The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 206: Who's Your Granddaddy

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

After sharing the true story of a hard-charging master sergeant with a voice like a jackhammer who went on to become a famous artist, Mike recalls the lessons learned from his soft-spoken grandfather – an artist of a different kind - whose unique talents inspired a show called Dirty Jobs, and a foundation called mikeroweWORKS. It's a rumination on men who scream, and men who whisper, complete with a song about a nose that wouldn't stop bleeding.

Hey guys, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. Episode number 206, it's called Who's Your Granddaddy? Not who's your daddy, who's your granddaddy. For the record, this is a rhetorical question. I'm not asking for an actual answer vis-a-vis the name of your grandfather, either maternal or paternal. I am instead posing a broad-based query designed to make you consider the impact of grandfathers on polite society in general, and more specifically, with you the impact of mine on me. Apologies, incidentally, for the sound quality. My trusty microphone has officially crapped the bed, and it is no longer interfacing the way it's supposed to with garage band, so you're hearing me on the microphone from my computer. I hope you don't mind.

Point being, this rumination on Grandfathers, regardless of what it sounds like, is preceded by the true story of a master sergeant in the Air Force who spent the first part of his career yelling at his recruits and the second part becoming a famous artist. This man, this master sergeant with a voice like a jackhammer, reminds me a lot of my own grandfather, a man named Carl Noble. Carl Noble was not in the Air Force and he never once raised his voice, at least as far as I know. But like this particular master sergeant, this man known for screaming at the top of his lungs by some and painting pretty pictures by others. This guy reminds me of my grandfather because my pop was also an artist. Different kind of artist, but an artist nevertheless, a vocational artist whose work not only inspired dirty jobs, but the MicroWorks Foundation, which I'm delighted to report, is about to enter its 13th year and announce another round of

work ethic scholarships and give away a million bucks later this month. That's neither here or there. My intent with this episode, regardless of the audio quality, was to interview my mom, who knows more about her father than I do, but unfortunately, Peggy Rose is a bit under the weather today, so my conversation unfolds once again with my old buddy Chuck, who, if the comments are to be believed, continues to amuse many of this podcast's regular listeners. Based on the conversation that Chuck and I just had, I believe he will do so once again forthwith. It's episode number 206, and it's called Who's Your Granddaddy? And it all starts right now.

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work for you too. Post a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash row. And watch what happens. Odds are you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. HipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. Chapter 28. Keep your voice down. Bob had a voice like a jackhammer, and when he raised it, recruits in the barracks at Ileson Air Force Base awakened as though a shotgun had been fired over their heads.

Rise and shine, dirtbags. Everybody up. Everybody out. Let's move it. As the young men sprang from their bunks, it occurred to Bob that he'd been yelling at recruits for as long as he'd been getting crew cuts. The work of a master sergeant in the Air Force, Bob's job description, basically, came down to yelling.

Come on, ladies, we're not on vacation. Let's get the lead. Out! As the airmen prepared for yet another five-mile run, Bob looked through the frosted window panes of the drafty barracks and watched yet another sunrise light up the snow-capped mountains behind Moose Creek, the early morning rays illuminating, the distant clouds, the mighty fir trees standing along the riverbank like emerald sentinels, the massive boulder in the middle of the rushing stream where the grizzly bears perched, waiting for the salmon on their way to spawn.

As always, Bob paused to let the image burn itself into his mind's eye. Then he did something rather unusual. He quit. At 38 years of age, the master's sergeant vowed right then and there to leave the Air Force, stop yelling, and get out of the cold. And that is how Bob became a famous TV star. Actually, it wasn't as easy as all that. It never is. Bob had no experience in front of the camera, and his road to stardom was paved, as such roads often are, with rejection and frustration. But Bob also caught one lucky break, a very lucky break, in the form of Annette Kowalski, who first saw him perform in a workshop in Clearwater, Florida. Years later, she recalled their first meeting.

I was in a deep depression, she said, grieving the tragic loss of my oldest son, watching Bob perform changed everything. It wasn't just his talent. It was the way he made me feel. He just lifted my spirits and radiated a quality that I knew America was starving for. Annette wasn't an agent or a manager, but she knew what talent was when she saw it. So she proposed a business relationship. Bob agreed, and in less than a year, not only did the retired Master Sergeant have a hit show,

he had the number one program on the channel. Eventually, he had a body of work that all. all but eclipsed anyone else's with 400 episodes under his belt. And that was how Bob became a famous TV star. Actually, it wasn't as easy as all that. It never is. Annette had no experience managing talent or selling TV shows. She waited through countless nose before finding a station manager in Virginia

who was willing to put Bob on the air. Once that happened, it really was as easy as that. But because Annette had been right all along. Bob had a certain quality Americans seemed to be starving for. Funny thing, though, in an NPR interview in 2016, 20 years after Bob's untimely death at the age of 52, Annette described Bob in a way that shocked listeners. She called him a tyrant.

You don't believe that, she asked. Do you really think this company would be as successful as it is if he didn't insist that everything be done a certain way? The interviewer was speechless. I don't want to leave the impression that he was rude or nasty, Annette added. He wasn't, but he was very disciplined, very strict. Believe me, it was Bob's way or no way at all. NPR's audience might have been surprised. by Annette's frank assessment. That wasn't how they pictured Bob being at all. But if any of Bob's

old recruits had been listening, they wouldn't have batted an eye. Oh no, tyrants would have summed up their former master sergeant nicely. Then again, imagine the shock they had gotten years earlier when the man with their crew cut who'd screamed at them around the clock had suddenly popped up on their TV screens with an afro the size of a beach ball and started whispering in a voice so soft you could call it soporific about fluffy little clouds, happy little trees, and friendly little boulders to help Mr. Grizzly catch his lunch in our busy little stream. They would have found it confusing. Yet their sergeant was the very same man Annette Kowalski had discovered in Clearwater

Florida, giving painting lessons to strangers in a hotel conference room, the soft-spoken art teacher who communicated primarily with dashes of titanium white, smidges of cadmium yellow, and touches of Van Dyke Brown. Such was the color palette of the man who pulled Annette Kowalski from the depths of her crippling depression. The man who lulled millions of viewers into a hypnotic stupor every week on PBS, the master sergeant who'd let his hair grow out and vowed to never again raise his voice. You might not know him by name, but I bet you've seen the joy of painting, a little program that lives on forever in reruns, thanks to a man who spent the first part of his life screaming at thousands of recruits in the Air Force, and the rest of it whispering ever so gently

to millions of mesmerized viewers, a beloved artist named Bob Ross. Bob Ross wasn't just an artist. He was a magician, a magician who could turn a blank canvas into a primeval forest or an angry ocean right before our eyes. His secret? There was no secret. Bob Ross worked without a net. He showed us exactly what he was doing, and in the process gave me and millions of other viewers the opportunity to follow along step by step. Odd thing, though, whenever I tried to paint my own happy little bushes, the results were neither happy nor bushy. Odd, because the artistic gene runs in my family.

My grandmother's sister, Betty, was a terrific painter. So too was my cousin, Nancy. She didn't start till she was in her 50s, but once she discovered her talent, she never put down the brush. Several of her paintings hang in my home today. To my eye, they're every bit as good as anything I've ever seen on the joy of painting. But, without question, the most skilled artist in my family was an industrial artist, my grandfather, Carl Noble. An electrician by trade, pop could repair anything. Didn't matter what the it was,

a broken watch, a faulty furnace, a busted engine. He would either fix it or build a new one from scratch. Pop never made it past the seventh grade, but he was plenty smart. He was also patient, though I never once saw him read the instructions to anything. He just seemed to know how things worked. When I was still a small boy, my father showed me a bronze plaque in the church we attended, the same church whose basement would become a permanent home for Troop 16. Pop had built much of that church, and the plaque inside it reads, In honor of Carl M. Noble, humble servant of Jesus Christ, who through the years has given himself to the program of Christian education

at the Kenwood Presbyterian Church. Look at that, son. Your grandfather has a plaque in his honor. Who else do you know with a plaque? My grandparents were our next-door neighbors. We had the only two homes at the top of a hill tucked away in a corner of Baltimore County, mom and dad and my brothers and me living no more than a hundred yards away from Nana and Pop.

There was room for a cornfield, a pasture where mom kept her horses, and a big garden up by the woodpile. Off to one side, at the foot of a very steep hill, thick with pine trees, you could just hear the traffic flowing off an exit ramp from Interstate 95. My mother told us that the sound was the ocean, and for a while there, we believed her, until a truck hopped the guardrail one day and came halfway up the hill.

Pop built the stable where mom housed her horses. He'd built the family room in his own home. We gathered there for every holiday, every birthday, every other occasion worth celebrating. In the summer of 75, when my mother started to feel claustrophobic in our modest farmhouse, my grandfather built her a family room too, along with the patio. His addition to our house was nearly as big as the house itself had been. Every day that summer, Pop woke up clean and came home dirty. That was his way on any project. He started clean, ended dirty, and somewhere along the way a thing was built or a problem was solved.

But this project was different. This work was magical because it unfolded right in front of my wondering eyes. Where there had been grass, there was suddenly a foundation. Where there had been empty air, there were now walls and a roof. Then there were windows and a fireplace. And then, in a twinkling, the summer was over, and my mom had a family room of her own. I studied Pops every move on the construction site determined to follow in his footsteps. I became his apprentice that summer and loved it.

Odd thing, though, none of the work we were doing made sense to me, and things were no easier in school. In wood shop, I made a sconce that looked more like an amoeba. Pop nodded when I showed it to him and applauded my creative design. In metal shop, I made a steel safe that didn't quite close. I'd also put the hinges on the wrong side. I got an F, and this time I asked Pop if he thought the handy gene might be recessive. He laughed. There's nothing magical about what I do, Mike.

I'm just using the tools I was given. You can be a tradesman, too, if that's what you want to be. Heck, we're all tradesmen. The trick is to get the right toolbox. Was that the best advice Pop ever gave me? That's hard to say. But without question, it was the best advice I ever took. Well, are you sick of it yet?

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Netsweet. Slash Mike. Wait a minute. You are not my mother. No. No, I am not. Sadly, your mother. is ill today and you're stuck with me. It would have been great if we had your mom here today.

Well, that was our plan. I just got off the phone with her. She's sick in bed. Not sure what she's got, some sort of flu. Obviously, she's worried to death. She went to the doctor. She took the COVID rapid test. It's not that. I don't know what it is. It's just some crud going around. My dad was sick a couple weeks ago. Now my mom is sick. And you're sick. You're dealing with this, Do you still have this headache thing? I do, yeah. I'm hoping it's going to be gone in a day or two. But yeah, it's been over three weeks.

What is going on? Almost everyone I know is dealing with some kind of infirmary. Well, I don't know. Well, let's start with yours. How are you doing? How is your nose? How are you breathing? Are you recovering?

That's what the people want to know about. Listen to this. It's a little. little better every day. Prior to the surgery, which was an open septoplasty, not to bore you with the details of my, my Odyssey, but three weeks ago on the second of June, they opened me up, put the septum back where it belonged. My right nostril, which was 100% blocked, is now 100% open. My left nostril, interestingly, which was... It's just going to be blocked down, right? Well, my left nostril was always about 40 or 50% blocked. No, sorry, 40 or 50% blocked. No, sorry, 40 or 50

percent open. Now it's about 60 percent open and he says it's going to get better as the swelling goes down. But if nothing changes from this point on, good God, there is so much air getting to my brain. It's like I've had more like three cups of coffee. I'm jacked up with the air. It's great. That's amazing. How did you ever jog in the past with one of your nostrils completely blocked? I was a mouth breather. I was like 50% of the rest of the country, according to. to James Nestor, who's written a great book I'm just digging into called Breath. So many people are mouth breathers. And you can get used to anything, like a frog in the boiling water.

You know, I remember we had a coach in high school, had us run around the soccer field, and he would make us take a mouthful of water before we ran and then come back and spit out the same amount of water because he wanted us to breathe through our nose. you know, and he didn't want us to cheat. Because the air, you know, that gets into your lungs that comes through your nose, it's filtered, it's humidified. It's a completely different substance, really. It's a then the air that goes straight into your lungs through your mouth. So many health issues, you can walk it right back to the quality of the air that you're sucking in.

And if you're sucking it in through your mouth, it's just not being filtered or humidified at all. So it makes a difference. It makes a difference when you eat. You know, when you can't breathe through your nose, you chew with your mouth open like an animal. You snore. And it's not just your nose, right? This is your nasal cavity is this.

It's an area the size of a man's fist, and it's behind your nose and your eyes and your cheeks, and it's your sinuses. They're huge. And they impact every single thing. I got to believe with the size of your head, it's bigger than a man's fist. That's probably,

more like a great fruit A man's foot price My head's not that big It's long But you know what Never mind it's big I know it What do you want for me?

Just as God made me Yeah that that's that's true enough Since we're talking about my nose We should mention and cue it up Sean McCourt's song Oh yes If you have it I just want to play a few bars

I offhandedly a couple of weeks ago when I was in the middle of this nightmare of a recovery, the first three days were awful. My nose never stopped bleeding, and I was so strung out on hydrocodone that I was hallucinating. And I didn't know I was hallucinating until I saw, until I heard the sound my dripping blood made on the third day when it fell into the clean edge. Landing into tissue, right. It was landing into tissue. I was holding in front of me. It was like 11 o'clock at night.

and each drip would go, I was like, good God, I'm bleeding to death. And the only reason it's not running out of my nose like a faucet is because these two splints are in my nose and around the splints is all of this awful hardened, snot and mucus and just disgusting. And I jokingly said to you, as we were talking about this ordeal, we were talking about sad songs that week.

And I said, somebody ought to write a sad song about, about my nose that wouldn't stop bleeding. And somebody did play a few bars, would you? Oh, I can hear the raging hurricane, lashing hard against my window pain. The ocean moans, the heathers are sweet, but it's all in my head. For when they fixed my faulty septum, they gave me plugs, I should have kept them. Now looking down at my white undershirt, I only see red. I can't lie down

I'm sick Up in bed Up in bed Drip drip The steady drip drip drip drip Pouring on my upper lip It's the scarlet

Version of old Noah's Floods For when they pulled the two plugs From my nasal cavity I went sailing on a river Of blood Stop it for a sec. You know what?

So the song is called River of Blood. It was written by a listener of the podcast, obviously, but also a guy we know named Sean McCourt, who's collaborated on more than just a listener of the podcast for sure. Well, I mean, but he still listens, even though we haven't been working together recently. But he wrote a number of these stories. He collaborated on a bunch of them.

His name's Sean McCourt. And I guess we just caught him with some time on his hands. because he turned that thing around in a couple days. Listen, it was amazing how Fatsin. We were actually recording the next episode, which was last week's episode, when we both got an email that said challenge accepted, because as you recall, you said somebody should write a song about this ordeal. And he did.

Yeah, that's Shawnee. You know what? We'll play the whole thing at the end just so you can listen to it. I'm not saying it's terribly good. But I will say it's terribly clever. He did it real quick. He's singing all the parts. Yeah.

And it's, you know, I mean, I don't know how many B-List celebrities now officially have a song written about their bloody proboscis. But I got to think it's a short list and it's an honor to be on it. Thank you, Sean. Well, you know, and Sean in his own right is a B-List celebrity. Oh, yeah. Right? He was on Broadway and Wicked. He was on Broadway.

in Titanic. He really loves to do upbeat shows, it seems. You know how I bet him? He produced a show you narrated, yes? No, back in 2007, 2008, he was the voice in my head during after the catch, the talk show after Deadliest Catch, where I go to the bar with the captains and we sit on talk. He worked for the production company that oversaw that and he sat in a truck, and he was the guy who told me, you know, I'm wearing. the IFB, and it was that kind of set up back then. Very annoying. Honestly, I hate that your thing, and I used to take it out all the time because I don't like producers telling me what to say. But he was such a nice guy that we stayed friends, and he's been a real help on this podcast.

So, you know what? We'll have him on. Our plan, by the way, to the extent that we have one, is to finish talking about each of the chapters that are in the book. And we'll be done doing that in a month or two. And then I'm kind of interested in going back to the beginning and looking at some of these older stories and bringing in like actual experts, like people who can really talk about the subject matter. Because people seem to enjoy these, this unpacking, if you will, the way I talked about, the way I heard it, which I guess we're about to do right now as well. But so, you know, that's that's kind of the plan. We have dozens and dozens of stories we can talk about. And I'll probably start writing some new ones too at some point.

And who knows where it'll go? Yeah. And one more thing about Sean, people who follow you on Facebook will remember a few years ago, the Girl Scout who you, Charlotte, who. I mean, Sean has a kid named Charlotte in the Girl Scouts. Charlotte wrote a blisteringly honest review of all the cookies she was selling in an attempt to be honest to her customers. Some of the, some were very.

complimentary, but some were just brutally honest. Like tag alongs, you can have them. And so I posted her review on my Facebook page, I think seven or eight million people saw it. And they wound up going to her website and literally tens of thousands of boxes of Girl Scout cookies were ordered. Charlotte wound up becoming like a mini-celebrity. And it was so interesting. You know, when when suddenly you're this girl selling cookies and all of a sudden you've sold more cookies than anybody else, well, you get some blowback, right? So she was getting a lot of crap at school from people who, you know, girls can be mean. Some girls were jealous.

She was interviewed on like on Good Morning America. Yeah. And in fact, she's a chapter in a book. Some guy just wrote a book on honesty and Charlotte's in this chapter. Is that right? Yeah. And the whole story, I'm in it. I was going to write the forward for the book, but I didn't have time.

But anyway, yeah, that's Sean. He's got a cool daughter who's sold a gazillion cookies. And apparently when he sits around with nothing better to do, he'll write a song about my bloody nose. So how much weirder can life get? So Bob Ross. Why Bob Ross? Bob Ross reminded me of my grandfather.

And Bob Ross also did the most deceptively hypnotic. TV show I had ever seen. I used to watch the joy of painting when I was a teenager. I was very young before I knew I was going to be in TV. And when I look back at that show, I didn't understand at the time why I watched it. There was a man who whispered with an afro who painted. And all I knew was that watching it lowered my blood pressure and interested me in a way that I couldn't quite articulate. And later, after he died, the joy of painting came back in a big way, and I found myself watching some of those shows again and realizing, oh, now I do know why I watched this show. Every episode had a beginning and a middle and an end. Every episode started with a blank canvas and ended with a work of art.

Right. And there were no mirrors. There were no tricks. Right. There were no cutaways. Yes, there was no commercials. Right. So you got to sit there and watch magic happen.

Yeah. Where there was nothing, suddenly there was something. And along the way, we had this reliable narrator named Bob Ross, who just kind of whispered and just kind of took you through the process. And I just found the common, obviously, I'm not alone. This was an immensely successful. Very popular, yeah. Right.

but not popular for any reason that any TV executive would ever attempt to duplicate, whatever green light, right? The incredible popularity of that show happened not because of anything Bob Ross did, but in spite of everything the industry did to get in the way of shows like this and people like him. So I wanted to somehow write something about this. And of course, thanks to Google, you hop online, you nose around, and the next thing I learned, I stumbled across this NPR interview and heard that he was a master sergeant in the Air Force. You know, and I just thought that was insane.

And then when I heard Annette Kowalski talking about the fact that many people described him as a tyrant and that he spent the first half of his life yelling, I thought, oh my God. God, are you kidding me? This guy that I watched that helped put me to sleep that performed a magic act in a whisper on PBS was a master sergeant yelling at recruits. It was just too good. And once you get that palette in front of you, well, I can't paint for crap, but I wanted to write something that hadn't been written before. And I wanted to try, you know, make it as interesting as I can, but as I wrote it, I realized that there's so many parallels with my grandfather that I didn't know what to do in the story about Bob Ross. I couldn't make that point,

but it's in the book because I can make that point in the book. And that's what I wanted to do. So you intended to write a story about Bob Ross. Were you ever concerned about, you know, the fact that maybe not a lot of people know Bob Ross? I was initially. but then talking to you and talking to the other people, you know, that were involved in the podcast and then just doing my own, you know, non-scientific straw poll. Right. I couldn't find anyone who didn't know him. And by that, I mean, not everyone knew his name, but when you describe a white dude who

whispers that has an afro that paints, even people who didn't watch the show, right? You can't help but even stumble across the thing. I mean, it's literally been on the air for decades. And everybody has PBS, whether you watch it or not. You know, you have to go past it on your way to ESPN or Comedy Central or wherever you go. And so he just became an inescapable, unavoidable part of the TV landscape. So the story isn't about really, ta-da, Bob Ross. It's about, right, I've seen the man who paints.

didn't know his name. Right. I remember the Afro. And I think for the majority of people, all that kind of lines up into some version of familiarity. But I didn't talk to anybody who knew that he worked at Isleson Air Force Base. Right. Right. In the Air Force. And no, I had never seen the show. And I remember we discussed what's more famous because we're always like, well, what is the actual reveal? Is it Bob Ross or is it the joy of painting? Right. They were kind of a toss up because it really was the afro, the beard, and the painting. A white dude with an afro and a beard who was painting. And whispered.

And whispered, yeah. Right? Who never raised his voice. You know, I didn't realize it at the time, but I called the story, Keep Your Voice Down in part because I never once heard my grandfather raise his voice. And the parallels between Bob Ross and Carl Noble, my granddad, the parallels between an artistic approach to living, whether it's painting, writing, singing, or fabricating, building with lumber and steel.

And, you know, dirty jobs in many ways is a tip of the hat toward that level of craftsmanship and artistry, a different kind of art, a vocational art, as I mentioned. Right. Look, it's easy to look back. You ask me why I wrote the story. I would love to tell you because I wanted to very cleverly write about my grandfather without invoking his name and using a different form of art to make the points I wanted to make. That's not what happened. I wrote the story because I thought Bob Ross was interesting. And then later, you look

back at it and you realize, oh, peel back enough layers and there might have been something else going on there. Do do do do do do do do. My guest today, Tomolbenis, is an American giant. and I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing right here in this country. It wasn't easy, but they did it. They sourced locally grown cotton. And they built factories in towns across the nation where they could hire hardworking

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American-giant.com slash mike. American made, American giant American made. Well, there's several things I want to talk to you about in terms of the grout of this particular chapter. And the first of which is that he was, you credit him as being perhaps the greatest artist in your family. But there were others. You have an aunt and you have a cousin in particular. And as I recall, there's a certain picture that your cousin. cousin painted.

Oh, Nancy. Oh, right. My cock. Yeah, it was a... My cousin, Nancy. I believe it was a rooster? Well, potato potato. Friends of the Facebook page will no doubt remember this. We auctioned off a picture of a rooster that my cousin painted and gave to my mother or showed to my mother. And I loved it. And I said, you know what? I would love to own that. and Nancy sent it to me.

And at that point, this portrait of a rooster became my cock. And I had it hung proudly on the wall. Well hung, you might say. Oh, dear. And because, you know, I'm an eight-year-old deep down, and because we were raising money for Microworks one year, I had a video of myself doing something, and somebody noticed the rooster in the background

and made a comment about my cock. And it got me wondering how much money I could get for my cock. You know, could I part with my cock really became the existential question. Isn't it always? And if I were to auction off my cock, what could I get for it? Right. So these questions were all articulated on a video, along with some equally silly and childish innuendo. And the conversation that arose around my cock was mind bogg.

wound up auctioning the thing off for something like $30,000 and got all kinds of attention for Nancy. Talk about an artist, Chuck. Okay, so my cousin, her name is Nancy Fine. Shameless plug, go to nancyfinearts.com. You won't see my cock there, but you'll see what she does. She paints in the pline air style. So she does a lot of painting outdoors, and she paints scenes of nature. They are terrific.

But here's the thing about Nancy. She never picked up a paintbrush until she was in her 60s. How did she paint before that? You idiot. She didn't. She didn't paint. I don't even know if she knew she could paint. I don't even, just one day she picked up a paintbrush and got busy and magic.

The blank canvas filled with something that looked an awful lot like what she wanted it to look like. And she had this gift. This rooster she painted. Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's, I mean, it won, it actually won second place in a big prestigious art fair at the state fair where people come from all over the place. The crazy thing was, she entered it in the portrait part. Yes, I remember. Right.

So everybody is painting these amazing portraits of people and she paints a rooster. And still, it comes in second. It was that good. She'd have certainly won the animal category if there were such a thing. But anyway, you know, I mean, obviously there's a straight line between Nancy and Bob Ross. Both are artists. Both could create magic right in front of your eyes. My Aunt Betty could do the same thing, although I didn't know her as well.

My grandmother had her paintings all over her home in Baltimore. And now I'm delighted to tell you. you that Nancy got a big commission. I don't think I'm allowed to say from whom, but a big company who saw my cock as brought to life by my cousin reached out to her. And now lobbies are filled with artwork. Really? Yeah. No, she has a, she has a career. And how long does she know? 140. Wow, that is something. So she's having a hell of a run. No, she must be, God, I don't want I think she's probably closer to 70 than 60. Well, you said she didn't pick up a brush until she was in her 60s.

Early six. I think she was 60 when she started to paint. But you know what else she did last month? Jet skied. No, better. She sold my parents condominium. Oh, really? She's in real estate as well.

She's in real estate. She's been in real estate for like 40 years. So my mom, who's recuperating right now, as we've mentioned, she's over there in the in the home into which she and my dad have moved. But she sold their condo for them. This is the thing about art. So many great artists do it as a vocation. And so many others do it as an avocation.

And I'm honestly not sure where the best art comes from. I mean, if you're an artist by vocation, that's all that you do. And maybe you're successful and maybe you're not. But to me, I've been more interested in art as a hobby. And to see that hobby get out of hand, to see the hobby turn into a vocation or the avocation turn into the vocation, that's interesting to me. Do you remember at overly senior high the art teacher there who kind of looked a little bit like Bob Ross? Yeah, I do. I can't remember his name, which is terrible, but I took a photography class with him.

and he made me appreciate history and photography. I couldn't believe how excited I was to look at a black and white photo from the Civil War. Sure. He sucked us in and did this monologue, similar to the Virginia Madsen monologue, what she did for Cabernet in Sideways. He did for me with a black and white photo from the Civil War. He's like, this is exactly what it looked like. everything is in the exact place it was on that moment of time. It's like looking through a time

machine. And he excited my imagination so much that I really appreciated it. And this was just with photography. But then one day I saw what he did for fun. And he painted pictures. And this is what really makes me go, I can't believe. I mean, this is like true art where it just, it almost looks like a photograph. It's a picture of a, of a, of a, of a, a horse-drawn carriage and, you know, people on it. And everything was so real, it looked like a photograph. And I'm like, you're teaching photography at our high school? What? Yeah. No, that's hyper-realism where a painting looks so much like a photo. You can't believe it's not a photo. Right. This is why great teachers always come at history in a different way.

Yeah. History by itself is a non-starter. Look, that's why we did six degrees. Yeah. If you don't know, Chuck and I worked on a show last year called Six Degrees where we try and it's a history show for people who wouldn't watch history shows. Yeah. Well, art history isn't really art history. It's history with art in it.

Right. Music history or music appreciation really isn't that. It's history seen through music. Right. That's how you make history interesting. It's not days and dates and the unpronounceable names of dead people who don't impact you anymore. If you can find a way to make it truly relevant. So, look, art can be a very powerful way to make people care about history.

And that's why I think everybody should take art history. You can turn your nose up at it and laugh at it and dismiss it as whatever. But there's art history is important. Music history is important. History is important. But in this day and age, the history channel is down to an H. for God's sakes. History is a tough sell. And when you find people who can make anything interesting, right, anything, that's what this podcast is about. Bob Ross made me care about something I didn't

care about. I didn't care about. Right. And most artists can do that regardless of their medium. My cousin did that. My grandfather did that. Yeah. Let's move on to your grandfather right now because There's a great turn of phrase that you use in this chapter where you say, where there was nothing but air, there's now walls. Where there was just grass, there's a foundation. It's where he built this addition to your house, which happened, as I like to say, BC, before Chuck, before we met. But tell me what that was like, because you said you apprenticed with him under him, which

is when he figured out that you didn't know which ended the hammer to hold. I did not possess the cards I thought I was dealt. The feeling of watching a building appear seemingly from thin air is really no different than watching a blank canvas suddenly become not blank. So that summer was like an episode of the joy of painting only. It was the joy of building. And protracted. You know, it doesn't happen as fast. Bob Ross in the course of a half hour could do this miraculous thing. Builders take longer.

My grandfather is not an architect by training. He never read the instructions to anything in his life, as far as I know. He just had the chip that I often talk about that allowed him to build or repair just about anything. So when my mother decided that she really needed a kitchen that functioned like a kitchen, he went over to make her a new kitchen. And then the more he thought about it, the more he thought, well, it might as well make it a family room. And as long as we're going to make it a family room, let's put in a fireplace. And if we're going to put in a fireplace, we might as well put in a big bay window that

faces out toward the pasture so you can look at the stable I built for you three years ago where the horses that you love live. And so suddenly, it became a real project. The family room that my grandfather put on to our house was about the same. size of our house. You also put on a patio, porch, roof over that. So for me, a kid who was pretty sure he was going to follow in his grandfather's footsteps, this would have been 1975, so I was 13. And I tried to make myself useful. And I think I was to a degree. I could run here, run there, get this, get that, hold the thing while he hammered it. Here's your coffee, pop.

Here's, like, I was just, I was underfoot, but he really made me feel like I was. a full-on apprentice. In reality, my grandfather's real apprentice on that project was my dad. Was your dad? I knew it. Yeah. My dad strong back. My grandfather was strong himself, but this was a five-man job and two men did it, two and a half men. How did they get along? Two and a half men, right? Yeah. They got along great. I don't know that of anyone who held my grandfather in higher esteem than my dad. And that's saying something because I don't know anyone who didn't hold my grandfather in high esteem. He was a Michelangelo of the trades. He could build, fix, or repair anything. And that summer, he proved it right in front of me. And by the way, my dad didn't get that gene

either. The handy gene is recessive. But yeah, but hang on. I think it's worth noting, too, that your grandfather is not your dad's father. This is your mom's father. Correct. So that makes a it even more interesting when you say that no one held him in more esteem than your father, who this was his father-in-law. Oh, yeah. Your dad's father-in-law, not his father. So I think that speaks even more to just how how appreciated he was. They were dear friends and my dad just had so much admiration for my grandfather. And you know, I think grandfathers in general have been arbitraged out of the the familial conversation, assuming we're even having one anymore. You know, the lack of fathers

is still headline news and the devastating impact that's had on our society, I don't think any reasonable person disputes it. But the impact of grandfathers has been largely forgotten. Because if there's not a father in your life, there's probably not a grandfather. There might be. Sometimes grandparents are raising kids all too often, in fact. But I was, You want to talk about privilege, real privilege? The greatest gift I got was not just growing up in a family where my parents loved each other and loved their kids. It was growing up in that environment right next to grandparents who loved each other. So I had this double dose of, I guess, security and certainty.

And my father was able to use my grandfather in. in many ways as an example of what to do, of how to be a man, of how to live, of what decency meant. And he was a living, breathing example that was right next door to us. The fact that on top of being such a morally upstanding man, the fact that Carl Noble was also Bob Ross in his own way, the fact that he was able to pull off magic tricks every single day, he was. He was wakes up clean, he comes home dirty, and somewhere during the course of the day, a problem is fixed. A situation is corrected. And you could point and see the results of that. That's amazing, Chuck. It was never lectured to me. Nobody ever beat me over the head with it. I just grew up watching

a master, my grandfather, working on all kinds of projects, whether it was digging a spring cellar, or building a stable or running pipe out to connect into the city sewer line in order to get us a working sewage. I mean, one thing after the next, day after day after day. And there with him always was my father being the apprentice. Years later, my mom said to me at some point, it was a conversation, I was being interviewed, and she was with me about dirty jobs. And I gave some answer about what dirty jobs was, how it happened.

And she said, well, that's one way to look at it. But from my perspective, this was just Michael's attempt to channel his earliest memories, which consisted of watching somebody who knew what they were doing, assisted by an apprentice. That's what Michael's doing. He's cast himself in the role of an apprentice. And now he goes around the country to work with people who subconsciously remind him of his grandfather. So you were playing your dad on dirty jobs, essentially. That's right.

I had never thought of it that way until my mother casually. informed the audience. Boy, your mom is good at doing that, isn't she? She will put your ass on a couch before you even knew you were in a shrink's office. Oh my gosh. You know, I have a memory of you telling me about, I asked you something about your mom and whether she had ever punished you or anything. And you said something like, you know, she didn't really need to. He goes, the biggest effect that she had on me once was with the BB gun. Do you know the story I'm going to tell? Oh, God, yeah. I desperately wanted a BB gun. My grandfather lobbied for it. My father lobbied for it. My mother didn't want me to have it. I mean, it's classic Christmas story stuff, basically. You put your eye out.

But I got a Crossman, a BB gun, a very powerful one when I was 12. And I was out back. It had snowed. there was a bird in the mulberry tree. I wasn't even really trying to, I don't know what I was doing. I had this gun in my hand, and I didn't even lift it up. I didn't even aim. I just from the hip pointed it up there, and I squeezed the trigger. And the bird fell out of the tree. And there was a red dot right in the center of its chest.

And yeah, my mom walked over, looked at me, looked at the bird. She actually picked it up and held it out to me and said, here you go. big hunter and walked away. And my relationship with guns, which I still cherish, and my relationship with animals, which I still enjoy, was never quite the same. That is just, that is a, it's, that's a, that's a story that, I mean, you must have told me that story 30 years ago, 35 years ago.

We were, we were still both living in Baltimore at the time. I think my mother actually got that style of parenting from her dad. My mom really never raised her voice at her kids. I never heard my grandfather raise his voice ever. And that's what I meant earlier by cautionary tales and examples in parenting. My dad was long on telling me the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. he had a propensity to lapse into a lecture from time to time, you know, because he wanted his sons to behave in a right way. And, you know, he got impatient with us sometimes. He said,

look, because I told you, so, okay, it's wrong because I'm telling you what's wrong. And that, of course, for a kid, is not persuasive at all. But what my dad was able to do, thanks to my grandfather, is constantly point to him. One time, I drove in the winning run in a pivotal baseball game in Little League. I was probably 16. And I was so full of myself after the game. We all went out to Shakey's Pizza and somebody asked me to describe the moment. And, oh, boy, did I describe it?

You know, I put myself, you know, I was the conquering hero. It was three, two. I fouled off a couple of balls. And then I drove one deep, deep, deep to center field. And the winning runs came in. I mean, I really just was so enjoying. explaining how I drove in the winning run. And my dad, what he wanted to say was, hey, self-praise stinks and you're embarrassing

me right now by patting yourself so hard on the back. Instead, all he had to do was glance over at my grandfather and say, let me ask you something. Do you think your grandfather would ever talk about himself the way you just talked about yourself? It's his version of Big Hunter. Right. Right. when you're surrounded by examples that you can point to to back up your dogma,

to back up your lecture, then you don't really have to lecture. All you have to do is point to the man who's walking the walk. All you have to do is point to the bird with the red dot in his chest. You don't have to hit me over the head with it. You just have to take a little sarcasm and then shove it up my ass. It's right where it belongs. She's still good at it, by the moment. Oh, yeah.

Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma 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 MicroWorks,

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. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants. Thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee Whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L,

which is now available in a variety of delicious mash-b bill. all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend $100 and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange-bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old-fashions every time. 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 noblespirits.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com. Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. You know? I called her this morning and I said, look, we want to talk about your dad on the podcast. I really want to drill down and I want to talk to you about pop.

and I want to get your feelings, you know, as my mom, but also as his daughter and help me bridge this weird space between education and wisdom, art and artistry, building and painting, all these things. And she said, well, Michael, you know, that does sound like a pretty interesting conversation. I am running a fever and the cough is troubling. but if it's important to you, I suppose, I could just hop on if it's important. Like, Mom, she was so brutal. Did I ever tell you the yogurt story? Doesn't ring a bell. I'm sitting in front of the fireplace in the family room a couple of years after it was constructed.

The bay window is there. The view out to the stable is there. The brick patio is off to the. right. It's a beautiful room and we're sitting there and we're watching television and I'm hungry. And I walked over and this is when frozen yogurt had become a thing. And I got some frozen yogurt out of the fridge. And I grabbed and I said, hey, mom, you want a frozen yogurt? And she said, oh yeah, I'll take one. Well, there was only one. So I took the yogurt and I grabbed a couple of spoons. And I walked over and I put the yogurt down. I had her a spoon. I said, there's only one. Why don't we just share it?

She says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have it. You know what? Honestly, I didn't even want one. I just said I'd take one because, you know, we could eat it together. I'm like, well, we can still eat it together. She goes, no, no, no, you have it, you have it. I'm fine.

So I opened a yogurt and I started eating it. And we're watching this, we were watching all creatures great and small, which she loved. It was one of her favorite books, one of my favorite books, too, James Harriet. And they made a series out of this on PBS. Yes. So it's entirely possible that the joy of painting had been on, you know, an hour or so earlier. So we're watching All Creatures Great and Small sitting in the family room that I helped my grandfather and my dad build. And I'm eating a frozen yogurt. And I'm pausing every 30 seconds to say, are you sure you don't want a bite? Are you sure you don't want some? No, I'm fine. I'm fine. There we sit, watching All Creatures Great and Small.

And I'm enjoying this Dan and Frozen Yogurt. It was delicious, by the way. And we finally get, I get to the bottom of the thing. There's one spoonful left. And I scoop it out and I hand it to my mom. I said, here, just take a, just take a bite of it. It's so good. She goes, no, no, I'm telling you, I don't want it. And then I take it and then I eat it. And then she reaches over and she takes the empty container and says to me, I'll just lick the lid and proceeds to lick the lid. That's my mother. Sitting there in her new edition. watching her favorite TV show, letting me eat all of it. I'll just lick the lid.

Big Hunter. God. And all I think about it, you know what, I'm glad she's not on this podcast today. She's brutal. Hey, you know what? She's about two-thirds of the way through, her third book. And this, too, is germane. And I say this as a guy who, you know, my job is to try and make everything relevant,

no matter how irrelevant it might seem, but it's not irrelevant. My mom wrote her first book at 80. Right. 80. My cousin, Nancy, painted her first painting at 60. Bob Ross yelled at the top of his lungs for the first part of his life, and then just decided, you know what? I'd rather paint.

You know, you have a painting? He goes to Clearwater, learns how to pay. learns how to paint. Turns out he's got it too. Now he's teaching classes. It's just amazing how way leads on the way. It's even more amazing, I think, about why we do the things we do and how we're influenced. And you know, you and I obviously aren't having this conversation without my grandfather. Dirty jobs never would have been a show without my pop. Microworks wouldn't exist today. We've helped 1,200 people learn a skill that's actually in demand. You know, does that happen without my grandfather?

No. No, it does not. I have to pause because I'm going to pee my pants. All right, go ahead. I will be right back. All right. Well, that's a level of candor. I don't know if you get it in other podcasts or not.

I don't know if when Chuck comes back, if he's actually going to edit this out or not. But to the extent that I have any training in any vocation, for me, a big chunk of my life has been spent making sure that dead air isn't there. And so the responsibility of talking to you for roughly two minutes while Chuck urnates is not something that I'm really troubled by. In fact, it's the only thing I'm any good at. I learned that skill, if you can call it a skill, at the QVC cable shopping channel, which some of you will recall. we talked about in detail in the early part of the book.

Now as we approach the end of the book and try and somehow unite all of these themes together through a conversation, I find myself really unable to have the conversation I thought I was going to have. I can't have it with my mom because she's under the weather. And I can't have it with the producer of this podcast because he's urinating. And so rather than a conversation,

it's simply a monologue, an opportunity to fill in two and a half minutes of dead air while I wait for Chuck to come back. Now, it's possible that Chuck was not only urinating. It's possible he's taking care of some other things in there as well, in which case this could turn into a five-minute bout of free association. And if that happens, well, I'm not going to panic. And I wouldn't blame you for hitting that little button on the app that allows you to jump forward 15 seconds to see when or if Chuck will ever return, when or if Mike will ever.

stop talking. These things are all shrouded in mystery because they live in the future. The past might be the coin of the realm vis-a-vis the stories I write in the book that you're currently listening to, but it's the present that I'm desperate to get back to. And that, of course, can't happen until Chuck returns, which I'm pleased to say he has. Yeah, I can answer both of those questions. I'm back. And what was the other one? What did you say? It's good to know you do hang on every word. Oh my gosh. I don't know what happened there, man. But I just, it's too much water after too much coffee, I guess. I don't think we really have to take a deep dive on why people need to urinate. You know, it's obviously tied to intake garbage in, garbage out.

I just, I'm going to cut all this out, by the way. This is never going to make it. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Why would I do that? I don't know. I wanted to let you finish your point. I didn't want to just get up and walk away like I did, I think, last week or the week before, which was just fine. With the leaf blower? No, it wasn't with the leaf blower, was it? Look, part of what we're doing, full disclosure, we're desperate to figure out why people listen to this podcast. And, no, I'm really curious. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they want to hear from personal people in my life. I'm not sure if they want to hear stories about famous people I've never met. I'm really not sure if it's two dudes talking, if it's a hangout thing, if people are, I honestly don't know why people are listening to this.

And it just seems like a sensible thing to learn eventually if we're going to keep doing it, don't you think? I suppose so. I mean, we could, you know, this is just a suggestion, is we could listen to what people say. No, you can't trust them. You can't trust him. They say they enjoy the stories. They enjoy hearing more of you. I think it's access to your stories.

Really? Do you think people care? They say they do. I mean, I'm just like I say, I'm reading all the reviews. That's it. Yeah. Yes. It's so hard, guys, to figure out when to believe you. I mean, look, I say that with great respect.

Every show I've ever worked on is programmed by the people who watch it. I take viewer feedback really, really seriously. But you also know how I feel about focus groups. I hate them. Isn't that interesting? I hate them because focus groups are really good at eliminating terrible ideas and brilliant ideas. Right. What they leave you with is the soft, squishy crap in the middle.

And that's why most TV is awful. that's why most newscasts are derivative. That's why so much music sounds the same. It all gets focus grouped. And then you have people working really, really hard to try and please an inherently fickle group of people. That's you guys, the listeners. The thing is, it's not that you're fickle, I don't think. It's that you don't want to be pandered to.

You don't want to feel like you've been focus grouped. And now you're being fed this thing that people desperate to make money selling advertising. need you to like. And so there's a constant balance, I think, in trying to figure out what is entertaining, what is worth knowing, what is worth listening to. I ask myself the same thing. Why do I listen to the podcasts I listen to? Why do I watch the TV I watch? It's almost always because the people responsible for making it don't seem to care too much about what I want, right? They're not desperate first and foremost to entertain me. They're more interested in entertaining themselves. And that's usually fun to listen to and watch. Usually. The last five minutes of this,

I don't know. Some people might be shaking their heads right now and saying, Mike, you guys had put a glass eye to sleep, honestly. And others might be saying, gosh, that was fresh and new and honest. More of that. Chuck should pee more often. I like it when Chuck's not there. You know what I'm going to do right now? I'm going to read you a five-star review. All right. This is from Nurse Tony T. And he writes, a disaster averted, astounding.

I never would have believed that I would thank someone for almost causing a driving collision. The day has arrived. I was listening to the spirited discussion between Mike and Chuck about Fred King as I returned home down a rural road from my overnight job. The topic shifted to a discussion of the man's antics in a restaurant. I had tears pouring out of my eyes and was laughing hysterically at the descriptions therein, a problematic point at 55 miles per hour on a winding road. I wrestled the car away from the ditch while gasping in laughter. Thank you for finishing my workday in one of the most memorable ways possible,

and I look forward to the next conversation. Keep up the good work for exclamation points, Tony T. Well, thank you, Nurse Tony T. That's great to know. I'm glad you're still alive. I'm glad he's safe. Oh, my gosh. Chuck, say rural road again for me.

Rural road again. Rural. Anyway, I guess that's just a long way of saying there's no accounting for taste. Which, if I dare to bring this back to the topic at hand, ought to be somewhere near the headline for all things artistic. What makes Bob Ross's paintings good, bad, or indifferent? I mean, is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? What makes art art?

What makes art valuable? You know, I didn't want to part with my cock, but I wanted to raise money for the foundation. And at something like 30 grand, I felt like, you know, something, I can get another cock. If your cock can raise 30 grand, then yeah. How do you not do that? Right. So I did that. For those of you who think I'm making it up, I'm not.

Google, Mike Roe, Rooster. You'll see the cock I'm talking about and you'll look at it and you'll say, look, that's a cock I could have got my hands around. Had I known. Whatever you do, don't Google microcock. No, don't do that. Don't do that. Mike Rooster. That's what you want to Google.

Oh, God, it's too late. You know, it's the white bear problem we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Oh, yeah. I believe that was last week. I think it was just one week ago. Don't think of the white bear. Don't think of Mike Rosecock. Don't.

Hey, what about your grandfather? What about Lou Ruelly? And what about, I mean, not to make this all about you, but, you know, a lot of those reviews mention you and people are asking me questions about you and what makes you tick and I don't want to put you on the couch, but I met your pop. And your pop was as interesting as my pop, but in a completely different way. Totally different way. Lou, you know what his middle name was? No. Rosenbush. Lewis Rosenbush Ruley. Now, it demands an answer. Why on Earth was his, what his name be Rosenbush? And he was famous for if you asked him a question, the same question more

than once, he'd have a different answer every time you asked him. But the one that stuck was that his father was a drunk and had two best friends named Lou. And he wanted to name his son after his two best friends. But he couldn't name him Lewis Lewis. So he took one of the guys' last names, Rosenbush. Well, your pop, I remember thinking the first time I met him, this, this would have been a dangerous young man. He seemed like a harmless older guy the way most grandfathers do. But unlike my grandfather, who never raised his voice, who kind of dedicated his life to a mix of family, charity, and church, a man who wound up, as I mentioned in the book,

with a plaque in the church he helped build. Yeah. You know, your granddad had a different legacy. He was a musician. and a soldier and frankly, a bit of a shit disturber. He was a bit of, yes. There are stories from before I was born where, you know, he was playing music every night. He wanted to come out to California and, you know, try his luck in the entertainment industry.

But World War II stopped him from that and he served instead. But there's a great story that my brother and sister tell about when they were kids before I was born. They're older. They're nine and 11 years older than me. And they were staying with my grandmother one night. And pop was out playing music, as he often did. He played the drums and he sang, had a beautiful voice. Begin the Begin was his signature song.

And he fancied himself a bandmaster. And he liked to drink. He liked to smoke. He liked to sing. and I think he liked the ladies a little bit. I think you're right. And my grandmother, my brother and sisters say they remember being awakened by my grandmother, put into the back of a station wagon and driven to a place.

You know, this is like in the middle of the night, like one, two o'clock in the morning. They would drive to, she would find my grandfather's car wherever he had parked. And he's clearly, it's past, he should have been home by now. He played his sets. He should have been home. home, but he's not. She would find his car. Nothing's open. Yeah, that's right. She would find his car and then move it three blocks away and then bring the kids back home so that when he came out of wherever he was, he could not find his car. That happened on one occasion. I remember you telling me

a story about your pop. You were like the human remote control before there were remote controls. and there was an occasion where you guys were sitting around and Patton came on, George C. Scott. Yes. Tell me that famous Blood and Guts speech at the beginning. Well, at the beginning of the movie, you know, George C. Scott stands in front of a giant American flag and he delivers this tremendous blood and guts speech that is based on what he actually did. He famously says in there, you know, the job is not to. you know, to be a poor son of a bitch who dies for his country, your job is to get the other poor son of a bitch to die for his. That's right. And that was delivered, what, June 5th,

right before D-Day. June 5th before D-Day. Right. So, so I'm sitting there, you know, on the floor, because I had to be near the TV to change the channel when it was time. And Patton comes on, and my grandfather sort of kicks my shoulder and says, hey, and I go, yeah. He goes, I was there for this. This is for the speech. You know, he's given the speech. And I go, really? He's like, yeah. I'm like, oh, okay.

What do I know? I'm like seven, eight or something like that. I don't know. Years later, when he passes away, I'm going through his effects. He had a purple heart. Again, if you asked him, how'd you get the purple heart? He'd have, he had like seven different stories. But he, you know, he was injured.

And so I'm looking through his affairs. And it says, you know, the day that he was. drafted into the army and it says, this is one section, it says July 6, 1944 arrived Normandy, France. And I thought that was interesting because that was exactly one month after D-Day. D-Day, of course, is June 6th, 1944. And so I go, wow, he arrived there. And one month after the action and then went all the way to Berlin. And then cut to that summer after he's passed. And I'm reading a historical novel about D-Day, which has all these fake characters, but it also has real characters like Patton. And there's a big chapter that talks about Patton and how he was a

decoy in England. He was his job before D-Day was to be seen everywhere in London, on the town, eating, not training, doing everything but looking like a guy who was about to invade Europe. And that was the whole point. So then I turned. the page and I see the chapter says July 5th, 1944, Patton arrives in Normandy. And I go, son of a gun, he was telling the truth. He actually was in Patton's army. And he was there for that speech. It's so funny, man. You know, when your pop was over there doing that, mine was in D.C. and my mother writes about this in her book in some detail, the dread, the fear that my grandmother had, that my grandfather was going to be called overseas to fight. But he wasn't.

He was called to D.C. instead because he was an electrician. Wow. And they were desperate for tradesmen. They were desperate for skilled tradesmen because so many had already enlisted, so many had been drafted, so many were over there. And the home front was in a real state of, well, it was bad. You know, there were infrastructure problems, but there were, there were just daily problems. You couldn't get a plumber. You couldn't get an electrician. You just couldn't find these people to take care of these very, very basic needs. And this, of course, was happening all over the country. You know, that can't happen indeed. You know, so he went down there to work on government buildings running electric, literally keeping the lights on.

So this is probably a pretty good place to start to land the plane. But if you want to draw a crooked line from a blank canvas on a show called The Joy of Painting to my backyard in 1975, when my grandfather turned that blank canvas into something useful and beautiful and good, even as my mother would sit in the fruits of his labor just a year or two later and shame me by licking the lid, thereby driving me further and further down whatever path I was going. The fact that somehow or another dirty jobs gets on the air and microworks comes out of it. And now I'm sitting here with you as the country truly is in the grip of another skilled labor shortage. We're not at war in the way we were in 1944 or 45.

Yeah. But we've got a real problem in our country. The infrastructure thing is headline news. Not that anybody knows what infrastructure even means anymore the way it's been defined, but our workforce is a mess and it's out of balance. And we need electricians. Again, we need steam fitters and pipe fitters and carpenters. We need heating and air conditioning guys.

It's just the opportunity is incredible. And the thing I would most love to do right now, if I could somehow go back in time, if I could somehow have a moment would be to sit with my pop and get his take on the state of our labor force and the shortages that are going on right now. And just his thoughts on microworks in general. I don't really know what else to say except for the fact that history really is a wheel. And it just spins. And every time something feels new, it's not.

You know, it's just another version of a thing. that a couple generations ago, people endured, a labor shortage, a war, an infrastructure problem, whatever it is. You know, you play the card you can as best you can. And the fact that micro works is a thing, the fact that we're about to award another million dollars next month to the next generation of electricians. The fact that your grandfather was over there with Patton, when mine was down in D.C., run an electric. And somehow we get to sit here and try and make that makes sense through the lens of my cock and Bob Ross. Wow.

How did that happen? Somebody's going to play that sentence back and say, they did it again. They came up with a sentence that never before in the history of the world has been articulated. And there's got to be some pride in that, some art, I dare say. Oh, yes, there's plenty of it. Well, listen, gentle listener, thank you so much for listening. And keep in mind if you'd like to hear this chapter and all the other chapters in the same place, this book is available in audio version as well as in the book version at places where

audiobooks and books are sold. Couldn't have said it better. If you're worried about my mom, hop over to her Facebook page. Say get well soon. She'd love to hear from you. She's going to be fine, I'm sure, and I'm going to try and get her back here on the podcast the next time. Well, she doesn't shame or humiliate.

me for asking. No, no, Michael, you go ahead and do the podcast. I'll be fine. It's just a low-grade fever with a persistent cough. I'd love to try it. You know what? Let me give it a shot. Is it okay?

Would it be okay to podcast from a warm bath? Because that's where I need to go now. No, Mom, I'm good. You do what you need to, big podcaster. And you do the same, gentle listener. We'll be back next week. No promises, no guarantees. Who knows what Chuck will do?

Maybe it'll be another five-minute pee. Maybe he'll edit it in. Maybe he'll edit it out. No, my pee is definitely gone. It's not going to live in this for sure. We'll see. We'll see. But you know what we're going to hear now?

A river of blood. Listen, again, nobody's going to be offended if you don't listen. to this, but I want you to hear it because we live in a world where a guy with a bloody nose can throw out a spontaneous appeal for a song and get something back, something an awful lot like this. Oh, I can hear the raging hurricane lashing hard against my window pain. The ocean moans the heavens who's sweet, but it's all in my head. For when they fixed my faulty septum,

they gave me plugs, I should have kept them. Now looking down at my white undershirt, I only see red. I can't lie down, I'm sitting up in bed, up in bed. Drip, drip, drip, drip. The steady drip, drip, drip, pouring on my upper lip, it's the scarlet version of old Noah's flood.

For when they pulled the two plugs free from my nasal cavity, I went sailing on a river of blood. And as I sail along, this river's flow carries me where no one wants to go. It connects me to great suffering, as through history I roam. Suddenly I remember the experience of being dismembered by the Assyrians and being crucified with Spartacus on the road into Rome. But here I am just sitting in my home, in my home. Drip, drip.

The steady drip, drip, drip, pouring on my upper lip, it's the scarlet version of old Noah's flood. For when they pulled the two plugs free from my nasal cavity, I went sailing on a river of blood River of blood Old Noah's flood My sailing ship Oh won't you be my protector

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