveat. Oh, really? Yeah. That's not to say, I'm not saying my dad's love was conditional. It was unconditional. It was unconditional. And it still is. It's just that he loved his wife more. Right, right, right. And I talked to him about that on the podcast a couple of months ago. I recall. I think I talked to my mom about it. And, you know, that, I never took offense. In fact, I think it was one of the greatest favors he did. He didn't make a big deal of spelling it out, but there was no doubt in the minds of my brothers and I that my mom came first to him and then us. Anyway, digression.

But yeah, Fred King was not shy about, you know, I mean, imagine today. Imagine Fred King today in a school, you know, putting his hands on your shoulders, leaning in and leaning in and saying, listen to me, I love you. And I want to help you get in touch with something about yourself that you don't even know lives inside of you. And then handing you music and forcing you to sing it. This is the same guy who took the snare drum and marched up and down the hallways during the first day. He and I went to overly senior high. We had the same first day. He started teaching there, you know, back in 1977, I guess it was. And, yeah, inspiring people to, you know, students to follow him out onto the football field for

homecoming, where he taught them the school song that people didn't even know they had. Yeah. And to sing it, you know, again, that we're juxtaposition of making music and acting and other stuff that, you know, typically goes in the Sissy category, right next to brawling, fighting, serving, shooting. He was a golden glove boxer, Fred King was. Yeah. He was an all pro running back, I believe.

There was a story from his previous school where he, where someone confronted him and he said, okay, let's go. And he actually fought a student, leveled the student and moved on. and there was no issue. There was no calling of parents. There was no. It was like, okay, can we move on now? Yes, we can.

Thank you. I get it. But that was actually, that happened at Parkville where I went to junior high. And in those days, when he was teaching there, he was just out of the Navy. He was like 24 years old, 25 years old. He wasn't a big guy. Didn't have any teeth. He had lost them all playing football and boxing.

So he had these, you know, these fake teeth you always wore. And in those days, you could hold a kid back indefinitely. And so there were kids there, technically still in high school, who were 20 years old. Right. So, you know, he got challenged all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

And, oh, a legendary story confirmed by several sources. He laid a guy out flat right in front of the classroom. And so I guess you're going to go home and tell you. mom he said no no and that was that shameless plug long before she was peggy roe my mom was peggy noble daughter of karl and thilma noble it was her father carl who inspired me to pitch a show called dirty jobs to the discovery channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work carl noble did for a living trade work skilled labor that foundation is called micro works and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades.

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It's my favorite way to support Microworks and my favorite whiskey. to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirates.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com. Soon may the noble man come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. Anyway, it was a different time, and you and I were lucky, you know, years later to meet him, and then to be ushered into this weird world where old veterans sat around.

singing sad songs, weeping and laughing while buying us 17 and 18 year olds, all the beer we could drink. This is not an homage to that which is appropriate. No, not any longer. But, you know, I was there for that with you, but I also was there not that long ago, I think it was the year before last, where you came to L.A. to do a speech about what it means to be a man. Oh, yeah.

And you told this story, basically, about Johnny Jones and all the sad songs there. But you had the benefit of not the written word in a page, but you could actually sing them there. And what was that like? Well, I was working on this chapter and kind of thinking about this when I was invited to give this talk. And the theme of the evening was on manhood. And I asked, well, what specifically do you want me to talk? talk about is, you know, is like a dirty jobs rumination, the deadliest catch rumination. I got lots of stories about manly men doing lots of manly things. And they said, talk about whatever you want.

I said, all right. Well, this book was in the works and this chapter was on my mind. So I thought it would be interesting to talk about Fred King, this man who had this impact on you and me and thousands of other people. Thousands, yeah. I mean, I don't think you were living. I don't think you were living in Baltimore when he died. But, you know, his funeral, Chuck, the church was standing room only, and there were probably 400 people standing outside. What's interesting was that there was a hurricane blowing up the coast. It was raining cats and dogs. And people were standing out in the rain, former students, almost all. And I was inside and every single person there. I mean, it was truly like, wow, this is a wonderful life.

If Fred King wasn't on the planet, you know, none of these people would be here and we wouldn't be having this conversation. But the point of the story vis-a-vis the speech was to say that this most unusual man was manly exactly because he didn't give a damn what anybody thought about the songs he sang and the life he lived and the way that he lived it. and to be able to be a role model to us the way he was and at the same time inspire so many other people with music and so many different ways. That's the thing I tried to unpack. And so talking about these sad songs and a book is one thing. You can type the lyrics out and hope people read them or maybe Google them and get some sense of it. But I realized when I was standing in front of that crowd, you know, I think it was Little Pal that first came to mind. I mentioned it in the book.

But that, dude, that song, a man falsely accused of a crime, crime he didn't commit, is going off to prison. And he turns to his little boy who will likely never see him again and says, little pal if daddy goes away promise you'll be good from day to day do as mother says and never sin be the man your daddy might have been I could type that out in a book. But to stand there and sorry about the vocal technique, my nose really is a hot mess at the moment. But I realized that standing on that stage, singing a song like that to a crowd like that,

was having an impact, not the same impact that Fred had on you and I, of course, but how many B-list celebrities walk out on a stage and sing a song that was written, a hundred years ago in the service of manhood. One. Right. So I'm not saying it was a great speech.

I'm saying it was a different one and probably not the one they were expecting. But it's weird, man. There's a chapter in this book called, you know, a manly man, a gold watch and a really big seat. Gold medal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't ever correct me on the podcast, Joe.

Yeah. Sorry about that. Look, I'm still somewhat medicated. I'm tired of making excuses. But, yeah. Are you? No. In fact, I'm really starting to lean into it.

You really are, yeah. Okay. Look, I guess I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm nearly 60 years old. And if there's some sort of playbook for what it means to be a man, I think it's still being written. And I personally believe that there must be a chapter in there somewhere that tries to parse. this weird mix of sentimentality with masculinity.

That's really all I meant to say, Charles. Yes, yes. And that's exactly what it was, you know. And Fred was a master of that. You're pretty good at it too. But the idea of, you know, conveying emotion in a masculine way, I think that's really the thick of it, is that to be a man and to be a man,

a masculine man, but still to say something that might bring a tear to someone's eye is a skill that not everyone possesses. I don't even know if it's a skill. I think it's a choice, you know. It's being vulnerable is what it is. I mean, not to be all sensitive about it because I don't, I'm not in the pajama boy camp, right? I don't think that kind. I didn't know there was a camp of pajama boys. Google Pajama Boy. You'll find them. What is it?

That seems weird. I don't remember. Now, it was an ad around Christmas and a guy, a guy's wearing pajamas. I don't, just Google Pajama Boy. All right. It was a thing for a while. This isn't that. Okay.

It's more about, it's more about being vulnerable and letting people see you at your, maybe not your worst. but maybe at your weakest. And Fred was not afraid to do that. You know, he was not afraid to cry. Yes. Which is different than saying, oh, gather around everybody. I'm going to cry for you now.

Right. It just, it was never the goal. It was just a symptom of a really passionate, emotional guy who didn't care to ever hide his passions or emotions. which I think is interesting. Have you ever seen your dad cry? Twice. Huh. Yeah.

Yeah. Once when his dad died. And a year ago, I saw him weep in much the same way. I saw myself weep three days ago. I don't know that I mentioned this at the outset, but this is probably a good place. to start to land the plane. But when I, at my worst moment this week, when I was on the phone with the doctor, listening to the imaginary sound, a drop of blood makes when it hits the tissue, I looked in the mirror. I'm standing there in my underwear with this awful. I got a splint on the outside of my

nose and two splints on the inside. I don't even look like myself. I don't recognize myself. I'm covered with blood. I'm laughing. and I'm crying. Tears, Chuck, real tears are streaming down my face. I'm laughing at the sight of myself, but not feeling any humor at all because this giant narcotic haze

is hanging over me. And my dad, my dad a year ago. And I'm not saying anything I haven't already talked about on Facebook. My mother wrote a chapter about this. Is this the testicle story? Yes.

The scroto. Yes. My dad, he had a hydroceal, you know, and a hernia, inguinal hernia and a hydrocile procedure, which led to massive swelling. Drainage, right? All that fluid has got to go somewhere and it goes to your scrotum. My dad's scrotum swelled up like, in my mother's words, some sort of pineapple. A pineapple.

No, she went through the whole litany of fruits and vegetables. She finally settled on eggplant. And she wrote about it in terms of a blackened egg plant. Now, my dad is a circumspect man. He, you know, he doesn't share unnecessarily. He's modest to a fault. He doesn't cry to answer your question much at all. But when I went home to see him, because my mother said, look, something's wrong.

I mean, it's not just the fact that your dad scrotum is now the size of an eggplant. He's depressed. He's crying. He's not in his right mind. Of course, he was on medicine as well. Right. But now that you mentioned it, I realize what was really happening is for me, three days ago and for my dad a year or so ago. We were both coming to terms with the fact that we weren't in control of our bodies.

Our bodies were letting us down. Yeah. Something was happening that we simply couldn't control. You know, for me, a steady drip of blood out of a nose that didn't look like my own. For him, a scrotum that was suddenly the size of an eggplant. And, you know, somewhere in the back of his mind, I'm sure he realized for his wife, this is just content galore. And, you know, between us, my mother immediately started. writing about it. She sent me an early draft of a hysterical essay that I retitled Scrodom Land.

Because everything became about my dad Scrodom. This shy, retiring, circumspect, modest man, when I walked into the apartment, he's standing there and he says, Michael, look at this thing. Oh, geez. And I'm like, no, he's like, look at this. Does this look normal? I'm like, no, it doesn't. look normal unless you're at the state fair in the eggplant competition. You know what else it doesn't look normal? You drop and trow right here in the living room. He was showing off his giant scrotum the way you would show off, you know, a new tattoo if you were really proud of it. Yes. Or confused by it. Proud and confused. So I guess, you know, I guess gentle listener, if you're seriously going to sit down and try and write a song about the moment Ingrid saw that

handwriting on that letter from her dead husband or the moment Mike Rowe heard the sound that blood makes when it hits a tissue, you might as well jot down a few bars about the time John Rowe pulled his underpants down and says, does this look normal? Because that is a sad song, my friends, waiting to be written sung and laughed at. Hey, before we go, I want to ask you, what's the last movie scene that you, that made you cry? Or what's the one that gets you every time? Well, you know, it's funny. the lockdown, I think, has made more people.

This people have been more, more people have been sadder in general. I think in my lifetime during the last year than ever, right? Yep. And I know that, you know, TV's powerful. I got an answer to your question, but by way of a preface, I got to tell you, I saw a McDonald's commercial. I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to say it. About eight months ago, you know, the one, the old guys behind the count.

He's working part-time. I mean, it's a 30-second spot. How they manage to impart in 30 seconds that the old man is a widower and he's just trying to fill his time by helping people. So he gets a job at McDonald's and he asks a couple of young kids if they want fries with that. And the young kids are so nice to the old man. And the old man is so nice to the young kids.

And it's just like a big Mac and fries and a Coke. And he offers him some change. And they say, keep the change. And I'm sitting there. And I realize, man, my lower lip is doing that. that the quipper. It's doing the thing. Yeah. Right.

And suddenly I'm like, you know, why does my genitonic taste salty? I'm weeping into my genitonic on account of a damn McDonald's commercial. Yes, man. I know exactly that feeling. I did the exact same thing. Last year was a sad year. But it doesn't matter. Pandemic, lockdown or not.

At the end of saving Private Ryan, when the old Private Ryan, the old. man is kneeling there at the grave of Tom Hanks, knowing that he died to save him. And everybody else in the platoon, basically, died to save him. Tom Hanks' last words, remember, he pulls him close and he says to Matt Brown, young private Ryan, earn this. Make it count. Make it count. Yeah.

And now, you know, 60 years later, the old man, kneel. at the grave with his wife and family behind him. Tears are streaming down his face and he's saying, was I, was I a good man? Right. And his wife is there to say, yes, yes. You know, you made it count. And then the music, of course, the music that swells behind that.

I'm sorry, you know, I, you could run it right now and I would cry. And then afterwards, we would laugh about the fact that we're, We're a couple of dudes crying at a moment on the screen. Yes. Or a moment in the back room of a dive bar in Highlandtown in 1982. Whatever. In the words of Crowded House, wherever there is comfort, there is pain. Well, true words never spoken.

I'll tell you that. There was a lot of tears in Highlandtown back in the day. Yeah, there was, man. Yeah, there were. Hey, we have a conference call we're supposed to be on. Yeah. Yeah. So we need to wrap this up. Thank you, listener, for listening. We really appreciate it. If you liked this episode, yeah. I'm thinking we got more than one at this point. If we don't. I'm speaking to each listener as if they're the only one listening because they probably the only one listening right now.

Listener, take a look around. Is there anyone around you right now who's listening to the same thing that you're listening to? Probably not. We're talking to you. And if you like this, share it with someone else. and if you don't share it with someone else my feeling is that more people should share things they're not crazy about i just really think in the interest of broadening everyone's horizon we ought not just get stuck in this five-star world right let's say i thought this was pretty good give it a listen i thought this was a little bit of okay let me know if you're right no no what i'm saying is you know what this one fell a bit short of the mark i'm still giving it five stars And I think you should give it five stars too, even as you listen and wallow in the sadness, the disappointment, the weirdness of Mike's bloodbath and his dad's giant scrotum for all these reasons.

Five stars for what's this podcast called? The way I heard it. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you. Oh, and if you want to get the book in advance. They know what to do. They know what to do. If they want the book, they download the book where people download books.

And then they listen to the entire book, probably audible. or some such place. But you just come back here next week. Yeah. You'll listen to a couple of knuckleheads unpack it one painful sentence at a time for free. Very good. Hey, by the way, how do things go with that whole blue chew thing? Remember the sponsor for a week or so ago?

Yes. I'm getting tons of email from people who say they love the, they let me write a commercial. And I did. and now people are wondering, hey, is blue chew coming back? I don't know. As a producer, I wonder if you have any insight. Yes, I do. Nothing that I'm certain to share at this moment.

But yes, I believe they will be back for more chews of the blue. Well, if you talk to them, just tell them that I said I'd be up for it. I see what you did there. Okay. All right. Peace out. Cheers. moves us, surfing a wave or savoring the view.

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