The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 74: The Ride of His Life

Episode Date: September 12, 2017

When you're in the back of an ambulance in the middle of a snowstorm - every second counts.

This is the way I heard it. They say your life flashes before your eyes, moments before it ends. Not all of it, just the important parts, the bits of your childhood, for instance, that shape the person you grow to become. As they hoisted George into the back of the ambulance, the 19-year-old artist couldn't help but wonder what images might crowd their way into his final moments. What exactly might a man recall from his childhood if he never had a childhood in the first place.

Eye shut, siren wailing above his head, George sees himself at the piano, sitting beside his beloved mother. He's seven years old, receiving his first piano lesson. He's intrigued, but distracted, partly because his friends are outside playing stickball, and partly because he's already figured out the piano.

The relationship of one note to another, chromatic, diatonic, chord progress, harmonies, rhythms, time signature, each key and its attendant tone make immediate and perfect sense to his brain. Whatever his mother plays, George plays it right back, flawlessly. Weeks later, George sits at a grand piano in a crowded drawing room somewhere in Kenosha. He's playing Chopin and Aetude. He plays from memory. The crowd applauds.

His mother weeps from the back of the ambulance. George can see it like it was yesterday. In the passenger seat, a beautiful woman turns to look back at George, prone and motionless on the gurney. Her lovely face, a mask of stress and worry. Hurry, she says to the driver, for the love of God, hurry! The driver's knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Cross-town traffic is a nightmare. The snow is coming down thick and heavy.

He swerves onto the sidewalk, scattering tourists and locals, and races towards another gridlocked intersection. George is oblivious. In his mind's eye, he's standing before a blank canvas. Through the closed window in the art studio, he can once again hear the sounds of children at play. He holds the brush with a natural ease and attacks the canvas with fluid, confident strokes, deftly combining colors and using light in ways that can't be taught. The result is identical to the Monet he has chosen to imitate. His instructor is dumbfounded.

George is eight. Like photos in an album, George sees his youth fly by. He stands by his mother's casket, heartbroken and devastated. He is nine, and vows to never play the piano or paint again.

But the artist inside cannot be contained. He auditions for a school play and gets the lead, and then another, and then another after that. He memorizes his lines as he reads them for the first time. His teachers have never seen the like of him. Now, George is with his father. A man so desperate to escape his own reality,

he flees Wisconsin with his son, taking the boy away from all he knows. They move to the far east. There is no stickball. There are no friends. But George learns a new language, and then another, and then another.

after that. He charms everyone he meets, but he meets no one his age. He's 11. Up front, the driver turns to the passenger beside him. I don't think we're going to make it. The elegant woman beside him chews her nails. We're going to make it, or you're going to live with the consequences. Now, drive, damn it! Drive! Outside, the snow is falling harder than ever. The ambulance and those in it are like figures in a snow globe, trapped in a scene they can neither control, nor change. Back in the childhood, George never had. The headmaster at Todd's seminary wants to know if he would like to run the theater department. Would he like to produce short films? Why, yes. Yes, he would. And so he does at the tender age of 12. More recollections fly by

faster and faster, but the life that flashes before his eyes is not the life of a child. No No Cowboys and Indians, no sledding with his friends down the big hill in Wisconsin. But he does see those final moments with his dad. He sees himself, threatening to leave forever if his dad won't stop drinking. He sees his father try and fail. At the funeral, George knows his innocence has gone forever. He is an orphan with decisions to make. Harvard has offered a scholarship all of them have.

But he passes on college in favor of a trip to Europe where he goes in search of his true self. He's 16. The ambulance screeches to a halt and the daydream is over. George's eyes snap open, alert, and full of mischief. The elegant woman in the passenger seat turns around, smiling. We made it, darling. Five minutes to curtain. Invigorated from his brief rest, George springs from the gurney and throws open the rear doors with a great flourish.

He escorts his fiancé out of the ambulance through the cheering crowd and into the theater. Always one to seek a creative solution to life's many challenges, George routinely took advantage of an obscure New York City traffic rule that allowed ambulances to bypass all traffic laws and regulations, regardless of whether there was an actual medical emergency. Back in 1935, this allowed the young Thespian to appear in a number of popular radio productions that were recorded in various studios all over the city, while starring in the acclaimed production of Romeo and Juliet every night. Yes, the man they referred to as the Boy Wonder had pretty much invented the art of multitasking

70 years before it entered the vernacular. But really, George was just getting started. Six years later, at the impossible age of 25, this man without a childhood would go on to write, direct, and star in a film about a man who died alone. Longing for the childhood, he treasured above all things. The unforgettable story of a titan of industry whose enigmatic dying word

was the name stenciled onto his sled from youth. If you've not seen the film, spoiler alert, the name on the sled was Rosebud, and the film was arguably the greatest ever made. Citizen Kane, and the artist,

the man who forever changed Broadway, radio, and the American cinema, the man who was never late for an opening night, and always arrived in style, that man was George Orson Wells. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility and your machinery isn't working right,

Granger knows you need to understand what's wrong as soon as possible. So when a conveyor motor falters, Granger offers diagnostic tools like calibration kits and multimeters to help you identify and fix the problem. With Granger, you can be confident. You have everything you need to keep your facility running smoothly. Call 1-800-Grangeer, click granger.com, or just stop by.

Granger, for the ones who get it done.