The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 318: NEW STORY—That's Gonna Leave a Mark

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Nothing irritates nightingales more than a runaway ass.

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leave a mark. The nightingales were a quartet of classically trained musicians who sang popular songs and performed dramatic readings of classic poetry on the vaudeville circuit. On this particular afternoon, they were on stage at the Nacadocious Opera House, attempting to entertain an audience of restless Texans. It was a matinee performance, and the crowd was not enthused by the musical stylings of four young men in sailor suits, white straw hats, clip-on bow ties, and paper-lapel roses, singing songs like, let me call you sweetheart, Camp Town Ladies, Goodbye My Coney Island Baby, and everybody's favorite, My Wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows, you may search everywhere, but none can

compare. to my wild Irish rose. The nightingales accompanied themselves on guitar, mandolin, and violin. And they made quite a racket. But 20 minutes into their act, many of those in attendance had knotted off, and many others were on the verge of joining them. The nightingales were doing their best, but the crowd just wasn't singing their tune.

It was at this point that the very first, car to ever drive through Nacadocious entered the downtown area. The vehicle traveled south on Church Street and then turned onto East Main just a few blocks from the Opera House when the exhaust system emitted a loud backfire, followed by several more bursts in rapid succession. No one inside the theater heard the explosions, but outside, several pedestrians dove head first onto the dirt, fearing a gunfight had suddenly erupted in their quiet little western town. No less alarmed was a large mule, hitched to a wooden wagon, and tethered to a pole outside the blacksmith's shop. Unlike the pedestrians, the mule did not throw himself onto the ground.

Instead, he reared up, braided once, and bolted down East Main Street, dragging behind him the wagon to which he was still hitched, and the pole to which he was still tethered. A pole that, unfortunately, had been one of four, supports, holding up a large canvas tarp under which the aforementioned blacksmith had been working next to an open flame. As the mule barreled down East Main Street, bucking and braying and knocking over various and sundry items, the canvas tarp dipped into the fire and burst into flames.

In the ensuing chaos, one of the pedestrians leapt to his feet and ran to the entrance of the Nacadocious Opera House, bursting through the front doors, he entered the theater and hollered, Runaway, Mule! Run away, Mule! We got ourselves a runaway Mule! The audience snapped awake and leapt from their seats, titillated, perhaps, by the prospect of something, anything, more entertaining than another verse of My Wild Irish Rose. They ran outside to witness the mayhem firsthand, leaving the nightingales to sing to an empty house. You have got to be kidding me, exclaimed Julius, a runaway mule. We appear to have been upstage by a donkey, said Milton.

I am so sick as singing for hillbillies, said Leonard. I do believe, said Arthur, a reasonable person might take offense. As it turned out, there wasn't much to see. outside beyond a burning tarp and a few passers-by dusting themselves off. The mule, the wagon, and the pole were already long gone. And so the crowd wandered back into the opera house, where the nightingales greeted them with a slightly different version of my wild Irish rose. My vile Texas mule, it poops and peas and drools. We love when it runs. It looks like such fun. It's my vile Texas mule.

As the boys harmonized their improvised lyrics, the audience returned to their seats, laughing. When the song ended, Julius asked the crowd, Hey, mule lovers, have you all noticed that Nacadocious is full of roaches? The crowd laughed some more, partly because it was true, and partly because they never realized anything rinded with Nacadocious. But mostly they laughed because no one had ever talked to them like this from the stage of their beloved opera house, especially a quartet of nice Jewish boys from the big city.

Hey, Julius, said Leonard in a broad Texas twang. Is it just my imagination, or is the finest flower in Texas, the runaway jackass? The crowd roared. Other acts might have been booed off the stage or run out of town. for insulting their audience. But somehow, when the nightingales did it, it was funny. And so Julius and the boys doubled down. In between songs, the young men heckled the audience,

transforming their normally cautious and predictable act into a cathartic smorgasbord of insult humor, musical parody, improvisational spontaneity, an unapologetic silliness. No one had ever seen anything quite like it, and the audience, now fully awake and eager for more, gave the nightingale something they'd never gotten before. A standing ovation.

Nacadocious and the rest of the country would never be the same. Of course, that all happened a long time ago. The vaudeville days are long gone, and so too are the nightingales. But the old acidoscious opera house is still standing, right where it was way back in 1910. And today, should you find yourself visiting the oldest town in Texas, you can wander into a little shop just across the street called the runaway mule,

named for the high-strung creature who helped launch the careers of Monty Python, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Jack Lemon, Carl Reiner, David Zucker and too many other legendary comedians to name. Indeed, you'd be hard pressed to find a comedian today who wasn't in some way influenced by that runaway mule whose mad dash through town first inspired the nightingales to change their tune, along with their name, had become the legendary comedy act

that would leave an indelible mark on show business. Several marks, in fact. Leonard, Milton, Arthur, and Julius. The Marx, you know, as Chico, Gamo, Harpo, and Groucho. The Marx Brothers. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. Before I switched to wealth front, my APY was probably 0.1. Like, it was a joke.

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