Pod Insights The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe 444: Jack Teetor—Blind Faith to Blind Logic About this episode Filmmaker Jack Teetor joins to discuss his new documentary, Blind Logic https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Logic-Ralph-Teetor-Story/dp/B0FDCNBSL3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=10YVCAVBOY61R&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6tFSzj0aC9PUkyyUPN9JH1mVkr8gAN6AhlzgdQxbKrKCBOpFYH2ZGEFNk3O9OQ33zMYlwGIpr1dKqfeQb2OserorQvdshUYaqDEFSpFdvuo07pXb9eZfQgw0uvFbXW_aAwo_cLdPVxH32cUmGErXdFZ-SU06qNVhSIFsY-4hh9qJq3JbZEqHI6ra2GQigh-jGJaJMHyICTCe9Y-Xh-LJTuAVLi4fuQh4V97T43wH0ts. R0P6LfhODrc1xYFqH1Dp7w3pG13KPpqUxdYiajtk5Kc&dib_tag=se&keywords=blind+logic+documentary&qid=1753129434&sprefix=%2Caps%2C222&sr=8-1, about his granduncle, Ralph Teetor, who revolutionized the automotive industry. From inventing cruise control to influencing the development of the automatic transmission, Ralph was an automotive visionary, which is ironic since he did all that while being blind since childhood.
Transcript 11,373 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 Mike Rowe? Mike Rowe here. It's The Way I Heard It. And full disclosure, there was a time when I thought this podcast might be called People You Should Know, because I wanted very much to use this space to introduce you to people like today's guest. And Chuck, I assume you would agree with that.
0:21 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. This guy is definitely worth knowing. And particularly, the subject matter that you're going to hear about is worth knowing.
0:28 Mike Rowe? And he's also a guy who you don't know.
0:30 Speaker 01 Yes.
0:31 Mike Rowe? You don't know Jack Teeter. And you probably don't know the subject of the documentary he made called Blind Logic. His great uncle named Ralph Teeter. And you probably don't remember the company that he built. It was called The Perfect Circle. And it was out of Indiana. And The Perfect Circle made these, well, these perfect circles that you would put over a cylinder.
0:58 Speaker 01 That's right.
0:59 Mike Rowe? Basically, in a combustion engine.
1:01 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:02 Mike Rowe? And...
1:03 Speaker 01 It improved lubrication, I believe, of the pistons?
1:05 Mike Rowe? Yes.
1:06 Speaker 01 If I'm remembering that correctly.
1:07 Mike Rowe? Well, before the cars were rolling off the supply, not supply chain, what do you call it, the assembly line.
1:14 Speaker 01 Assembly line.
1:16 Mike Rowe? You know, things were very, very different, you know, before Henry Ford kind of owned the whole thing.
1:21 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:22 Mike Rowe? And this is a story of a man who was born in 1895, who was a natural inventor, a skilled tradesperson, and who not only went on to build this incredible company that you probably never heard of, but also developed a couple of things that you probably used today, especially if you own an automobile. I refer in no particular order to the automatic transmission.
1:47 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:48 Mike Rowe? And cruise control.
1:49 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:50 Mike Rowe? Now, what makes it doubly interesting? And honestly, it would be interesting enough if that's all Ralph Teeter did.
1:57 Speaker 01 Pretty big accomplishments, yes.
1:59 Mike Rowe? He was blind.
2:00 Speaker 01 Totally.
2:00 Mike Rowe? Yeah. He lost his vision when he was five or six years old. And his talent as a tradesperson was so immense. And his personality was so stubborn. He was simply unable to act like he was blind. And he was unable to hear the word no. And so he wound up living a very normal life. In fact, his own daughter, Marjorie, didn't even realize her dad was blind until she was, what, like 10 years old?
2:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. There were people who encountered him on the street who had no idea that he was blind. He was so good. His hearing was so keen.
2:37 Mike Rowe? Yeah, wouldn't use a cane, never learned Braille. So many interesting things about this guy. And what I think is kind of fun is the way he got onto my radar, which was a phone call from his great nephew.
2:50 Speaker 01 Or grand nephew.
2:52 Mike Rowe? Grand nephew, I suppose.
2:53 Speaker 01 Either one.
2:53 Mike Rowe? Whatever. Call him what you will. His name's Jack. And Jack got it into his head that there needed to be a documentary about his great uncle. And so he made one and he asked me to narrate it. And I read the script and I said, you know what? This guy's never made a movie before. He's in the industry, sort of, you know, he's adjacent to it anyway. But I just really admired the fact that, like so many other people, he learned that there was somebody in his family who was truly extraordinary and just decided the world needed to know about him. So I did this thing. I narrated this documentary and it's won 15 awards so far.
3:35 Speaker 01 Yep.
3:35 Mike Rowe? And by the time you guys listen to this, it'll be available on Amazon and pretty much everywhere.
3:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:42 Mike Rowe? It's just weird how life works, man. And so this guy, Jack Teeter, shows up at the office today. He brings his girlfriend, Rose, who made me banana bread. And we sat down and we had a chat.
3:53 Speaker 01 Yep.
3:54 Mike Rowe? And I'm so glad we did.
3:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:56 Mike Rowe? We're calling it Blind Faith to Blind Logic. The documentary is called Blind Logic. Spoiler alert. In fact, I've given you a great deal of spoilers, but I want you to listen to the conversation that we're about to have, knowing where it's headed, because it just makes the whole thing so more extraordinary, I think, right from the jump.
4:19 Speaker 01 Yep.
4:19 Mike Rowe? Jack Teeter's here. Banana Bread is waiting right after this.
4:29 Mike Rowe? So as some of you may have heard, I went to Congress 16 years ago to testify before a House Subcommittee. And then again, a year later, to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about the need to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some kind of national effort that would make a more persuasive case for a lot of good jobs out there that didn't require a four-year degree. Well, 15 years later, I finally heard back from the government, and I am delighted to tell you about a program called BuildFreedom.us. This is the national PR campaign that MicroWorks has been talking about for a decade and
5:12 Mike Rowe? a half now, and it's focused on 300,000 or 400,000 excellent jobs in the defense industrial base. These are the electricians, and the plumbers, and the steam finners, and the pipe fitters, and the CNC operators, and the shipbuilders, and so forth. But, in this case, all of those trades are focused on building out our national infrastructure through the defense industrial base. So people who are building our autonomous weapons, our planes, our ships, it's only a matter of national security, and it's a very big deal. And on a personal level, it's really been very gratifying. BuildFreedom donated $10 million to MicroWorks. The money's available right now for you, if you want to pursue a skill that's in demand
5:55 Mike Rowe? and work in the defense industrial base. I think it's an opportunity of a lifetime. Go to BuildFreedom.us, see what's available, and then apply for a scholarship from MicroWorks. The money's there, burning a hole in my pocket. Go get some. BuildFreedom.us. Thanks for doing this.
6:18 Speaker 02 God, I love your voice.
6:19 Mike Rowe? Well, I would hope so. You hired me to narrate the story of your family's life. I'm glad you like it. Jack Teeter is the, well, your great uncle was Ralph.
6:31 Speaker 02 Right.
6:32 Mike Rowe? Ralph Teeter is the star of a documentary called Blind Logic.
6:38 Mike Rowe? Jack, the guy sitting across from me, reached out to me out of the blue, as people do from time to time, to see if, you know, there was any interest in narrating this project. And I looked at your rough cut and I read the script. And honestly, Jack, I'm not often taken aback. There are a lot of great stories out there and I feel like I know most of them, especially in this space. But I just had no idea what your great uncle had accomplished, who he was. And I was just so impressed that somebody in his family would take the time to put together such a great tribute. So congratulations.
7:18 Speaker 02 Thank you. I have to back up a little bit because it was my nephew Scott who suggested you. We were sitting in Detroit at the Automotive Hall of Fame. And I have a film crew. We're getting ready to put Sarah Cook, President of the Automotive Hall of Fame, on camera. And Scott said, "Well, who are you going to get to narrate?" And I said, "Well, I haven't thought about that yet." You know, there's a lot of great guys. And he said, "Mike Rowe." And I said, "You know what? That's a good idea." Anyway, that was a genesis.
7:54 Mike Rowe? Here's the way I heard it, or at least the way I remember it. By the time you got to Mary, she came to me and said, "Some guy wants you to be the voice of Ralph Teeter." Right? And I'm like, "Well, who's Ralph Teeter?" And she said, "I don't know." It's just gonna be, we get a lot of inquiries.
8:15 Speaker 02 Right.
8:15 Mike Rowe? This is how it starts, right? And I'm like, "Well..." So I Google Ralph Teeter. I'm like, "I think this guy had a, had something major to do with the automotive industry." That's how it started. And then I read the script and I was like, "You know what? I would do that, but I should probably narrate it and you should probably get somebody more famous than me to be the voice of your great uncle."
8:39 Speaker 02 Well, you're absolutely right because I kinda liked your voice for Ralph Teeter. And I think in my initial inquiry to Mary, that's what it was. And I think she came back and said, "Oh, he won't do the voice of Ralph Teeter, but he'll narrate." And...
8:59 Speaker 02 Hey, that's great.
9:00 Mike Rowe? Well, this is like some fun insight to how this industry works. And I know you've had a ton of experience in Hollywood. You've been out here for many years. You've been involved in God knows how many marketing campaigns for movies that people are super familiar with already. But in my mind, when I read it, I'm like, I don't know that I want to be an actor in this thing, you know, because I was up to my neck at when you reached out in writing stories for this podcast called The Way I Heard It that were these short mysteries about people you know that did something interesting that you weren't familiar with. So I was just, I was so focused on doing that, I didn't want to like start acting again. And I'm glad because you wound up getting Jeff Daniels to do your great uncle.
9:45 Speaker 02 We're pretty lucky about that, too. You know, he's from the heartland.
9:49 Mike Rowe? I know.
9:50 Speaker 02 Little town in Chelsea, Michigan.
9:52 Mike Rowe? Oh, yeah.
9:53 Speaker 02 Yeah. And he brought that sort of midwestern tone, if you will, to Ralph Teeter, which is what I was kind of looking for.
10:03 Mike Rowe? Yeah. Just so people understand what in the world we're talking about, give me the thumbnail. Who was your great uncle? And why should everybody in this country be familiar with his contribution to civilized life?
10:18 Speaker 02 Well, he's known in the automotive circles for inventing the cruise control. That's what people know about him, if they know about Ralph Teeter, because he's really an unknown person at this point, but this will all change. His life basically spanned the entire development of the American automobile industry as we know it. For example, he was born in 1890. 1895 was when he was five years old, about the first time a car actually made it into Indianapolis.
11:00 Mike Rowe? Not Detroit.
11:01 Speaker 02 Not Detroit.
11:02 Mike Rowe? That's the first thing would surprise people. This story starts in Hagerstown, Indiana.
11:06 Speaker 02 Hagerstown, about an hour east of Indianapolis. Indianapolis became the automobile capital of the world. Now, there were, I don't know, 120 different automobile manufacturers in Indiana. Now, these were all custom-built cars. And this was all before Henry Ford, you know, developed the assembly line. And that changed everything.
11:33 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
11:34 Speaker 02 But backing up again to Ralph in 1895, the reason why that year is so relevant is he had his accident.
11:45 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
11:46 Speaker 02 This is when he, he had an accident prying open a cabinet and hit his eye, stabbed his eye.
11:54 Mike Rowe? A knife went straight into his eye and he immediately lost the sight in that eye.
11:58 Speaker 02 And then the disease moved to the other eye. But here's another important.
12:02 Mike Rowe? What was the disease, Jack? How does that work? I like, I didn't, it must have been an infection of some kind?
12:07 Speaker 02 It was. And I knew you were gonna ask that question.
12:12 Mike Rowe? It's my job to ask the tough question, Jack. That's why, that's why I'm here. I'm not just a narrator.
12:16 Speaker 02 I can't think of the name of it. Maybe Chuck will Google it.
12:21 Mike Rowe? Not likely.
12:22 Speaker 02 Not likely. But that year was relevant, Mike, in the sense that his uncle, Uncle Charlie Teeter, invented the railroad cycle car for investigating and all the tracks.
12:38 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
12:39 Speaker 02 If they were right or if something wrong, they were used. And he invented this thing.
12:45 Mike Rowe? Different than, like, you know, the old gandhi dancers, right? They'd get on these platforms and that was manual, but this was not?
12:53 Speaker 02 This was based on the bicycle technology. So in other words, a guy could ride it along the track and check to see how it was. Well, that kind of revolutionized that whole industry. And so the company was formed.
13:09 Mike Rowe? Mm-hmm.
13:10 Speaker 02 And they were building these railroad inspection car, cars.
13:15 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
13:16 Speaker 02 And it kind of exploded. They were purchased worldwide. And, but the point of this is that this is where Ralph. Really developed his mechanical skills. Now, he developed those even before his accident. So, he loved to play with tools.
13:36 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
13:36 Speaker 02 He hung out at the factory. But after his accident, that didn't stop. His passion was tools.
13:43 Mike Rowe? How old was he again, when he lost his sight entirely?
13:45 Speaker 02 He was five, he was six by the time he completely lost his sight. And his parents raised him to be as if he could see. They raised him.
13:57 Mike Rowe? As if he wasn't blind.
13:59 Speaker 02 Right. That's the really cool thing about it. And that stuck with him his entire life. Now, here's another interesting thing. As a child, so when he was 12 years old, 1902, he wanted to build a motor car. Well, how many 12-year-olds actually do this?
14:20 Mike Rowe? Who can't see?
14:22 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, he got the help of my grandfather, Dan Teeter, who was four years older. And they, they built a motor car from scratch, machining each part by hand.
14:35 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
14:36 Speaker 02 And it went forward only. And it had a tiller. And he actually drove it. So, the way he drove it was they, they strung a cable above the car on the street. And he would hold on to the cable. So, he would, you know, kind of stay straight on the street.
14:56 Mike Rowe? Quick sidebar. Two things, as I got into the script, that immediately convinced me I wanted to be a part of this. The first was your great uncle's natural affinity for tools. And the way they just became an extension of his person. That was my granddad, Carl.
15:14 Speaker 02 Oh.
15:14 Mike Rowe? Same chip.
15:15 Speaker 02 Right.
15:16 Mike Rowe? Okay. He, he only went to the seventh grade. But there wasn't a tool in the box that you couldn't hand him, that he didn't intuitively understand and know how to use.
15:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:25 Mike Rowe? His, his language was tools. And he was an incredibly handy man. And, and made a pretty great living as an electrical contractor. And worked in the trades all of his life. So, that resonated. He also was a big shot in the Lions Club. And for their philanthropic project, they worked to raise money and help. The people at the Maryland School for the Blind. So my pop is a tradesman's tradesman who spent a lot of his life working with and helping the blind. In fact, when I was in the Boy Scouts, my Eagle Scout project was reading to the blind
16:10 Mike Rowe? and building a bridge at the Maryland School for the Blind. So if you're me and you're looking for reasons to do a project with somebody you've never heard of, you got me in the first three pages.
16:20 Speaker 02 Ah.
16:21 Mike Rowe? You got, I mean, I was, I was your Huckleberry right there.
16:25 Speaker 02 Well, I read about that, about what you did as an Eagle Scout and that you were reading to the Maryland School of the Blind. And I thought that was a really cool project that you did. And Uncle Ralph would be very proud of you for doing that.
16:41 Mike Rowe? Well, I don't want to make it about me. The point I'm trying to get at is what kind of stuff possessed this young boy at 12, at 12, to dream that big? And I'm also super interested in, would it have been better to have been born blind? Or, you know, do you get five or six years of memories seared into your brain about everything from color and what people look like, right? And like all of these other things? And I've asked that question to a lot of people that I know without sight, and the answers always vary. So I'm just curious about your take on it.
17:22 Speaker 02 Well, that's very interesting because I've thought about that, too.
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18:59 Speaker 02 I can speculate from Ralph's standpoint, having seen for five years, gave him the ability to strengthen his mental capability of visualizing. So in other words, when he was completely blind, he had to use all of his other senses. Most importantly, I think, hearing and feeling and touch. But I think because he was able to see at one point, he may have used that in his library of visualization. I don't know, but I do know that he had a gift for memory.
19:44 Speaker 02 So throughout his life, and walking about town, he would memorize how many steps, where the buildings were, where everything was. He memorized voices. He recalled everybody's voice. I don't know how he did that, but he did. And it amazed me because he would, even if they had a cold, he would still know who it was.
20:11 Mike Rowe? Well, they say that when one sense goes, the others become sharpened.
20:14 Speaker 02 Right.
20:14 Mike Rowe? But to this point, like you make the point in the movie, and I don't know if one of your family members elaborate on it or not, but... This guy was like a bat, right? I mean, like echolocation. He could figure out where he was by footfalls and not, not just counting, but the way the sounds of the town reverberated back to him.
20:38 Speaker 02 Good point. You're absolutely right. The echoes of, when he was young, the echoes of the horses walking and the buggies. He could hear them bouncing off the town buildings and whatnot, but he did count on that. And the other interesting thing, he, he, he refused to use a cane. He wanted to be as normal as possible. And if he had a cane, well, he would almost have to admit that he was blind. And the other thing, he refused to learn Braille.
21:14 Mike Rowe? Wow, now that's controversial today.
21:16 Speaker 02 Now, I knew that when I was making the documentary. And I, but I didn't know why he refused to learn Braille. And then I learned from the family, well, if he learned Braille, he would have to kind of admit that he was blind. And he didn't really want to do that. He didn't look at himself as handicapped. And he didn't want people to focus on that.
21:42 Mike Rowe? And obviously, his parents didn't either.
21:43 Speaker 02 Right. And people that had met him weren't certain that he was blind. For example, his own daughter, my Aunt Marjorie, she didn't know he was blind until 10. And I think I have something in the movie about that. Uh, her classmates said, well, your, your dad is blind and this and that. And she said, oh, no, no, he sometimes bumps into things, but he's not blind. And that's, so think about that.
22:14 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
22:14 Speaker 02 Well, because when she was a young kid. He would play with her and build toys and he built her a steam engine, but he would say, "Let me see this." So she would hand him something and he would, he would see it through his touch. But he would always say, "Let me see it, or I will show you."
22:33 Mike Rowe? Interesting. It's just, so he just refused to act like a blind person?
22:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:39 Mike Rowe? Hard stop. Alright, so that's just laying a little pipe. So people understand that you got a 12-year-old kid who wants to build a car, who is completely blind and has been for seven years and is filled with all the confidence necessary to believe he can make that happen. So, go ahead and walk me up to, I guess, perfect circle at this point.
23:04 Speaker 02 Okay, well, high school, not so much of a challenge because he seemed to get through that pretty well. In fact, even becoming the manager of the basketball team. And, uh, building the first electric light in Hagerstown for graduation, 1908. He built a sign. He wired it from a generator that he got, and then he wired his family's home, and then the town got wired up for, you know, electric. And college was a bit of a challenge. He
23:44 Speaker 02 wanted to get his engineering degree. Uh, well, University of Michigan had a great school.
23:52 Mike Rowe? Yep.
23:52 Speaker 02 But they turned him down because they, they didn't know how to teach a blind man engineering. And no fault of theirs because, well, how do you do that?
24:03 Mike Rowe? There's no playbook for this.
24:04 Speaker 02 Yeah. So, his older cousin, Niva, took him to, she had a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. They went. He packed enough bags for a whole semester. He was that confident that he was going to convince the dean of engineering.
24:20 Mike Rowe? Who's the dean, remember?
24:21 Speaker 02 Uh, Henry Spangler.
24:24 Mike Rowe? Right, Spangler.
24:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, Henry Spangler. And so, he met with Henry and, you know, he wasn't quite convinced. And he had to talk to the faculty and told Ralph, "Come back at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. I'll have an answer." But he had to talk to his faculty. How are we gonna teach this student? Engineering, he's blind. Well, they all agreed, we'll, we'll let him try. And they all didn't think that he would last more than two weeks.
24:56 Mike Rowe? They let him try precisely because they knew he'd fail.
24:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And he went through, he graduated, came back for his masters. He was the first blind student to graduate from the university. And the first blind engineer on record in the United States. So that was great. Anyway, he came back to the family company. By that time, they were building internal combustion engines. So they, they evolved from the bicycle inspection car, the railroad inspection car, into the internal combustion engines.
25:33 Mike Rowe? As one does.
25:34 Speaker 02 Yeah. In that time with the cars were, you know, and so they, it was the Teeter Hartley Motor Company. And so that was, that was going well, but then, okay, nineteen seventeen, nineteen eighteen, World War One happens. Well, men are going off to war. Well, Ralph wanted to serve his country, but how? And he was accepted for civil service at the New York Shipbuilding Company. Well, this is kind of funny. They gave him an office, but they didn't give him a job. They didn't know what to do, or, you know, what are you gonna do? Here, Ralph, you got an office. And he overheard them talking about a problem they had.
26:19 Mike Rowe? Because he can hear anything a mile away.
26:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. He can hear anything a mile away. And he overhears a problem they have. They can't balance these turbine rotors. And they're torpedo boat destroyers. The boats are breaking apart at high speeds.
26:38 Mike Rowe? So people understand the incredible amount of torque being generated by these turbines. And if they're not perfectly in sync.
26:45 Speaker 02 Right.
26:45 Mike Rowe? It's like those sympathetic vibrations that could shake a bridge, right? To the point where it would collapse.
26:53 Speaker 02 So he thought, hey, maybe, maybe they'll listen to me. So he told him, he said, I think I can figure out what the problem is. And they were, hey, come on, what do you, what do you know? You can't see anything. But he, he balanced driveshafts for race cars at Indy. And he knew that he could balance these by spinning the rotors in opposite directions.
27:23 Mike Rowe? Right.
27:23 Speaker 02 Now.
27:25 Mike Rowe? Why did he know that?
27:26 Speaker 02 I don't know.
27:27 Mike Rowe? Why did he know that?
27:27 Speaker 02 I honestly don't know.
27:28 Mike Rowe? It had never been done?
27:29 Speaker 02 I don't know. But he could touch and feel, and somehow they were balanced. Well, by that time, the war was ending and there was no need for those destroyers. But the news, the news picked up that story. And everyone was kind of blown away that this, this blind kid from Hagerstown fixed something that the top naval engineers couldn't. But anyway, those ships were used in World War II.
27:59 Mike Rowe? He actually solved the problem.
28:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, he solved the problem.
28:02 Mike Rowe? By getting the turbines to spin counterclockwise and clockwise contemporaneously.
28:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:08 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
28:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, amazing. So he came back and he had a bit more confidence in his engineering abilities. And the, his uncle Charlie and Ralph figured out that the key to the internal combustion engine was the piston ring. And the piston rings, in those days, you had to replace them like every 10,000 miles, 12,000 miles, maybe 8,000 miles. It just didn't last. So they figured out, let's focus on the piston ring because at that time.
28:50 Speaker 02 Henry Ford with the assembly line was kind of revolutionizing the automobile business. And Indianapolis was not the capital of the world anymore because all the custom-built motor cars were going out of business.
29:07 Mike Rowe? Right, because Henry Ford is making it possible for everybody to have one.
29:12 Speaker 02 Right, and their custom engines, they weren't structured or built for the assembly line, so they really wanted to get out of that business, the way I understand it. So the piston ring was really going to be the focus.
29:28 Mike Rowe? And this is a very simple thing, right? I mean, so people can visualize it.
29:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, I should have brought some in.
29:34 Mike Rowe? Six inches, maybe, in diameter?
29:36 Speaker 02 Well, they're like this, and say this is the cylinder. They wrap around the cylinder and they actually lubricate the cylinder wall. So when the cylinder is going up and down, and you've got eight cylinders or six in a car, they're going very fast.
29:54 Mike Rowe? So was it self-lubricating at that point?
29:56 Speaker 02 To some extent, but their rings became more advanced and they were able to lubricate. And they also designed fluid-actuated, well, actually Ralph invented a fluid-actuated gear shift in 1924. So that came shortly after he came back from serving in the military.
30:22 Mike Rowe? Right.
30:23 Speaker 02 Anyway, so they focused their attention on this. And the company kind of evolved to the Indiana Piston Ring Company. And then in 1926, it became Perfect Circle. And it became Perfect Circle because the advertising department came up with a trade name for their piston rings, and they came up with Perfect Circle. And then that trade name became so popular that they decided to name the company. And that was 1926.
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32:22 Mike Rowe? So they basically then had a device that they were mass producing and selling directly into Detroit. And so this device, this piston ring, became an integral part of everything that came off the line for some time.
32:40 Speaker 02 Well, it became so important that every new engine coming out of Detroit or any other manufacturer that was still around, there was still a few in Chicago. Indianapolis probably had Fred Duzenberg had his going on for a while. So every engine required a special ring. So in other words, you couldn't. Mix all these rings with all these other engines. They had different diameters of cylinders and everything. So he would go up to Detroit and work with their engineers. Okay, you got a new engine, now we need a special ring.
33:22 Speaker 02 Anyway, so the business really grew because of the need for piston rings. And over the course of the years, technology got better and they didn't have to replace them every 10,000 miles. Then they could last 20, 30. And nowadays, you don't even replace them.
33:43 Mike Rowe? Right, but at the time, it was a, it was an integral part. And those parts were still coming out of Hagerstown, right?
33:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, now this, this is-
33:51 Mike Rowe? Like, what did that do to the town? To have a company anchored in it that was experiencing that degree of success?
33:58 Speaker 02 It did unbelievable things for the town and the community. And the town had, was really kind of a village when you think of it. 2,000 people. There was another town close by, Newcastle, small town. Richmond was 20 minutes away, small town, but a little bit bigger. So the first factory, of course, being in Hagerstown, and it employed a lot of people. And then they built another factory. They were expanding pretty rapidly. One of the interesting points here, Ralph and his uncle Charlie
34:42 Speaker 02 and the rest of the teeters that were in the company cared very deeply about the community. They cared deeply about the people that worked at the company because they were their neighbors. So if the town needed a post office, the company built it. If they needed a new school, the company built it. During the depression years, this is kind of interesting, 1929, you know, Black Tuesday.
35:09 Mike Rowe? Sure.
35:11 Speaker 02 The company was doing very well because even though automobile sales, new car sales sunk.
35:20 Speaker 02 Everybody who had a car had to keep them running.
35:22 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
35:23 Speaker 02 And the trucks delivering and so on and so forth. And so they were buying piston rings. So piston ring, their business was doing good, but.
35:32 Mike Rowe? Recession proof or depression.
35:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was. And Uncle Charlie, he was the head of the company and Ralph was an engineer. He would hire anybody who was out of a job and find work for him at the company.
35:52 Mike Rowe? It was like those company towns you read about, like Woolridge, right? The company that makes.
35:59 Speaker 02 Great example.
36:00 Mike Rowe? They became so successful. It was such a terrific relationship, you know, I mean, look, everything comes down to execution, obviously, and I guess you can have a bad company in a town that's dependent on it. But that certainly wasn't the case with Woolridge and it certainly wasn't the case with Perfect Circle.
36:18 Speaker 02 Yep. Ralph and his Uncle Charlie took great pride in helping the community and the people. And now these workers worked in the factory and they were skilled workers and they were trained. So if they wanted to work for the company, they would be trained. But they all worked in the factory, worked with their hands. And as the company expanded, soon they had four factories. And at the height of, I think they had sixty-five hundred workers during World War Two. Because they had to hire a lot of workers for wartime production. They, they converted everything to wartime production.
37:04 Speaker 02 And they hired a lot more workers and because they had so many workers in these small towns, they knew.
37:15 Speaker 02 Their responsibility was for the communities. And as I said before, they would build libraries and schools. And at that time, they were paying a very good wages. I mean, these people could go out and buy houses. They were getting benefits. Now, back in those early days, in the twenties and thirties, workers weren't really getting benefits. They were getting early health benefits. They were getting even a pension plan that was developed. The company built and formed a credit union. So they could save their money and have a pension. And back then, you didn't hear about that much.
38:00 Mike Rowe? No, no, but I think it's it's worth talking about now. Because for me, one of the most interesting parts of the movie, and I know it's controversial to talk about it today, but I want to. It was the advent of the unions. And the role that Charlie and Ralph assumed when the unions came to town. Because not every town had the relationship with the automotive industry that Hagerstown had with Perfect Circle. And that just is so poignant, you know, when you when you look at the town differently all of a sudden. And when people are coming in from out of town and those protests and those riots, that was national news. And Ralph was right in the thick of it.
38:44 Speaker 02 Well, the interesting thing about the union thing was that Ralph and the company were very friendly and respectful towards the early unions. And they signed contracts. And they were amenable to work with the union. And those early unions were a little bit different before the big giant union in Detroit.
39:13 Mike Rowe? UAW.
39:14 Speaker 02 UAW, CIO. And The interesting thing that was happening was that these little, small towns with these factories, this Perfect Circle became on the radar of the Union in Detroit. And because they were so powerful in Detroit, they had the big three, they were going after parts companies. And Perfect Circle was on their radar, and the other parts companies, too. And then they decided to come down to Hagerstown, and again, their first trip down in forty-eight, nineteen forty-eight, Ralph signed a contract.
39:58 Speaker 02 It was fine, okay. But at that time, the Union was a little bit different. The workers didn't have to join. It was a Union contract, certain amount of wages. And then they came back again, and then they were demanding more. And that was about three months after they came down. So they were demanding more, and...
40:20 Mike Rowe? Was it the workers themselves, Jack? Or was it purely outside forces coming in to unionize? Like, I'm always curious about how these things originate.
40:33 Speaker 02 Well, they originate with Union reps that go down to the town, and then they meet with the workers outside of business. And restaurants are wherever they gather, and they try to convince them, hey, look, you guys are working, you need to be protected. And I think, to some extent, that was going on, certainly before nineteen fifty-five. That was the big mess. And so there were some workers that were convinced they wanted to sign up with the Union. And the reason is, World War II, when they were hiring so many workers, they probably hired another twenty-five-hundred workers that...
41:19 Speaker 02 Did not understand the value that the company places on employees.
41:24 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
41:25 Speaker 02 Certainly, they didn't know what happened during the depression and that they were building schools and, you know, really building the community. They had no recollection of that. So, they were just workers, working a job and wanted more money and they probably thought, "Oh, yeah, the union's gonna come in, this is great." Well, anyway, they came back and it got a little ugly, if you recall from the movie. And then they came back again. And this time, they brought in a thousand sympathizers from other 1,200, I think. They set up a tent city. They brought violence to the townspeople.
42:07 Mike Rowe? Sure.
42:08 Speaker 02 And they weren't local, they were from outside. And they were gonna try to muscle there and it just got ugly. I mean, the governor had to declare martial law, you know, after the local police couldn't handle it.
42:22 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
42:23 Speaker 02 And...
42:24 Mike Rowe? People died?
42:26 Speaker 02 No, there was gunshots. People, there was a couple of people that got shot and wounded. It got to the point where they had to send in tanks. That's when the National Guard came in. And, you know...
42:42 Mike Rowe? You're oddly understated here, Jack. Like, once we start talking about the advent of tanks. I mean, as I recall, as the narrator of Blind Logic, the film we've been talking about now with Jack Teeter, people were barricaded inside the facility. I mean, it was super sporty. It could've gone way off the rails.
43:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, Mike, I mean, they could've. They decided to stay in the factory and some managers and workers together, and they were actually armed because they thought they were gonna be bombed. There was threats to bomb the factories. And it got to the point where, this is getting real dangerous, folks, and one guy, one guy had his wife send clothes in, his clean underwear, because the mail kept coming. But...
43:39 Mike Rowe? I just figured everybody's shorts are gonna be filthy at this point. I mean, there's a lot of fear in the air.
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44:50 Speaker 02 It was, and I actually talked to a couple of older folks that are still around that were there during the riots and the strikes. And this one fellow who ran, operated the gas station where all the Teeters came, he was saying, "Oh yeah, they'd come in and they'd harass us." And they harassed townspeople, and it was really scary. And he said, "They came in and harassed me and said, 'Uh, do the Teeters, tell me about the Teeters, tell me about this Ralph Teeter, you know.'" And he said, "Well, no." He wouldn't say anything, he just played dumb. It was really bad, but they got through it.
45:35 Speaker 02 And now here's the interesting thing. They settled on the exact same terms that Ralph offered them.
45:44 Mike Rowe? Right.
45:45 Speaker 02 The exact same terms.
45:46 Mike Rowe? So there was no material improvement?
45:48 Speaker 02 There was no gain.
45:49 Mike Rowe? Because they were already, he was already treating his workers in relative terms, pretty damn well.
45:55 Speaker 02 And Ralph's, his feeling was if the union can convince the workers to join,
46:04 Speaker 02 that's another thing. He's not gonna get in their way. And they did. One factory
46:10 Speaker 02 joined the union.
46:12 Mike Rowe? Mm-hmm.
46:12 Speaker 02 They kinda caved into the demands. The other three stood strong.
46:17 Mike Rowe? So what ultimately became of perfect circle? And Charlie at some point dies.
46:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, he, 1937, he died. And then Lethair, his son Lethair, took over. 1946, Ralph Teeter became president. And...
46:37 Mike Rowe? Right after the war.
46:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, right after the war. Around that time, I guess, while, and during the 50s, they were now selling their products in 91 countries around the world. And so the 50s were kinda cool, because after the strike, Ralph had already by that time invented the cruise control. But back in the late 40s, he couldn't convince his own board of directors to manufacture the cruise control.
47:08 Mike Rowe? Because it never fails, all great, obvious ideas are initially greeted with insanity. You must be crazy.
47:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:16 Mike Rowe? Who in the world is gonna get in a car and push a button or turn a dial that lets that car determine its own speed or set that speed? That was heretical. And I'm only making the point because three days ago, I got in the back of a Waymo with no driver. I just sat there like a Christmas ham.
47:37 Speaker 02 Rose and I did that too.
47:38 Mike Rowe? Yeah. Yeah, Rose, by the, Rose, by the way, is Jack's girlfriend. Quick sidebar. You made me banana bread, Rose?
47:47 Speaker 04 Yes, I did.
47:49 Mike Rowe? Look at this, and there's, what is that? Is that Rosemary on there?
47:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, Rosemary and, uh, la- la-.
47:55 Speaker 02 All right, this is, uh, on that sidebar, that's kind of her world famous, uh...
48:00 Mike Rowe? World famous banana bread?
48:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. Everybody loves it.
48:04 Mike Rowe? All right, well, I'm gonna dig into that once we're done talking. I'm just gonna let it sit here right now as a, as a tease.
48:10 Speaker 02 So, I have to add something, Mike, that you were saying about the cruise control on the Waymo, but going back to 1924, when he invented this automatic gear shift, he went to his manufacturing friends and said, "Look it, we gotta manufacture this." And they said, "There's no way that people are gonna pay for the luxury of an automatic transmission, an automatic gear shift." And, well, he sold his patent to Bendix.
48:42 Mike Rowe? Wait a minute, wait a minute, I forgot that. So, how instrumental was Ralph in ushering in the automatic transmission?
48:50 Speaker 02 Oh, very. 1924, the fluid actuated gear shift. There was an automatic gear shift. And, uh, his friends, and he had a lot of friends in manufacturing, and they just said, "No one's gonna pay for the luxury of..."
49:08 Mike Rowe? Not shifting gears?
49:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, because it was gonna be too expensive. Well, fast forward to what you were saying about the cruise control, the company didn't wanna manufacture it. And, well, he was very disappointed. And, uh, but he built a couple of samples for the truck business, but that was slow to get any enthusiasm, for whatever reason, other things were going on. But the company was really growing at that point. Then after the union strike, we'll say 1957, he had the cruise control, really, he had a good model, the cruise control, and he convinced Detroit companies to test it.
49:50 Mike Rowe? Is Perfect Circle still Perfect Circle?
49:52 Speaker 02 No, it was, um, the last factory's closed in 1995, a hundred years after the company was born. It was bought by, uh, well, 1963, the company was acquired by Dana. That was a big
50:10 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
50:11 Speaker 02 company. And then they bought... Perfect Circle and they kept the brand. And then it was subsequently sold to a German company. So a German company today has Perfect Circle brand and they're making piston rings.
50:28 Mike Rowe? Okay, so it gets a little convoluted, but Perfect Circle goes where it goes. But Ralph is still around and he takes the idea for cruise control to the big guys in Detroit.
50:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, to test it.
50:44 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
50:45 Speaker 02 And Chevrolet, Ford and Chrysler, I believe, were testing. And at the same time,
50:54 Speaker 02 he was getting the company kind of excited about it. So one of the reasons why he was getting them excited about it is he turned over the presidency to Bill Prosser, his longtime friend and company veteran. Because he was very smart about this. He became chairman, but he knew that Bill Prosser could sell the board on the product because he was very good in sales. So Bill Prosser sold the board on the cruise control manufacturing. So they had a press conference and they flew all these journalists in from Detroit. Meanwhile, the Detroit is testing the product.
51:38 Speaker 02 And so it's getting all this press and excitement.
51:44 Speaker 02 And Chrysler decides, they invite Ralph up and say, we're gonna put it on our 1958 model Chrysler New Yorker and one of their other ones. So they were the first to introduce it and the company manufactured it. And then Cadillac came in in 1959. And then I think it was Oldsmobile, then Ford, Chevrolet, then they all came in.
52:10 Mike Rowe? But it wasn't overnight. It's not like somebody flicked the switch and said, oh, we've got to have the cruise control. It took time. People had to, right? You've like, you've got to sell that down in a lot of different ways across the whole country. And it just wasn't immediately embraced, is my point. And once again, your great uncle is just sitting there hearing, no, no, no, that's not gonna happen. They're never gonna get an automatic transmission. They're never gonna take cruise control. No, no, no, never gonna happen.
52:39 Speaker 02 Do you know, he said,
52:42 Speaker 02 In 1974, he said, "If I could have seen, I would have never developed the idea." Mike, he came up with the idea in 1936. He, of course, had drivers for him. And one of them was Harry Lindsey, his patent attorney. And Harry, Harry was a bad driver. Let's just say it like it is. He was a throttle brake driver.
53:08 Mike Rowe? He's a patent attorney. Yeah. He's got a lot going on.
53:10 Speaker 02 So, you know, I can only visualize Ralph sitting there like this. Geez, Harry.
53:18 Mike Rowe? I'm getting nauseous.
53:19 Speaker 02 So, he, he said to himself, "Well, okay, I gotta invent something that will make the car go steady." And so, for 10 years, he tinkered in his workshop. And this is where he gets in with his hands. He built a cruise control in his workshop, basement workshop, with his hands.
53:39 Mike Rowe? Look, you don't want to overstate it, but a blind man developed cruise control with his bare hands, working with tools in his basement. And that same guy says, "He never could have done it had he been able to see."
53:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
53:54 Mike Rowe? That's where your movie lands. And, look, we can talk about all the zigs and zags. Why bother? Watch Blind Logic. It's terrific. I want to spend the rest of our time just talking about the man and his impact on you and why you decided to dive into this project, which clearly got out of hand. I mean, it sucked up years of your life, obviously.
54:15 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
54:16 Mike Rowe? You know? But, um...
54:18 Speaker 01 Mike, before you move on?
54:19 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
54:20 Speaker 01 I did find the name of that disease, and it's kind of interesting because it's called sympathetic ophthalmia.
54:26 Speaker 02 That's it, yeah.
54:27 Speaker 01 And basically, it comes from, if you have an eye injury, particularly a piercing one in one eye, then the other eye develops sympathy for it and degenerates by itself.
54:41 Mike Rowe? Crazy.
54:42 Speaker 01 It's really crazy, yeah. But that's what, it's particularly prevalent in puncture wounds to one eye.
54:49 Mike Rowe? Wow.
54:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:50 Mike Rowe? Well, you know what? It kind of rhymes in a weird way with the other thing that I was trying to come up, think of, which was sympathetic vibrations.
54:58 Speaker 01 Correct.
54:59 Mike Rowe? So, like, you know, if you're marching in the army and you get to a bridge, you break cadence because if you're...
55:09 Mike Rowe? Marching all together, you got a hundred thousand men marching across a bridge. Those sympathetic vibrations will do something to the structural integrity of the iron and the basic structure itself, and it will collapse. So it's a very powerful thing for people to be doing everything at the same way at the same time. And in a weird way, I guess your body somehow, right? I mean, what a straight, like, why would my right eye go blind because my left eye did? What's it called again? I'm fascinated by this. Sympathetic opthalmia. Sounds like I'm listening.
55:48 Speaker 02 That's the term.
55:49 Mike Rowe? That, that's why I keep Chuck, every now and then.
55:51 Speaker 02 I knew he'd come up with it.
55:52 Mike Rowe? It took him forty minutes, but he found it.
55:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:54 Mike Rowe? And he chimed in at just the right time. For the record, I had it a long time ago. I was just waiting for a minute to jump in, so.
56:01 Speaker 02 Thank you, Chuck. That, I'm glad you came up with that.
56:04 Mike Rowe? Fascinating. Really, really interesting. But Ralph married? Had kids?
56:12 Speaker 02 One.
56:12 Mike Rowe? One kid?
56:13 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, that's.
56:15 Mike Rowe? Marjorie.
56:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. That's another whole story about my Aunt Nellie, Ralph's wife. I mean, she was a force in her own right. But Marjorie was their only child. And she wrote a book called One Man's Vision, nineteen ninety-five. And when I read that book, I mean, it was just amazing to me. She was told by a few people to write a book about your dad. You know, he's really quite amazing. You should write a book. And she was all for it and thinking of maybe having a professional writer write it. And an editor told her, oh, no, you have to write the story. Anyway. You asked about Ralph.
57:01 Speaker 02 I guess Ralph as a person, the way I remember as a kid, was very kind and incredible sense of humor. He loved to laugh. He loved people and he had a gift to make everyone feel comfortable no matter who they met. And he had an impact on so many people throughout his life, including me and my brother and sister and Ralph's grandkids. But he was an amazing man. And what he was like at the office, I don't know. I can only assume from what I hear from other people that he was an incredible leader and
57:46 Speaker 02 he cared deeply about his workers. He was passionate about the company and that was his life. So the inspiration for me to make this documentary actually started in 2013 at a family reunion. And my father, Jack, was still alive. My Aunt Marjorie was still alive and we met at Lake Wausau where Ralph had a summer home.
58:17 Mike Rowe? And he was kind of a, like a boat guy too, on top of everything else, wasn't he?
58:21 Speaker 02 Oh my gosh, was he a boat guy. He built speedboats and...
58:25 Mike Rowe? Of course he did.
58:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. And he became friends with Chris Smith, one of the...
58:32 Mike Rowe? Is it Chris Craft?
58:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, as in Chris Craft. In fact, he bought a lot of Chris Craft, but he built speedboats. And he was crazy for speed. So, speedboats, I think, oh yeah, he bought Miss Detroit too. And that was late, I don't know, 19, 19, early twenties? I can't remember. But that boat went 70 miles an hour. Now...
58:59 Mike Rowe? Unlike a car, he can drive the boat because he'd get somebody next to him.
59:03 Speaker 02 Well... That I don't know, but I do know that 70 miles an hour was a crazy speed back then. Right now, no, but back then that was crazy for a speedboat.
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59:46 Mike Rowe? On the water?
59:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:47 Mike Rowe? 70 miles an hour on the water is different than 70 miles an hour on macadam.
59:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:51 Mike Rowe? Concrete.
59:52 Speaker 02 So, he loved Lake Wauwasee because he could build speedboats and race them. So, he convinced his parents when he was young to get a cottage. So, he spent his summers up there. Anyway, that's where we had our family reunion. And I don't know who mentioned it or how it came up, but the idea of a movie about Ralph Teeter came up. And it might have been my Aunt Marjorie. And so, they kind of looked at me, okay, where do we go from here?
1:00:25 Mike Rowe? Why'd they look at you?
1:00:27 Speaker 02 Well, because...
1:00:27 Mike Rowe? Because they knew your resume?
1:00:29 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, they knew my resume.
1:00:30 Mike Rowe? And real brief, what is that, just so people understand?
1:00:32 Speaker 02 Well, I worked at Universal Pictures for most of the 80s and in marketing, and I moved into production. So, I had a, and distribution. I had a sense of how films were made. And I went to UCLA Film School. So, they looked at me, okay, where do we go? I said, well, that's a great idea. And, but I had my career. I had a job and things going too. I said, well, let me, let me start with an outline and then maybe I'll develop a script and adapt the book. So, I did that off and on for 10 years. And it wasn't until 2021 that I decided, well, I have a script.
1:01:19 Speaker 02 Oh, I should backtrack. Before my father passed away, he, he read an early draft of the script, and a very early draft, so he was pretty excited. My Aunt Marjorie read an early draft before she passed away, but they were really rough. But, the fact that those two knew that I was gonna make this documentary makes me feel good today. Anyway, I refined the script and, and had forty-eight revisions, and then, two thousand twenty-one, I decided, okay, I'm gonna make it, stop talking about it, Jack. You know, call your cousins up and say, you're coming to Hagerstown, you're gonna put them
1:02:03 Speaker 02 on camera, I'll bring a film crew to Hagerstown, and I'll start there. Now-
1:02:09 Mike Rowe? Were they nervous? Were they enthused?
1:02:10 Speaker 02 They were excited. Well, my cousin Ralph is very excited and, about this. He was named after-
1:02:18 Mike Rowe? Ralph's son.
1:02:19 Speaker 02 Grandpa. Grandson.
1:02:20 Mike Rowe? Grandson, Marjorie's son.
1:02:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:23 Mike Rowe? Of course.
1:02:23 Speaker 02 Anyway, we put them on camera, and then, it took two and a half years to make it. I didn't know if I had images, I didn't know if I had footage, I didn't know where I was gonna get it. I had the script, but, but where am I gonna put the visuals? I didn't know if I had them. Cousin Ralph, he had an archive in his basement, and I spent a week going through images and just see if I had enough stuff, but I honestly didn't know. And I was kinda going on blind faith. Anyway, it sorta worked out.
1:02:55 Mike Rowe? Yeah, I'd say it sorta worked out.
1:02:57 Speaker 02 It worked out to the point now-
1:02:59 Mike Rowe? Blind faith led to blind logic.
1:03:01 Speaker 02 Led to blind logic, which is circling back to One Man's Vision, the feature film. We're in development of a feature film now.
1:03:10 Mike Rowe? Oh.
1:03:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:11 Mike Rowe? Terrific.
1:03:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:12 Mike Rowe? That could be huge.
1:03:13 Speaker 02 Well, we're excited about it. We have the writer, Howie Claussen, who wrote Space Cowboys and the film Reagan. So I have the film team that brought you Reagan last year. With Sean McNamara directed.
1:03:29 Mike Rowe? Mark Joseph?
1:03:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:30 Speaker 01 Mark Joseph was the producer and Dennis Quaid was the star.
1:03:34 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:03:34 Mike Rowe? Dennis Quaid sat right where you're sitting.
1:03:36 Speaker 02 I know, I watched that podcast.
1:03:38 Mike Rowe? Well, you've got excellent taste.
1:03:39 Speaker 02 I love Dennis Quaid.
1:03:40 Speaker 01 And Mark Joseph might be there sometime soon, too.
1:03:43 Mike Rowe? Okay, good, great. I love it. What a weird, perfect circle, little world this is.
1:03:48 Speaker 02 Isn't it?
1:03:49 Speaker 01 Well, I didn't even know that connection.
1:03:51 Speaker 02 That's the connection. Anyway, we're working on a script now.
1:03:55 Mike Rowe? Wow. So what's the reception been like? I hear this thing's winning awards here and there?
1:04:00 Speaker 02 We've been very lucky. We have 15 awards now. We screened it last year in the Midwest in various towns. And the reaction in colleges, engineering schools, the response has been great. And now we're going to release, it's going to be released July 8th. So on Amazon and across digital platforms, on-demand cable, Cox, Charter, Spectrum. It'll be on iTunes, Apple TV, what else do we have?
1:04:35 Mike Rowe? You did it. You actually did it.
1:04:37 Speaker 02 Well, with the help of the distributor, you know, I had to get a distributor.
1:04:41 Mike Rowe? And modesty aside, and a hell of a narrator.
1:04:45 Speaker 02 We're a hell of a narrator, is right.
1:04:48 Mike Rowe? Really?
1:04:49 Speaker 02 So we're going to get out there now and it's very, it's very exciting. Because I didn't know if we were going to ever get a distributor. You never know. You make a film. You hope that people will like it when you screen it. You hope that maybe it's going to be good enough that a distributor will want it. But you just don't know.
1:05:10 Mike Rowe? You don't know?
1:05:10 Speaker 02 You just don't know. And, and...
1:05:13 Mike Rowe? But Jack, if your great uncle could run a company like Perfect Circle and could figure out how to keep a submarine from falling apart in the First World War, and suggest that an automatic transmission might actually stick. And then to further suggest that controlling the speed of a vehicle might be something the average driver would appreciate, since the world's filled with so many poor drivers, to hear no at every turn. And to overcome all of that. The movie that you're talking about, this documentary is terrific. But the movie you're talking about needs to be made. Because that is an inspirational, it, it.
1:05:54 Mike Rowe? Everybody listening to this thing has felt sorry for themselves at some point in the last week. And they've looked at themselves in the mirror and they say, how am I gonna deal with this? My frickin' boss is up my butt over here and this and this and this and that and that. And there's your great uncle staring down the unions, staring down the bosses, staring down the military brass, staring down the dean of. Staring him down without any eyes. Staring him down without even seeing him.
1:06:19 Speaker 02 Now, that, that's the funny part, yeah.
1:06:21 Mike Rowe? Staring him down without even seeing them. You know, look, I wanna just compliment you again. I, I wanted to be involved because I think your great uncle is a person the country needs to know. But on a personal level, I love the whole Sisyphean quixotic. Venture of making a movie without a distributor and, and building an airplane while it's in the air. And flying by the seat of your pants. My mom wrote her first book when she was 80.
1:06:53 Speaker 02 Oh, my gosh.
1:06:54 Mike Rowe? And she's written three more since, and they're New York Times bestsellers, right? Your uncle, it's a story of persistence and resiliency.
1:07:04 Speaker 02 Oh, you're absolutely right.
1:07:06 Mike Rowe? Plenty of talent there, but you don't get credit for talent. Those were the cards you dealt. You know, the, the stuff you decide to do with the cards you have. Makes you either interesting or memorable or notable or something. And the fact that you picked it up after he was gone and did that for your family, I think that's, that's as important to me. As what your uncle did. I know a lot of people who have sat down to write a book about their family. Because they're so impressed with something, somebody did, right? In their chain and they wanna be remembered and they want their, their ancestors to be remembered. And there's something so poetic and beautiful about that.
1:07:51 Mike Rowe? And it's hard to write a book without a publisher. And it's double hard to make a movie without a distributor. Simply because you're afflicted with the knowledge that you come from pretty good stock.
1:08:02 Speaker 02 I think a book may even be harder. I wouldn't even know how to start a book. But you, the one thing that you were saying about this being an inspiring story. Everything that we got from the screenings, people walk out and say, "I'm incredibly inspired. I have hope. I'm inspired to go out there and do something." And I think that's the takeaway that I would like people to have is that, you mentioned it before, I mean, we're all faced with things in life and challenges, but gee, look what Ralph did, and we have our eyesight.
1:08:41 Speaker 02 It is inspiring. I was inspired every day making the movie because of Ralph, knowing what he did. I'm not worried about if I can get a distributor. I want to make the best movie I can because Ralph is sitting there over my shoulder, giving me inspiration. And he inspires people. So, yeah, that's the takeaway from all this.
1:09:03 Mike Rowe? Well, his work was a heck of a legacy, and your tribute, you know, will live a lot longer than we will. I'm gonna open up this banana bread, Rose, if you don't mind.
1:09:13 Speaker 02 You open up the banana bread. And by the way.
1:09:16 Mike Rowe? Oh, yeah? Other gifts?
1:09:19 Speaker 02 I have Blind Logic hats.
1:09:21 Mike Rowe? Nice.
1:09:22 Speaker 02 And T-shirts for you, Chuck, and Mary.
1:09:25 Mike Rowe? Great.
1:09:28 Speaker 01 And just so people know, this will air after July 8th, so the movie is out now.
1:09:33 Mike Rowe? It's out right now?
1:09:34 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:09:35 Speaker 02 Great. Tune into Amazon and iTunes, Comcast, Cox.
1:09:41 Mike Rowe? Hey, do you care if when we edit this together, we use some footage from the doc?
1:09:46 Speaker 02 No, I'd like you to. I'd like you to. Yeah, in fact, I'll work with Chuck, anything you need.
1:09:52 Speaker 01 Sure. Yeah, okay, great.
1:09:54 Mike Rowe? Hey, Rose, do me a favor. Walk next door and get a knife. Hey, or Taylor, can you do me a favor and grab a knife out of the utensil drawer? We're gonna have some banana bread before we say goodbye. Yeah. I'm gonna try this on a, on camera, so I can give it an honest assessment.
1:10:10 Speaker 02 Oh, that, oh, that's great.
1:10:12 Mike Rowe? Yeah, I'm very particular about my banana bread.
1:10:14 Speaker 02 Be careful what you do, because this could inspire Rose to open up a little business here.
1:10:19 Mike Rowe? If I take a bite of this, and I drive down Santa Monica six months from now, and Rose's Banana Emporium, Banana Bread Emporium is, is open for business? We're gonna need to talk about a percentage, I'm afraid, because I, you know.
1:10:34 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, she's, she's very good with giving you a percentage.
1:10:38 Mike Rowe? I'll narrate your commercials, Rose.
1:10:40 Speaker 04 Thank you.
1:10:41 Mike Rowe? You're welcome.
1:10:44 Mike Rowe? A little piece from the end here. Oh, look at the, oh, it's so moist.
1:10:50 Mike Rowe? That's pretty good banana bread. That's a pretty good banana bread, Rose.
1:10:54 Speaker 04 Well, thank you.
1:10:55 Mike Rowe? You're very welcome.
1:10:56 Speaker 04 Glad you like it.
1:10:57 Mike Rowe? Hey, thanks for the swag, the carbohydrates, and your time.
1:11:03 Speaker 02 Thank you, Mike, and Chuck, thank you, thank you very much.
1:11:07 Mike Rowe? I really admire what you've done, and I hope it inspires other people to tell the stories of their own families.
1:11:12 Speaker 02 I was admired and aspired by your book, by the way. I love those stories. Oh, my gosh, the Jim Morrison one. I read through all these stories, trying to pick, who's he talking about? And then I catch it, and sometimes, where's he going with this?
1:11:29 Mike Rowe? Well.
1:11:30 Speaker 02 I love that book.
1:11:31 Mike Rowe? Your great uncle would be a terrific subject for one of those stories. Even though most people don't know who he is, the fact, look at you, plugging my own book on my own podcast.
1:11:41 Speaker 02 That's because I love it so much, the stories in here are phenomenal.
1:11:45 Mike Rowe? Well, if I do another one, I'll see if I can't get Ralph in there, because, look.
1:11:49 Speaker 02 The Mel Brooks one.
1:11:51 Mike Rowe? Oh, yeah, that's a good one, that's a good one. Spoiler alert now, now, now, now people know it's Mel Brooks, you're killing me, Jack.
1:11:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, but they're gonna read it, and they won't know it's him.
1:12:00 Mike Rowe? That's right, they won't know. But, I'll leave you with this, folks. The car you have today would not resemble the thing you're driving, but for the man we've discussing, we've been discussing, Ralph Teeter, and his grand nephew.
1:12:18 Speaker 02 Right.
1:12:19 Mike Rowe? Jack.
1:12:19 Speaker 02 Grand or great, yeah.
1:12:21 Mike Rowe? Whatever it is, let's start with. What's better, grand or great? Like, would you rather be remembered as the great Jack Teeter? Or that Jack Teeter, he was grand?
1:12:30 Speaker 01 They don't call it the Great Old Opry.
1:12:33 Mike Rowe? No, that's true.
1:12:34 Speaker 02 How about Ralph Teeter's great nephew?
1:12:37 Mike Rowe? That's not bad. But they also didn't call it the Grand Depression.
1:12:44 Mike Rowe? Thanks for listening, folks. You're a terrific guest. You're welcome back anytime. Thanks. And Rose? Yeah, I'll see you at the Banana Bread Emporium.
1:12:54 Speaker 05 This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long. But if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge.
1:13:37 Speaker 05 You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you've got to do is leave a quick Even if you hate it. Five-star review. Thank you.
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