The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 278: OCCASIONALLY—Halloween 2022

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

In a tip o' the hat to the occasion, Mike delivers a dramatic recitation of one of his very favorite poems, The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service.  Happy Halloween!

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At puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Hello, friends. This is episode number 278 of the way I heard it. It's what we like to call and occasionally the occasion in question is Halloween. And this year I thought I'd mark the occasion by reciting one of my very favorite poems. This is not a poem that is traditionally associated with October 31st, but it is a little creepy and well-suited, I think, for the occasion at hand. It tells the story of a gold prospector up in the Yukon territory who's partner makes him promise to cremate his last remains after he freezes to death, which he is

pretty sure is going to happen. Well, it does. And as you'll soon hear, the prospector, who is also the narrator, is a man who takes his promises very seriously. A pal's last need is a thing to heed, he says. And then one of my favorite observations, a promise made is a debt unpaid. Those words, fact, or the epigram in a book I wrote a few years ago about this podcast, but that's neither here nor there. The poem, as many of you know, is the cremation of Sam McGee. It was written a long time ago in a very cold place by a bank teller named Robert Service, who became widely known as the Bard of the Yukon. Service was a modest man, very careful not to call his work poetry. Verse, he said, not poet.

poetry is what I write. Something the man in the street would take notice of and the sweet old lady might paste in her album. Something the schoolboy would spout and the fellow in the pub would quote, my work belongs to the simple folks whom I like to please. And please them he did. Robert Service was one of the most commercially successful poets of the last century, even though the critics absolutely hated his work. They called it doggerel. And the more popular he became. the more his critics howled. Full disclosure, that's partly why I like him so much. He wrote to please nobody but himself. I also like the way he wrote. In his autobiography, Service described his method of writing at his tiny cabin in Dawson City like this. I wrote mostly on coarse rolls of paper used by the paper hangers. I'd pin them on the wall and print my verses in big charcoal letters. Then I would pace back and forth before them, repeating the words, trying to make them perfect. McGee, however, was conceived entirely in his mind before he wrote any of it down. He basically went for a walk in the woods and pulled the entire thing from thin air.

It was strange, he wrote, how easily the whole thing flowed. I'd compose a line in my head and then repeat it out loud. Then I'd compose another line and repeat the two back to bed. back, then a third, and then a fourth. In this way, line after line, verse after verse, I composed the entire thing and memorized it on the spot. It just came to me, fully formed. I also wanted to share McGee on this day because it was on Halloween of 1976 that I recited this poem from memory for the first time around a campfire in the woods in the company of a few dozen Boy Scouts. It was my old Scoutmaster, a retired colonel called Glendon Huntington,

who gave me a copy of a book called Spell of the Yukon. I still remember one-eyed Mike, Dangerous Dan McGrew, Pious Pete, Gumboot Ben, Blasphemous Bill, the lady known as Lou, and of course, Sam McGee from Tennessee. I memorized everything, forgot most of them, but McGee stuck with me, and I often think of it around Halloween, and try to recite it every year, usually when I'm alone while walking in the woods. This year, I did it in a recording studio. Here then, with no further ado, on the occasion of yet another Halloween is the cremation of Sam McGee and proof positive that a promise made is a debt unpaid. There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.

The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The northern lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see was that night on the marge of Lake Labarge. I cremated Sam McGee. Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee with a cotton blooms and blows,

Why he left his home in the south to roam around the pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but that land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell, though we'd often say, in his homely way, he'd sooner live in hell. On a Christmas day, we were mushing our way over the Dawson Trail. Talk of your cold, through our park as folds it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze, till sometimes we couldn't see. Now it wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

Now that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow, with the dogs all fed and the stars overhead, dancing heel to toe. He turned to me, and Cap says he, I'll cash in this trip, I guess. And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request. Well, he seems so low that I couldn't say no. Then he says with a sort of moan, It's the cursing cold, and it's got a hold,

And I'm chilled right down to the bone. Yet, taint being dead. It's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains. So I want you to swear. that foul or fair, your cremate, my last remains. A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail. We started on at the streak of dawn, but God, he looked ghastly pale. He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee,

and before nightfall, a corpse was all that was left to Sam McGee. There wasn't a breath in that land at death, and I hurried, horror-driven, with a corpse half-hid that I couldn't get rid because of a promise given. It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say, you may tax your brawn and brains, but you promise true, and it's up to you to cremate my last remains. Now, a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern co-es. In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I curse that load. In the long, long night by the lone firelight, while the huskies round in a ring howled out their woes to the homeless snows. Oh God, how I load that thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow. And on I went, though the dogs were spent, and the grub was getting low. The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in. And I'd often sing to that hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin. Till I came to the marge of Lake La Barge, and it derelict there lay. It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the Alice May. And I looked at it, and I thought a bit. Then I looked at my frozen chum.

Then here said I, with a sudden cry, is my crematorium. Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire. Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel up higher. The flames just soared, and the furnace roared, such a blaze you seldom see. So I burrowed a hole in the glowing cold, and I stuffed in Sam McGee. Then I made a hike, for I did not like to hear him sizzle so, and the heavens scowled and the huskies howled. It was icy, cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why,

as the greasy smoke and streaking down the sky. I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear. But the stars came out and danced about. There again I ventured near. I was sick with dread, but I bravely said, I'll just take a peep inside. I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked. Then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart, of the furnace roar. He wore a smile you could see for a mile, and he said, please close that door. It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm. Since I left plum tree down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm. There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The northern lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge. I cremated Sam McGee.

Big thanks to Dan Jensen over there at One Union Recording for breaking out the grown-up microphone and dropping in some cool sound effects. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it. Also at the risk of some shameless pluggery, it occurs to me that Sam McGee was, in fact, from Tennessee. And so, too, is my grandfather's whiskey. Noble Tennessee whiskey flying off the shelves. I'm happy to say we finally got shelf space throughout Maryland and now in Tennessee, working on Michigan and Texas, one state at a time. We'll get to all of them sooner or later. We can ship, however, to 26 or 27 different states, and we have the Rickhouse edition being introduced right now. We ran out of the original juice, and so we have a slightly higher proof that we're making available through the holidays. You can get it over at Noble Spirits.com. That's K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com.

Proceeds benefit, the Microwworks Foundation. and if I don't say so myself, it's kind of delicious. Just the thing to sip on a cold winter evening by the fire as you're telling ghost stories to your significant other or just muttering to yourself. Either way, that's that. Thank you. Talk to you soon. If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility and your machinery isn't working right,

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