The Way I Heard It Read online

  If James Cameron had allowed Leonardo DiCaprio a few slugs of whiskey, his character, too, might have survived that terrible night and grown old with Kate Winslet. But of course there was no happy ending for Jack and Rose, or for the 1,500 real people who perished on their way to New York City. Thanks to an open and unguarded bar, Charles Joughin was not among them. He was busy putting his customers first and preparing to step into history as the inebriated baker who just happened to be the very last person to abandon… the Titanic.

  * * *

  Of all the dreadful details to fixate upon, I think about the conditions at the time of the sinking. No wind. No waves. Dead calm. According to every account, the Atlantic was flat when the great ship went down. Flat and black like a duck pond—a dark mirror with no reflection. How terrifying must it have been to be slowly pulled beneath that tranquil surface? How terrible for the captain, who knew he’d been driving the ship too fast?

  In 2004, seven years after Leonardo DiCaprio sank to the bottom of James Cameron’s sea, the Discovery Channel invited me to host a documentary called Deadliest Catch.

  “It’s not really ‘on brand,’ ” they told me. “It’ll never go to series. But at least you won’t be crawling through sewers!”

  I get suspicious when network executives tell me what their “brand” is. Seems to me your “brand” should be whatever your viewers are willing to watch. But I was happy for the work and eager to see Alaska.

  “Why are you calling it Deadliest Catch?”

  “Crab fishing is dangerous,” the executives said. “Plus it’s a snappy title.”

  I chuckled. I had grown up fishing for blue crab on the Chesapeake Bay. Tying raw chicken necks to long strands of twine, tossing the bait off the end of the dock, reeling in the crabs as they clung to the poultry, and watching my brother scoop them up into his net. Yeah, I knew all about crab fishing. How dangerous could it be?

  I arrived in Dutch Harbor a few days after Thanksgiving. The flight had taken me from San Francisco to Seattle, which was pleasant; Seattle to Anchorage, which was also pleasant; and then over the vast Bering Sea to Dutch Harbor, which was not pleasant. Not pleasant at all.

  Technically, I guess it was turbulence, but not the kind I’d experienced in the lower forty-eight. It was a kind of turbulence unique to islands with big hills that flank narrow runways buffeted by constant crosswinds. It snapped the overhead compartments open. It sent a beverage cart careening down the aisle. It was the kind of turbulence that would make a plane full of hardened fishermen blubber and curse and pray, all at the same time.

  A hundred feet before touching down, our pilot aborted the landing and flew to Cold Bay, where he put the plane down on a runway that had been built for the space shuttle. We spent twenty-four hours there waiting for the weather to clear, enjoying a variety of stale treats from vending machines in the empty airport.

  When I finally did arrive in Dutch, I headed straight to the docks, where the film crew was waiting to board a crab boat. Was it the Fierce Allegiance? The Maverick? The Bountiful? I don’t remember. What I do remember is that the rain was blowing sideways and turning to sleet as I climbed aboard. Remember, it was 2004, and all I knew then was that I was hosting a documentary about crab fishing. I didn’t know what the show would become. No one knew. But the director wanted footage of me baiting the massive 800-pound pots and chatting with the crew, giving the viewer a sense of how crab boats worked on the open ocean. It was an odd role to assume: part host, part greenhorn, part reporter—a strange combination that left the deckhands confused as to what my actual purpose on their boat was. It was a confusion I shared.

  Twenty miles out of Dutch, things got sporty. Green water rolled over the bow as we plunged under wave after wave in twelve-foot seas. The wind picked up, I threw up—the waves got bigger and bigger—but the work never stopped. In the wheelhouse, the captain kept a lit cigarette in each hand even as one dangled from his mouth. He looked like a human chimney. On deck, the massive, 800-pound pots slid back and forth as the swells built around us. It was an impossible situation to shoot, and our attempts to do so annoyed the captain and crew. I recalled the terrific line at the start of Ulysses: “The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”

  I survived, and by Christmas I had actually gotten used to the snotgreen sea. By New Year’s Day, my scrotum had returned to its normal state. It might have remained that way but for the events of January 15, when the weather did something truly terrifying. The wind stopped howling, the waves stopped rolling, and the temperature rose to a balmy 30 degrees. For the first time all month the Bering Sea… settled down.

  The boat that sank that day was called the Big Valley. She slipped beneath the surface while I was sleeping back at the hotel. Conditions were not to blame. In fact, when the ship left port, the Bering Sea was flat and black, like a duck pond—a dark mirror with no reflection. Maybe that’s why the captain went out with too many pots. Far too many. But the Bering Sea is an unpredictable place, and when the wind picked up, the Big Valley became unstable. A death trap. Six men perished as a result, seventy miles off St. Paul Island.

  How terrifying must it have been, to be slowly pulled beneath the surface? How terrible for the captain, who knew his boat had been carrying too much weight?

  I can still picture the faces of men I met a week later at the memorial—hardened fishermen who blubbered and cursed and prayed, all at the same time. Deadliest Catch had lived up to its name, I suppose, but it had done so in ways that we’d never imagined or wanted. Ways that haunt me to this day.

  ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BETTER DRIVING

  Back in May 1932, a sixty-one-year-old handyman named John Thompson was tinkering in his garage when he had himself a Eureka moment—a self-centered idea that would virtually eliminate bad driving. In those days, bad driving was commonplace, and US automakers weren’t sure what to do about it. But Thompson believed the problem had less to do with bad drivers and more to do with the obstacles they encountered—specifically, recessed gullies, intricate curves, and flat horizontal planes. His idea would promote better driving by eliminating those obstacles.

  Six months later, he had a gleaming prototype in his garage, ready for action. Six months after that, Patent no. 1,080,080 arrived in the US mail, making him the sole owner of the device that would virtually eliminate bad driving. All he needed now was someone to mass-produce it.

  John traveled all over the United States looking for a manufacturing partner. He visited dozens of factories and presented his prototype to countless engineers. The reaction was always the same: “Great idea, Mr. Thompson. But no, thanks.”

  After two years of “no,” John grew discouraged. He’d never tried to sell anything before, and the rejections were demoralizing. He made his last pitch in a conference room full of engineers at a manufacturing facility in Oregon.

  “Good morning, Mr. Thompson. We’re intrigued by your design. The cruciform, the conical helix, and the self-centering aspect are most innovative. But please explain to us how such a thing can be mass-produced.”

  “Well,” John said with a nervous laugh, “I was hoping that’s what you fellas could tell me.”

  The engineers said nothing, so John plunged in. He talked about the fundamental problem—the frequency with which drivers wound up getting stuck—and the inevitable damage that followed when they continued to accelerate. Then he explained how his device would solve the problem by ejecting the driver before the moment of impact. When he was done, the engineers all agreed: his idea was brilliant but simply too hard to mass-produce. In other words, “No, thanks.”

  Later that evening, belly to the bar, John was staring at the diagrams on the wrinkled pages of his worthless patent when a man with white teeth and perfect hair struck up a conversation.

  “Don’t take it so hard, friend. A ‘no’ is just a ‘yes’ to a different question!”

  “Spare me the platitudes,” John said. “I know what a ‘no’ means. I hear i
t every day.”

  The man’s name was Henry. He grinned, pulled up a stool, and ordered a fresh round of drinks. “What exactly are you trying to sell?”

  John handed Henry his patent. Henry didn’t understand all the details, but he knew the importance of better driving. He offered to buy one more round. Then he offered to buy John’s idea for a handful of cash. John agreed, and after that, things happened fast.

  Henry returned to the company that had just rejected John’s idea and asked to see the president, a man named Eugene Clark. “Oh, no,” said the secretary. “Not without an appointment.”

  But Clark’s secretary didn’t understand that a “no” was just a “yes” to another question. Henry smiled his charming smile and showed her the patent he’d bought. “This idea is going to eliminate driver error,” he said. “I can show it to a competitor, but wouldn’t you rather show it to the boss yourself?”

  The secretary looked at the patent. Like Henry, she didn’t understand all the details but knew the importance of better driving. She showed the patent to her boss, and soon Henry was sitting across from the president of the company, stretching the truth a bit and posing additional questions that could be answered only in the affirmative.

  “Mr. Clark, I just heard from General Motors. They want millions of these things. Your engineers say it can’t be done. Should I ask someone else to give it a try, or do you want to give it another shot?”

  Clark picked up the phone and summoned his engineers back to the conference room. Once again the engineers examined the prototype and said “No.” They blamed the practical limits of a cold steel forge and the many challenges of scaling a product of this size. But the engineers didn’t realize that a “no” was just a “yes” to another question. When Clark asked if they wanted to keep their jobs, they went back to the drawing board and did come up with a way to mass-produce Henry’s prototype. At which point Henry flew to Detroit to persuade General Motors to place a massive order for a million devices that did not yet exist.

  You can guess what happened next. Henry got a meeting with the president of General Motors and persuaded him to test the prototype. Driver performance improved dramatically, and General Motors offered to buy Henry’s idea. But this time, it was Henry who said “No.” Because Henry had no intention of selling his driving system to just anybody. He wanted to license it—to everybody.

  Ultimately, General Motors ordered millions. Then Chrysler. Then Ford. Then the Department of Defense. Henry’s patented technology wound up inside every new car on America’s highways. Henry’s bank account? That wound up packed with $65 million in today’s dollars. And as for John Thompson?

  He got screwed.

  There’s really no other way to put it. The aging handyman had been right all along. He knew the problem with bad driving had less to do with the drivers themselves and more to do with the obstacles they encountered. He was the one who replaced those troublesome gullies with a unique, tapered cruciform. He was the one who looked at those horizontal planes and saw what an ingenious conical helix could do. His patented Self-Centering Drive System solved the chronic problem of over-torquing—by automatically ejecting drivers before they could cause any serious damage. Not human drivers. Mechanical drivers. That was the breakthrough that dramatically increased the speed and productivity of American assembly lines. But the breakthrough was not named for the man who invented or designed it. It was named for the man who bought it and sold it—over and over and over again.

  A salesman who knew that a “no” was just a “yes” to a different question.

  A guy named Henry, whose last name is still synonymous with the screw that made him rich and the screwdriver that made him famous… Phillips.

  * * *

  Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to speak on behalf of some pretty remarkable companies: Ford, Caterpillar, Discovery, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola, to brag ever so humbly about a few. But long before I became “the Ford guy,” I was selling water purifiers door to door and magazine subscriptions over the phone and hosting infomercials. I was also hawking a variety of dubious products between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00 a.m., on the QVC cable shopping channel.

  Back in 1990, QVC was having difficulty recruiting show hosts. Experienced salespeople weren’t comfortable on TV. Experienced TV people weren’t comfortable selling things. So QVC stopped hiring experienced people—and started hiring people who could talk about a pencil for eight minutes. That was the audition, and for reasons that would probably take a psychiatrist to unpack, I was able to discuss the features and benefits of a Dixon Ticonderoga no. 2 ad nauseam. I was hired and placed on the graveyard shift for the three-month nocturnal crucible called “the probationary period.”

  In hindsight, it was a fantastic way to learn: three hours of live TV without a script. With no prompter, no delay, and almost no supervision. Just a producer named Marty, a former host who slumbered at his desk while I worked. For me, it was a true baptism by fire, partly because I’d never been on TV before and partly because there was no real training program. Aspiring hosts were left to figure out for themselves how best to discuss the bewildering array of products they were charged with presenting.

  On my first shift, I walked onto the set at precisely 3:00 a.m. Four robotic cameras faced me, controlled by a crew of operators hidden behind a pane of smoked glass twenty yards away. I sat behind a desk on a pie-shaped stage that rotated every hour to reveal a new setting from which to hawk new categories of pabulum. That particular hour was called Ideas for Your Home. What type of home? Hard to say, given the products I’d been asked to sell. Every five minutes or so a stagehand would bring me some gadget I’d never encountered before: the Amcor negative ion generator; a hand-painted Hummel figurine; the first cordless phone I’d ever seen; the first karaoke machine. The supply of products was endless, and the products themselves were profoundly unfamiliar.

  I began with something called a Katsak, a paper grocery bag lined with Mylar, guaranteed to make a “crinkling” sound cats supposedly find “irresistible.” Yes, it’s a real thing. It’s out there, online. You can actually watch me trying to sell this thing on YouTube—talking about the Katsak for ten whole minutes.

  No one bought any.

  Then they brought me a lava lamp, which I attempted to open on the air to see if there was lava inside. There wasn’t. No one bought any of those, either.

  Then they brought me something called the Healthteam Infrared Pain Reliever. It looked like a miniature flashlight with a cord attached. It cost $29.99 and promised to “relieve arthritic pain with healing infrared light when applied directly to the troubled area.”

  With eight minutes left on the clock and not one cogent thing in my head, I looked into the camera and said, “Folks, I’m gonna be honest with you: I have no idea what this thing is or how it works. Frankly, I’m skeptical about the healing power of infrared light. But if you have one of these objects, call the 800 number on the screen. Ask for Marty. He’ll put you on the air. Maybe you can tell me if it actually works.”

  Ten seconds later, something extraordinary happened. Someone called in. A nice lady named Carol explained exactly what the product did and told me she was very satisfied with hers. She also told me I had pretty eyes. After that, things got weird but more fun. With each new product, more viewers called in to explain what the gadget was and how it worked. These were not “testimonials”; these were tutorials. The viewers had taken pity on me and begun to do my job for me. Sales picked up. Marty woke up. Like I said, things got fun.

  Years later, while narrating a nature documentary, I learned that young wolves, when confronted with bigger, stronger wolves, will sometimes roll onto their backs and expose their bellies. According to the narrator, the submissive posture they adopt is a way for weaker wolves to show they’re not a threat. According to my veterinarian, this is the same reason my dog pees on me when I come home: he “respects my authority.” I’m not sure I buy that. In fact, I’m p
retty sure Freddy is just incontinent. But I do believe there’s more than one way to sell something. For me, the secret was to admit my vulnerability on camera and quit pretending that I knew more than I did. To adopt my own submissive posture.

  NO POLITE WAY TO PUT IT

  George was horny. Sorry to be indelicate, but there’s really no polite way to put it. He hadn’t seen Elizabeth in weeks, and he missed his wife with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

  “Excuse me, sir, but a letter has arrived.”

  George leapt from his chair and ran to the doorway. “Hand it over, my good man, with all due speed.”

  The courier complied. George locked the door behind him. With trembling hands, he opened the envelope. The sight of her handwriting quickened his pulse. The smell of her perfume wafted from the page, leaving him light-headed and breathless.

  “Oh, my gallant champion,” it began. “How I miss you. If only we could be together, for just a few hours. If only I could sit ‘Tomboy’ for a quick ride with you behind me.”

  George swallowed hard, gripping the page with his free hand. By God, his wife really could turn a phrase! He tried to slow things down, but when he got to the part that read, “I know of a soft place upon somebody’s carpet, that yearns for a gentle touch,” well, that was simply too much. George had to… collect himself, then start again from the top.

  The second time was better. It always was. George read more slowly now, with as much patience as he could muster. He savored every syllable, pausing between paragraphs to fully embrace the images his wife had so cleverly evoked. When he finished, he wiped the perspiration from his brow and tried to return the favor.