433: Coffee with Mom—That Toy Really Sucks

Peggy Rowe, a.k.a. Mike's three-time NYT bestselling mom, is back for a check-in. In this episode you'll hear about the horrors of hoarding, books you'll never read, dancin' chicken, crab pickin', and a Mother's Day story about a toy that really sucks!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:02Speaker 01

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• 0:04Speaker 00

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• 0:06Speaker 01

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• 0:09Speaker 00

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• 0:12Speaker 01

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• 0:13Speaker 00

  Pilates socks. Underwear.

• 0:15Speaker 01

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• 0:17Speaker 00

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• 0:30Mike Rowe?

  A cup of coffee with my mom. Mom was just telling me a story about this hoarder that our family knew very well, who needed help, but how do you decide? Like, when are you helping, Mom? And then when are you enabling?

• 0:52Speaker 03

  It was really difficult for us because I knew him well. You know, he was employed, he had a good job, but he was just a hopeless hoarder. His house was filled, his car was filled, his van was filled. He had bought three storage sheds for his backyard. They were filled. He kept saying, "Well, I'm going to start getting rid of some of this stuff." He couldn't do it. He was mentally ill. And when he called us and said,

• 1:27Speaker 03

  "I can't get into my kitchen. I've taken off my pants with the bulging pockets and I've turned sideways. I can't inch my way through the clutter in my kitchen. I can't get to my bathroom and my bedroom. I can't fit in my car anymore. Could I just spend a couple of nights with you? And then I'll come back in the daytime and get rid of some of this stuff."

• 1:55Mike Rowe?

  Can I just bring some of my stuff with me when I come over? Just?

• 1:59Speaker 03

  At which he would have done. I didn't know what to do. I did write to a friend, and he's a minister, actually, to see if he could help. But in the meantime, I said, "I am so sorry, but we're leaving in the morning. We're going to Florida. You know, sorry about that."

• 2:19Mike Rowe?

  Liar.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  I didn't know what else to say because I knew if he came, he would not leave. He was not capable of leaving. You know, I'm not trained to deal with mental illness and um.

• 2:31Mike Rowe?

  But you certainly know how to lie when the, when your back's against the wall.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  But I did put him on to this mutual friend of ours who was the minister.

• 2:40Mike Rowe?

  Oh, good. Oh, really? Wow. Awesome. Are you guys still friends?

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Well, he passed away tragically because of his hoarding. He couldn't get his medication in the refrigerator.

• 2:54Mike Rowe?

  Oh, God. Look, I don't even know how to.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  It's a horrible story.

• 2:58Mike Rowe?

  It is horrible, but you know, when it gets to the point where you can't get through your own kitchen without taking your pants off, somebody's trying to send you a message, surely.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  I'm just trying to wrap my head around that, that his pockets were so full, like he was hoarding in his pants as well, right? He had cargo pants and the sides of his legs bulged out as far as the pants would allow. And his other, all of his pockets were filled. They were filled with.

• 3:29Mike Rowe?

  What was in them?

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yes. Balls of string, tape. Oh, golly, various sundry things. Um. I don't remember now, but I remember all of that string that he had. He couldn't throw anything away. He was powerless to throw away an envelope that had a cancelled stamp on it. Oh, my goodness. I have pictures that it's just such a sad story and Mike, your dad. Um, oh, hi, Freddie.

• 4:02Mike Rowe?

  I, I just wanted you to say goodbye to him because I'm gonna go ahead and throw him out now with all the other things that are just making me crazy over here.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  He's looking at you, you know.

• 4:12Mike Rowe?

  I know. I haven't seen the boy in a while.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  He wants your approval. Michael, don't let him do that.

• 4:20Mike Rowe?

  I don't care anymore. I love the dog. He's 12 years old now. If he wants to lick me in the mouth, I don't care. I don't care. I mean, I do care a little bit, but obviously not enough. I want to talk about, I mean, since we're on this weird subject. Isn't it crazy how? Like, when you were thirty or forty? Or fifty? Was hoarding, I mean, I know it was a word. But was it a thing? Did anybody talk about it? Like, all of us, I mean, this couldn't have just happened. In the last thirty or forty years. But it got a name. We gave it a name. And shortly after it had a name.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  It had a TV show.

• 5:01Mike Rowe?

  It had a TV show. And it damn near had a whole network, Chuck. Hoarders was a huge show. And many, many hoarding shows spun off of that. You know, and I can't prove it, but I. I think it might have been another one of those that Dirty Jobs helped kickstart. We did a segment back in season one. It wasn't about hoarding. You know, it was about this woman who had a dirty job and I wound up going back to her house for whatever reason in the course of filming. And her house was just. It just looked like a garage, like that had been completely overfilled, but every inch of the house. And even back then, this was two thousand. Four. Like, the first thing that popped into my mind wasn't.

• 5:45Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my gosh, we got ourselves a hoarder. It was just. Man, this place is a mess. But. Now here we are, hoarding is a thing. It's a mental condition, obviously, I'm not, I'm not making light of it. I'm just saying that isn't it odd how once you name a thing?

• 6:04Mike Rowe?

  There it is. Everywhere you look.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Well, I'll tell you one thing I did. I did call Protective Services. And I talked to them about this person. And they said, oh, yes, that was something that they could. Take care of. So they went. And picked him up.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  And committed him temporarily to an institution that could have helped him.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  He called me from there and he said, please come and get me out. He didn't know that I had done this. And he said, please come and get me out of here. These people don't know what they're doing. It took them two hours just to go through my pockets. And he was blaming them for that. He just, you know, he was hardly coherent. And I said that I couldn't do that, that perhaps they could help him do what he had committed to do, to get rid of a lot of his stuff, you know, and he hung up.

• 7:13Mike Rowe?

  How do you think that happened?

• 7:15Speaker 03

  But let me tell you what happened. Some well-meaning people that he knew from a church went and got him out.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  And they thought they were doing what was right because he called and he begged them. You know, they shouldn't have done that, but they thought they were doing the right thing.

• 7:41Mike Rowe?

  There it is. That's the message for the season. It's your, your best intentions, right? You can't always know, and it's such a torture. I know we talk about this a lot because being a bestselling author now, three plus times over, people ask you for advice and they ask you for encouragement. And it's always fun to give, but you don't always know who you're talking to. And when encouragement becomes enabling, when help becomes hurt, how do you know?

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Well, here is one more layer of this story. He had an offspring who lived out of state.

• 8:26Mike Rowe?

  You mean like a child?

• 8:27Speaker 03

  A child. I don't want this person to hear this and know that I'm talking. So I'll just.

• 8:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but I mean, we just, for the clarity, we're, we're staying within the same species.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  Let's just call his offspring a daughter. Let's say he has a daughter, had a daughter, who lived, who lived out of state. And Protective Services got in touch with her and asked for her help.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  She couldn't. She said, I can't do it. I have been dealing with this my entire life.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  My mother passed away partly because of this problem. She had lost a sibling, possibly because of this problem. Their whole family had been really messed up. And she said, I just can't deal with it. I'm sorry. I'm not trained to deal with this. Just as I had said, this mental illness, I can't do it. I'm sorry. I have children, can't expose them.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  So she received criticism for this from people here that I know.

• 9:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  What should she have? When you think about it, she had been dealing with that issue her entire life. Well, I mean, certainly her adulthood.

• 9:55Mike Rowe?

  God, it's so complicated, you know? When a person you love and who loves you asks for a drink and you know for a fact that they've struggled with alcohol, you don't give them a drink simply because they love you or because you love them. You can't do that. But you also have to be in a state of mind at that point when you understand that you're not dealing with a desire, you're dealing with a compulsion. Now, are you dealing with a disease? Well, a lot of people say yeah, a lot of people say no. Chuck, I would love for you to find some, like an expert on hoarding. I had no idea we were going to talk about this, but I, I'm, I'm fascinated by it

• 10:39Mike Rowe?

  because I, I don't know if it, if it really comes to you in the form of a disease or if it metastasizes. Like, like where does it start? Should I be worried that my entire desktop is cluttered with icons? Because I don't like to file things and I really don't know how and I don't really care to learn, or that my closets are overfilled? Like, when do you, people have these spring cleaning rituals, for instance, that are so therapeutic, you know? Because once you get used to getting rid of stuff, you get rid of more stuff. That all seems human and normal, but I really have no idea when things evolve

• 11:23Mike Rowe?

  or devolve into some kind of illness.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  When you step over that line, well, I think.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, when you open your front door and newspapers are stacked up from the.

• 11:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, when you can't find the line to step over.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  And there's just a narrow pathway through your house and everything is junk around.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Well, Chuck, that is exactly what happened. I've known this man for years, probably 28 years. And through the years, he has invited us to his home for certain things. I was shocked when I went into his house, went in the front door, and there was a narrow pathway, as you describe it, through boxes and clutter, a narrow pathway into the kitchen or some room where this expert was going to teach us how to do something. So it was gradual because you used to be able to get in through the front door and then that pathway gradually closed in.

• 12:27Mike Rowe?

  That's fascinating.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is. And I know of someone here at the home who was hoarding and he had a problem with something. Something was wrong with the electric or the water or something, and he had to call in general services. And when they came in, well, they are trained to look for things. They might come in and you think, oh, they're just here to clean. They're just here to unclog the drain. But these people are trained to look around to see if there are problems that need to be dealt with. So when this person came into his apartment and saw all of the clutter, he realized this man can't even get to the

• 13:10Speaker 03

  pool cord if he needs help. And so they had a meeting and they told him, either he cleared out his apartment or he would have to leave.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  So fortunately, he had friends who helped him to clear out his apartment.

• 13:29Mike Rowe?

  I'm just so interested in the day, in the moment, where you go from a messy person with a cluttered house to a hoarder, to somebody who is suffering from a disease. It's an environmental kinetic thing. You can look at it and you can say, okay, that's a mess, that's messier, that's super messy that now you've just entered. Like, is it one, like, a box too far, a bit of clutter too much? And then, all of a sudden, it looks like, oh, well, clearly, this person's, you know, lost their mind. But they haven't. They're a frog in the boiling water, and it progresses. You know, my friend, uh, Mariana, Mike's wife.

• 14:15Mike Rowe?

  She's had a business for years. I don't know if she still has it. But this happened about, I think, maybe 20 years ago. She just started noticing there were so many people that she either knew or had access to that were in this space, suffering from some level of this problem. She started, she started a business called Clutterflies, where she would come to your home and spend as much time as it took just to get you decluttered. And I remember her telling me once, you know, it's like, sometimes, it really is just a question of people who took their eye off the ball, and now they're just kind of disorganized and messy by nature, and they just need some help.

• 15:00Mike Rowe?

  They just need a clean slate, and then they can do a better job of keeping their basic area livable. And then there are people who are beyond help. And it's just fascinating and difficult to know, at a glance, which one you're dealing with.

• 15:20Mike Rowe?

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• 16:05Mike Rowe?

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• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, these people have to be willing to declutter. And if you are truly a hoarder, you are incapable of doing it. Because Dad and a couple of other guys who knew this person went over to his house one day and said, "We're here." And they took big trash bags and they said, "We're here to help you." Because he said he wanted to declutter. Sadly, they were unable to talk him into parting with anything. He had canned goods on the kitchen table that were years expired.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  He said, "No, they don't really expire. They just put those dates on there, but you can still use that stuff." A rubber band. "Well, no, I might need that rubber band." So he'd stick it in his pocket. Oh, that was something else in his pocket, Chuck. Big, big balls of rubber bands. Oh, what else?

• 17:42Mike Rowe?

  Don't leave home without them.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Old newspapers. His house was cluttered with old newspapers.

• 17:47Mike Rowe?

  That's common for hoarders. I don't know why, but that's common.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  He said, "Well, because there might be a coupon in there that I could use." They left that day without being able to get rid of stuff.

• 18:00Mike Rowe?

  This is the area. Here, let me turn this light over here. This is my office, okay? Now, when we record, I'm over here. It's not terrible. It's not great. But, you know, I got my lights set up and I can sit here and I can talk. But right on the other side of this partition, which I have up just to control the sound, I got stuff that just comes in the mail and it's just, it's driving me crazy. It's just stacks of stuff. And every time I come over to try and tidy it up, the same thing happens. I look at a thing and I'm like, "Well, you know, somebody, somebody sent me that book." You know, they sent it to me.

• 18:43Mike Rowe?

  And in my case, half the time, they wrote it. So he wrote a book and they sent it to me. And now I've got a stack of like thirty of these books. I'm never gonna read them. There's just no way I can. And then between the books are, are letters and explanations and pictures and, and I can't tell you how many times I've gone over there to say, "Okay, this is the day. I'm just gonna get a bag." Cause like, said, "I know what's gonna happen. I, I'll snap and I'm gonna throw it all away." And I'm gonna have a fire. I'm gonna have a fire. And then I'm gonna feel okay about it, but that's not normal either. It's like, why can't you just, you know, manage your stuff?

• 19:27Mike Rowe?

  You know, look, you've got three sons and all of us are somewhat afflicted to varying degrees with whatever that is. And maybe it's just as simple as procrastination meets a bit of laziness, meets a bit of distraction, or maybe we're nuts.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Or maybe you know that somebody cared enough about whatever they sent, that they wanted to share it with somebody who is very approachable. And you are, Mike, people trust you. You're a very trustworthy person. So why not send you something that means a lot to me? People send me stuff too. Not, not on the same scale that they send you because I don't have as many followers, but they do. I have a big box of books.

• 20:21Mike Rowe?

  Was that like a passive aggressive cry for help or something? What, what just happened there?

• 20:26Speaker 03

  I don't know. Tell me.

• 20:27Mike Rowe?

  Can you work up a tier? Cause I don't have as many followers.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  No, and I'm happy for that because I'd have a bigger box full of stuff.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Oh, you know, but I've been a writer forever and I had so much rejection and these people who send me their books have had a lot of rejection and they feel that maybe I can help them. Or maybe if they just get an encouraging word from me and believe me, I've been there. I know that. I can't throw any books away and I do read an occasional chapter here and there. Yeah.

• 21:10Mike Rowe?

  It's heavy. Do you remember a book by a guy called O'Brien? I think it was Tim O'Brien. It was a big deal back in the, in the eighties, I think it was called The Things They Carried.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  Oh, Dad just read that book not too long ago.

• 21:27Mike Rowe?

  You're kidding.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a wartime book about the things that soldiers carry. And I know this because Dad loves to read aloud and.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  And I'm here.

• 21:42Mike Rowe?

  Is that a proclivity? A condition? A compunction? An ailment? Disease?

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Some writing is meant to be read aloud. I have to say that. People tell me that my books are so good when shared with some... People just tell me that. Are so good when read aloud.

• 22:02Mike Rowe?

  In fairness, I was one of those people. Yeah, and I think Chuck may have told you that too.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Hey, Mike. I recently wrote something that I think you might like. It's a story that happened years ago when you were growing up. And you had two younger brothers, which you still have, but they were...

• 22:26Mike Rowe?

  Younger.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Younger.

• 22:30Mike Rowe?

  Still brothers, if you're keeping score. And still younger. And still younger than you. Not young anymore.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  But no longer growing up. But anyway, it's about a purchase that we made for our family. Do you remember Kirby?

• 22:47Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my God. Please tell me you've written this down.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  I have written the story, and I'd love it. It's filled with humor.

• 22:57Mike Rowe?

  This is the story of a vacuum cleaner, at least on the surface. Named Kirby? Well, Kirby was like the state-of-the-art manufacturer of vacuums once upon a time. Okay. And we had, prior to that, a Hoover, which Mom used to joke, you know, we got from the Hoover administration because it was ancient.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  It was originally owned by Herbert.

• 23:27Mike Rowe?

  It was the opposite of a vacuum, this thing. You'd push it around, and it made sounds. And air rushed around, but I think it was pushing the air out because crap and dust just flew over it. It just didn't pick up any dirt at all. Anyway, sorry, Mom, go on. But I love this story.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  So one day... John was on the phone and he was moving his feet around the floor, scraping his feet. And he scraped up a pile of dog hair because we had two dogs who shed like nobody's business.

• 23:59Mike Rowe?

  And we lived like animals.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  And we lived like animals.

• 24:03Mike Rowe?

  And we weren't orders, but we just lived in a giant hairball.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Don't tell me you were making, you were collecting the hairballs of the animals, right?

• 24:12Speaker 03

  Yes, and we put them in our pockets.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  In your pockets, yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Yes. No, we filled pillows with them really and slept on them.

• 24:19Mike Rowe?

  All our clothes were made of dog hair.

• 24:23Mike Rowe?

  Well, that seems economical to me. I mean, that's not a bad idea.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  And we wove them into blankets.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  But anyway.

• 24:32Mike Rowe?

  And ate the dogs.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  And supplied the army with blankets.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  John was like, not angry, but who lives like this? Look at this hair. And so, of course, I was a little on the defensive side and I said, you know where we keep the vacuum cleaner? Feel free to use it. And that's what he did right then. He went to the closet, got out the her, got out the Hoover. Now, in defense of Hoover, I don't mean to, you know, to criticize Hoover, but this had been around for like decades.

• 25:12Mike Rowe?

  This vacuum cleaner sucked.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Not at all. Not at all. So he vacuumed and vacuumed and vacuumed and very little happened. And I said, wait a minute, here's how you have to do it. So I laid it over on its side. And as, as he, you know, held it on, turned on the button, I fed the hair into the moving rollers on the bottom. I'd pick up a handful of hair, put it in the roller and it would disappear.

• 25:44Mike Rowe?

  She's not making this up. I stood there. This is the house I grew up in. It's not like we didn't, it's not like we didn't have appliances. It's just that they weren't in a state where they could be operated, you know, in the intended way. So you literally, to use our vacuum, you had to lay it on its side, pull the crap out of the rug and jam it into the roller. And you should see how the blender worked.

• 26:13Mike Rowe?

  I had no power. You had to just drop the eggs in or whatever, put the lid on it and then just shake it like you were making a martini. The toaster, well, it was, it was great as far as toasters go, but it didn't generate any heat. So what you had to do-

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Two big lighters, you know, on either side of the bread.

• 26:33Mike Rowe?

  We just put the whole thing in the oven, turned it to bake 450.

• 26:38Mike Rowe?

  Then put the bread in the toaster, boom, Bob's your uncle.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  Michael, you do exaggerate, but the, but, but the Kirby-

• 26:46Mike Rowe?

  Better than yours.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  So that, so the Hoover part of the story, that is true. The hairy part, it is a hairy story for sure. So, this is a Mother's Day story. For Mother's Day, John happened to see an advertisement on the bulletin board where he taught for a Kirby vacuum cleaner.

• 27:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  And so-

• 27:14Mike Rowe?

  And it was expensive, like it, it cost real money.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  It costs a hundred dollars and on a school, I didn't work, I stayed home with the children.

• 27:23Mike Rowe?

  What year was this?

• 27:24Speaker 04

  What year?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  Well, I think Phil was about five and he was born in 67.

• 27:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, so this was early 70s, 72, 73 maybe.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  Gotcha. Hundred dollars, a lot of money, lot of money.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Oh my golly.

• 27:38Mike Rowe?

  Money, it's like a mortgage payment.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  John was more proud of that Kirby when he brought it home. You would have thought it was gold. And we all stood around and our mouths gaped open, we oohed and ahed, the kids had never seen anything like it. I mean, it was like Christmas morning. Well, anyway, so I've written all this into a story and I call it a Mother's Day story. I was going to put it in my book, but-

• 28:07Mike Rowe?

  You know what? Send it to me. Send it to me today. I will record it, right? I'll read it like the old big blue purse thing that got got this whole thing started.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 28:23Mike Rowe?

  And we'll just put it up either with the podcast or right after it, or we'll figure out something to do with it.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  It gets very dark, though, remember, Mike?

• 28:31Mike Rowe?

  It gets super dark. Oh, my God.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Is the audience up to that?

• 28:35Mike Rowe?

  This story is. Well, without giving too much away, what I can tell you, Chuck, is, I mean, we'd never seen the old man spend money on really anything ever.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 28:50Mike Rowe?

  And so, including toys, like, we, we didn't have toys at that point, like, not, not traditional toys, right?

• 28:59Speaker 04

  But was it a ball of hair or whatever with a leash on it?

• 29:02Mike Rowe?

  You would play with a hairball, right? We'd get like, like, maybe 16 pieces of Lego and do your best. You know, we had one Lincoln log, which is difficult to build much with, but you connect the Lincoln log and the Lego together.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  You use the hair and the Lego.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, you tie it together.

• 29:18Mike Rowe?

  The whole Lincoln log together, yeah. So like, we did the best we could. We didn't know any better. We thought,

• 29:23Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:23Mike Rowe?

  you know, this is all part of, you know, expanding your imagination. But this vacuum cleaner was better than a toy. It was a beast.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  It was a machine.

• 29:37Mike Rowe?

  A true machine, a true engineering marvel. It could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, man.

• 29:45Mike Rowe?

  It was amazing. And like, once we saw it in action, like, we couldn't wait to, like, my brothers and I were fighting over who gets to vacuum.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 29:55Mike Rowe?

  And then it was like, oh, my God, it'll lift up a pillow. It'll lift up a ball.

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Oh, man. It's the attachments. When they discovered the attachments, it was Christmas morning. I'm telling you, it was a weapon. It was a tool. It was pure fun.

• 30:14Mike Rowe?

  I'm guessing some of your brothers got some hickies somewhere on their bodies.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  And they might have been pulled upwards somewhere.

• 30:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, there were hickies all over the place. I mean, it was just crazy. They're like, everything in the house needed to be tested against Kirby and the attachments. It had a hose, right? The hose had these different attachments. I know it's all very common today, but in 1973, it was, it was literally like, uh, like.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  This was NASA stuff.

• 30:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it was a prime directive on Star Trek. An alien came and left a device from the future on our porch. And now we were just trying to figure out all the different things that could happen. Well, look, I don't want to screw up the story because I'll be curious, Mom, if our, uh, if you heard it the way I heard it, if we remember it the same way.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  That, well, yeah, that's, yeah, that's good.

• 31:10Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  Probably, I mean, the facts are there, but interpretation will probably vary because you saw it from a, what, 11-year-old boy's eyes through your eyes. Oh, Chuck, it was, honestly, I didn't know what to expect next. They wanted to vacuum the curtains. They pulled the curtains right off the wall and the curtain rod came right off the wall. They just about destroyed the house. I mean, and the poor, the poor dogs. Well, the one dog was 15 pounds. It lifted her hind end right off the floor.

• 31:51Mike Rowe?

  Right off the ground.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  But the other dog had a real thick coat. He was part shepherd. She loved it. Oh, my God. She thought she died and went to heaven when they put that on her back. She loved it. It scrubbed the hair, pulled the hair right off of, not all of it, of course, just the loose hair.

• 32:11Mike Rowe?

  We would vacuum the dog.

• 32:19Mike Rowe?

  The service I'm about to recommend to you is absolutely free, and it can easily save the average user over $1,000 a year. It's called Chapter, and it's the best way to make sure the Medicare plan you're on is the one you should be on. Because every year Medicare plans change, and so do you. And just because your plan might have been the best choice when you were 65 doesn't mean it's the best choice today. At Chapter, independent advisors compare Medicare plans nationwide. They look at your doctors, your prescriptions, and your budget to help you find coverage that fits your needs. And they're not paid more to recommend one plan over another. You don't need to sort through all the options yourself. You can talk to somebody who understands them,

• 33:01Mike Rowe?

  ask your questions, and get help comparing the costs and benefits. So if your current plan is still the right fit, they'll tell you. If there's a better option, they'll tell you that too, and they'll help you switch. Again, the service is free, and a review can take less than 20 minutes. This is the time of year to make sure you're squared away for 2027. So if you haven't checked your Medicare coverage lately, give Chapter a call. It's a simple way to make sure your plan still works for you. And with potential savings of $1,100 a year, it's worth a free review. 804-Chapter. Call them today. 804-C-H-A-P-T-E-R. It was amazing. The hair never stopped coming off the dog, but the dog never went totally bald.

• 33:47Mike Rowe?

  Bald, right. But we sucked a lot of hair off that dog. We really did.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  I'm so curious as to how it went dark.

• 33:55Mike Rowe?

  Oh, God. Well...

• 33:56Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 33:58Mike Rowe?

  I don't want to wreck it, but I'll just tell you that in our particular home, which was a haven for all creatures, great and small...

• 34:12Mike Rowe?

  Cats, all sorts of creatures. And not all of them take to being vacuumed equally.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  Okay. Is Peta gonna get involved in this story?

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:26Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  I hope not. I hope not.

• 34:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. It won't be the first angry letter I've gotten from that particular angry acronym. But this is a screwed up Mother's Day story. But since you've written it, since Mother's Day is around the corner, send it. I'll read it. Done.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  It was such fun to write. I couldn't stop laughing when I wrote it. And I called your brothers to see if they remembered it. And of course, they remembered it.

• 34:56Mike Rowe?

  Remembered it. We're all still in some form of therapy for that whole decade.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  I can't wait. I cannot wait for this story.

• 35:08Mike Rowe?

  We had horses. We were boarding horses back then. We had dogs. We had cats. Phil was like a, even at that age, he was only like five or six years old, but he was like a Steve Irwin. He'd come home, he'd bring home fish out of the creek. He'd bring home lizards, frogs, all sorts of things.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  We had two turtles that walked our kitchen floor.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  I mean, they-

• 35:37Speaker 04

  That must've taken a while because they're pretty slow.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Well, we had a big kitchen, too. Um, oh my golly, crayfish. We had a pan of crayfish under our bed. One night, John and I woke up in the middle of the night and we heard scratching, scratching. I said, what the heck? And John looked under the bed and there was a big pan of crayfish. And little Philip had put them there because he said, I was afraid they might wake up in the middle of the night and miss their mommies and daddies. So I wanted it to be close to you. So I put them under our bed. Oh, a snake. Phil brought a big, black snake into the basement, wrapped around his arm. And you know what? He still has, he's still an animal person. He hasn't changed that much.

• 36:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, still loves animals. Anyway, Mike, I'm so glad to see that you're up and about and, cause you, you were a little bit under the weather.

• 36:33Mike Rowe?

  You know, there's so much crud going around. And yeah, I got back from Clint Hill's funeral. And didn't feel bad, but just didn't feel great. And then every day it's just a little worse, a little worse. And then it's like, oh, you know what? You're sick. And then you take your temperature and it's like, what? A hundred and three. So, yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  That's high.

• 36:57Mike Rowe?

  It was high. And I spent the weekend in bed and now I feel exponentially better.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  I'm so glad. Well, are you coughing? Because when I had that, it left me with a residual cough that just lasted for a long time.

• 37:13Mike Rowe?

  I know. I was so worried about you. Was it COVID? Or do we even care anymore? Is that even a polite question?

• 37:20Speaker 03

  We both tested positive for COVID in the first week of April. April 1st for me, and I think maybe April 3rd or 4th for your father. So we did have COVID, but very different forms of COVID. We had different symptoms.

• 37:36Mike Rowe?

  You had the kind that you, that you can only get after you've been vaccinated and boosted three times. That most rare form of COVID reserved for people who did everything they were told to do. But nevertheless, have it visited upon them for reasons no one is, it's just unknowable. It's just a fluke, I suppose.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  I don't know, but I do know that I missed the latest booster because I had COVID and they said.

• 38:04Mike Rowe?

  I don't think you need it.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  Don't think about it. Uh, maybe in a few months you might decide to go there. But Mike, it's funny. I wrote about it. Because I write and I talk about our lives. Well, I got the greatest comments from readers who wanted to tell me what to do to stay healthy and how to and how to avoid coughing. It was so funny. One lady said, oh, sip pineapple juice. That'll do it. That does it for me. Every time my coughing stops the minute I sip pineapple juice. Another woman said, sprinkle salt into the palm of your hand and lick it. And she said, by the time you lick up all that salt, you won't

• 38:50Speaker 03

  even want to cough. The cough will be gone. I didn't do that. Um, because I try not to, you know, ingest too much salt. Um, oh, my golly. And for the coughing, oh.

• 39:05Mike Rowe?

  Wasn't there something about wrapping your?

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. Somebody told me to slice, more than somebody. I mean, a lot of people said, oh, yeah, yeah, that works. Slice a raw onion, very thin, and wrap it on the bottom of your feet. Put it on the bottom of your feet and wrap Saran Wrap around it.

• 39:28Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  I'm doing it as I'm talking. And that will help. Well, don't try to go to the bathroom and walk on on onions because you'll get bruised feet. Um, and then somebody told me, oh, this is easy. You just get Vicks Vapor Rub and you rub it all over the soles of your feet just before you go to sleep and then put your sock, put socks on and you won't cough all night long. I did that. I did do a little coughing, too. I mean, I might have done more if I hadn't tried that.

• 40:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but that's like saying, ah, you know, my head still hurts after I took the aspirin, but it would have hurt so much more if I didn't, you know? Covid would have been so much worse if you hadn't gotten the booster. That's right. We got a much easier ride. You know what? I, I know this tweaks a lot of people, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. If we're living in an age where the most enlightened minds in the world keep telling us to take more and more boosters and everybody keeps getting the same disease over and over and over again, then I'm not sure how bananas it really is. To wrap your feet in bananas, or to sip pineapple, or eat onion, or rub salt on your

• 40:51Mike Rowe?

  hand. I don't know how to think about people who have to take their pants off in order to walk through their kitchen on account of all the clutter. I don't know if I should just set them off in crazy town while the rest of the population is lining up to get booster number 12. While they're infected with the very thing it's supposed to prevent, I just don't know how to think about it all, Mother. Please say something wise for those dozen or so people still listening.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  I do have one reader who raises goats, and she wrote to me and suggested that I put Vicks in one nostril and some garlic, a garlic clove in the other nostril. She said, really, that helps so much. You'll get well faster and, and the coughing will be at a minimum.

• 41:43Mike Rowe?

  How's the goat factor in this?

• 41:45Speaker 03

  Also, she feeds her goats honey and cinnamon and dark red wine. And I said, you know, you know, if I do succumb to this illness, I want to come back as one of your goats.

• 42:02Mike Rowe?

  Honey and wine. Nice.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:03Mike Rowe?

  Honey and wine, sure.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  But the garlic clove in the, I don't know about that.

• 42:10Mike Rowe?

  Well, you've got.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  I mean, just like jamming a clove up your nose, is she saying? Like clogging your nose?

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Well, she wasn't real specific. And I don't know how big goats' nostrils are.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  Well, she did that to her goats, or she was saying to, for you to do that?

• 42:26Speaker 03

  Oh, no. When her goat gets sick, she puts a thing of garlic in her nose.

• 42:29Mike Rowe?

  Mom, that's not what you said.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Oh, what did I say?

• 42:33Mike Rowe?

  You said that a woman who owns goats wrote to you and suggested that you stick garlic cloves up one nostril.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Oh, well, she was just telling me what she does with her goats, and then she thought.

• 42:45Mike Rowe?

  Important detail of the story, really critical detail.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, because because I was picturing you with the clove of garlic, but even that, I mean, the PETA people should talk to her with a jamming garlic up.

• 42:59Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, none of it's stretch. Talking about a woman who vacuums by turning on the vacuum, lying it on its side, and then pulling the dirt out of the rug and jamming it into the roller. It's not beyond the pale that she might strap some onions to her feet and shove garlic up her nose.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  This woman loves her goats. She wouldn't do anything to harm her goats. So she feels that this is really a good remedy. Garlic in the nostril.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  We had a goat, didn't we? For a while?

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Oh, we didn't, but our neighbor did, and our neighbor kept. In fact, the goat's name was Mary, and he used to um, put Mary in our back pasture.

• 43:45Mike Rowe?

  That's why that's you can see my confusion. When you live in a petting zoo and you look out the window and there's a goat in your back pasture, it's not a stretch to think it might just.

• 43:55Speaker 04

  Belong to you.

• 43:56Mike Rowe?

  Be part of them in Ashery.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  Also, their chickens used to come into our garden and eat our tomatoes.

• 44:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  Chickens, you should get some chickens, Mike.

• 44:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  You should get chickens.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  They're very popular.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  I mean, backyard chickens are really the rage now. A lot of people have chickens in their back.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  They make eggs. You can eat them.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  I know.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  And they're not going to be diseased eggs if you, you know, control your chickens where they go and so forth.

• 44:32Mike Rowe?

  I learned more than I wanted to to know about all that season. I think it was season one of Dirty Jobs up at Murray McMurray. You remember that hatchery segment? Where we did a, we did chick sexing?

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Oh, I remember that. Yeah, I remember that was funny.

• 44:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, I, I mean, first of all, it's like 350 breeds of chickens.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  Really?

• 44:58Mike Rowe?

  There are so many. And secondly, the vast majority of of chicks that are purchased by people all over the country are sent to them through the US mail.

• 45:13Mike Rowe?

  They're they're literally put in a box and just

• 45:16Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 45:17Mike Rowe?

  Just shipped, you know? They can survive for a while because the uh the white part of the the egg, which you call the uh albumen, is absorbed by the yolk and that's filled with the, I guess, the fluids, the nutrition, whatever hydration is necessary to keep the chicks alive for a couple of days. I don't know if you saw the episode, but chick sexing, right? You just

• 45:44Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:45Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my God, you take these chickens one at a time. They're little chicks. They're like little Easter tweeters.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  They're little balls of yellow feathers, little

• 45:55Mike Rowe?

  Yes, yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Down.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  With a tiny beak.

• 45:57Mike Rowe?

  Yes, and to separate the uh pullets from the cockerels, you need to have a really experienced eye. And for whatever crazy reason, at least twenty years ago, I'm not sure it's still the same, but the go-to chick sexing teams were flown all around the country to different farms to perform this service. And incredibly and inexplicably, these teams often consisted of very old Japanese men who, for whatever reason, had some facility for the work. And the work involved picking up each of these little chicks and peering into their buttholes

• 46:42Mike Rowe?

  uh to i- identify the tiniest little bump. The bump was associated with the cockerel, of course, and the pullets were bump-free. And so the two sexes were separated, but in between the peering into the butthole was the evacuation of the intestines, which presumably were filled with some ingested albumen. So the first thing you do is you pick them up and you hold them over a coffee can, in this case, I think it was a Folgers, if I remember right. Not that it matters, but you literally squeeze the chick and the poop would fly out. And then you'd look into the butthole. Pullets to the right, cockerels to the left. And it was really only the pullets that people wanted.

• 47:27Mike Rowe?

  Those were the ones that typically got, got shipped by the thousands every day. Incredible. And then what happens to the mail chicks? Oh geez. The cockerels. Really? All right, well. I mean, since we're having that kind of conversation. Yeah. Yeah, this wasn't dealt with in the episode because it was deemed too upsetting by my executive producer at the time. But they're, they're not needed and so they are disposed of. And by disposed of, I mean, they are by the thousands poured into a hopper of sorts that leads straight into a grinder. It's like a whisper chopper.

• 48:09Mike Rowe?

  And what comes out the other end is just cockerel goo, which if memory serves is ultimately repurposed and turned into chicken feed. So there you go. Hakuna Matata, mom. Circle of life.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  Well, that's a happy.

• 48:22Mike Rowe?

  Hoover?

• 48:23Speaker 03

  That's a happy story, Mike. Well, when your nephew, you weren't born yet, of course. I was just a teenager, but my sister was married and had a little boy who was three. And we lived on a, in the country on a farm. Well, I bought Steven, who was three. I bought him six little baby chicks for Easter. Well, they were little babies. And when I bought them at the feed store, I said, I would like females, please. Five of them were males and one was a female. Well, those males.

• 49:07Mike Rowe?

  Same thing happened with your kids, as I recall.

• 49:09Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, I ordered girls three times.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  But anyway, they were horrible. They all ran loose, of course. We didn't have a chicken house. They just ran free. Well, you couldn't go out the back door. They would attack you. They would put their wings up in the air and scratch the ground and put their heads down and run right for you. They were horrible. You would try to cut the grass and they would attack the lawn mowers. So your Uncle Charles came up from Virginia and took them home with him and they had chicken for dinner.

• 49:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, where they spent the rest of their lives in rich fulfillment up on the farm. Do you remember the first time you saw your grandmother wring the neck of a chicken?

• 49:53Speaker 03

  Oh, my golly, it was traumatic. My sweet little Grandma Daisy, just with the apron on and her braids wrapped around her crown like a cherub, just the sweetest little thing and little pair of glasses, picked up that hatchet, grabbed that chicken by the head and laid him over the tree stump and whack. And the blood, I mean, the blood splattered on her face and, and what was left of that chicken just danced around the yard. Oh, I remember it like it was yesterday. That's another kind of dark story, isn't it?

• 50:34Mike Rowe?

  I don't know. I mean, you came out with mental illness. Yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  It involves dancing, you know.

• 50:41Mike Rowe?

  We paint with a broad brush over here with Coffee with Mom.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  I know. Can't we think of something happy?

• 50:54Mike Rowe?

  What if, say, five years ago, some big oil company offered a promotion that gave you a chance to lock in the price of gasoline at $2.50 a gallon for the rest of your life? Would you have taken that deal? Or what if a nationwide grocery store had given you an opportunity to lock in the price of ground beef at, say, $2 a pound for as long as you live? Would you have taken that deal? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, those deals were never on the table, but this one is. Today, as in right now, for a very, very limited time, Pure Talk is offering every American the opportunity to purchase unlimited talk, text,

• 51:35Mike Rowe?

  and data, along with a 30 gig hotspot, for just $29.95 a month for life.

• 51:42Mike Rowe?

  Not your phone's life, your life. No contracts, no commitments, just a very rare opportunity to lock into a ridiculously low rate for unlimited talk, text and data for the rest of your life. It's the unlimited data plan from Pure Talk and it will not be around for long. $29.95 a month for as long as you live. Taxes and fees not included. Some restrictions do apply. See puretalk.com for details. Offer ends 11/15/26. So chop, chop. I got one.

• 52:23Mike Rowe?

  Since you mentioned Daisy, here's another episode that never really aired, which is a shame, but I did a story on these people who were living off the grid outside of Georgia who raised rabbits as their primary source of protein. And we're getting a lot of hate mail from people that go online and they would, you know, their, their kids are participating and they're, you know, they're walking them through all the steps of raising and slaughtering and preparing and they're making rabbit stew and hoss and pfeffer. And I just thought, well, it's a great chance for people to understand where their food comes from. And I wanted to do that story. So we went there and we filmed it and sure enough, man, it's very instructive.

• 53:06Mike Rowe?

  You know, a rabbit mom is so much more efficient than a cow to an almost extraordinary magnitude. Like the meat from a rabbit that you'll eat when it's properly slaughtered and prepared is well over 90%, but a cow is probably less than 50. When you, you know, your count for all the organs and all the fat and all the stuff that you don't want. Anyway, it's super efficient, but I'll never forget this father taking one of the rabbits, big plump Easter bunny. I mean, he just looked like the star of a Cadbury commercial and just gave it a slow pet and said some soothing words to it.

• 53:51Mike Rowe?

  And the kids came over and they petted the rabbit and the father.

• 53:58Mike Rowe?

  The father laid it on the ground and took an ax handle and gently put it behind the head and on the neck. And the little boy and the little girl each petted the rabbit again. And the father put a foot on either side of the handle and then grabbed the hind legs. And then they said a little prayer. And then the little girl reached out and rubbed the ears one more time and said, "Bye Daisy." And then the father pulled the hind legs of the rabbit and the neck snapped.

• 54:40Mike Rowe?

  And within four minutes, that thing was completely dressed. And five minutes after that, it was in a pot. And two hours later, we were having rabbit stew. And the network just said,

• 54:58Mike Rowe?

  "We just don't, we just don't know how to think about it." I literally called the episode "Bye Daisy." And you know what? I mean, you brought her up, but it was beautiful. I mean, it was rough because you don't want the Easter bunny. You don't see the Easter bunny as your meal. But,

• 55:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, we don't want to see things die. I mean, we know we like a hamburger, but you, we went up to your Uncle Nelson's one year. Golly, I can't remember. I think it was over the Christmas holiday and we had dinner and we were eating. They had hamburgers, but they called them Max Burgers. And I was curious as to how they got that term. Max Burgers, you know, are they like maximum ketchup and mustard? Relish? No, this was Max. Remember Max out in the field eating grass? This was Max. These are Max Burgers. You guys couldn't eat very much.

• 55:55Mike Rowe?

  Oh, but I do remember it. And honestly, that was somewhere in the back of my mind when we did Earl the Butcher. That mobile butcher segment, that one did air and that one upset a lot of people. Remember, I shot the cow. I shot a cow in an episode of Dirty Jobs, yeah.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  It was probably a steer.

• 56:16Mike Rowe?

  No, it was a cow.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Oh, a cow.

• 56:19Mike Rowe?

  It was horrible, but, you know, I rode with the butcher. This was a family who raised the cow for this specific purpose, and it would provide them with six, seven hundred pounds of meat, feed them for the whole year. And when the day came to take it, they didn't want to do it, you know? They had kids and it wasn't a pet, but they had become attached to it. I forget the name of this thing. What I'll never forget, though, is opening the segment, standing there by the gate. It's a shot of me and the cow, and the farmer and his wife and his family are out of the shot,

• 57:00Mike Rowe?

  and the mobile butcher, Earl, is standing on the other side of the camera with a rifle. And I just introduced the segment by saying, we're here, and we were in western Michigan, I remember. And I quickly introduced Earl, and the camera caught him. And then I quickly introduced the family, and the camera panned over. And then it came back to me, and I'm standing next to the cow, and I explained to the viewer that this cow is going to feed that family for the next year. And that man, Earl, is going to show you exactly how every cut is prepared, dry-aged, and then returned to this place. But he's also here because the family doesn't want to do what has to be done. But make no mistake, what has to be done is going to happen.

• 57:46Mike Rowe?

  As I'm talking, the cow is licking my neck, nuzzled up and licking my neck.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 57:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, and that's what I do.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  And she had a name, and she'd been giving them milk?

• 58:02Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Was she a milk cow?

• 58:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, it is traditional. I mean, if she wasn't giving them milk, I don't know what she was giving them.

• 58:09Speaker 03

  I mean, it's life, isn't it? And we don't want to see that side of it, but we're, we're very anxious to eat a hamburger or a steak or, you know.

• 58:20Mike Rowe?

  Mom, it's one of the few things that I'm positive about today. Not everybody agrees, but I.

• 58:29Mike Rowe?

  I say it all the time and Chuck's heard me talk to lots of different guests about this, but you just have to get your head out of the sand. I don't care what the issue is. You know, if you want to trade with China, you have to look at what's going on with the Uighurs. You have to look at what's going on with organ harvesting. You don't have to like it, but you have to at least be mindful of it. And if you're gonna eat a steak or a hamburger, yeah, you damn well better meet, Max. You better understand where it's coming from. The animal deserves that much, at least. And I guess if you're gonna make lighthearted jokes about a condition like hoarding, then you need to hear a real life story about somebody who had to take their pants off to walk through their own kitchen.

• 59:12Mike Rowe?

  It's real and it's, it's a heck of a thing, but in the end, it's better to know, right?

• 59:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, we should be informed.

• 59:23Mike Rowe?

  Well, I tell you what, in the interest of information, as we land the plane here, I'll remind the two or three viewers we still have left that I'm gonna read your story. It better be as good as I remember it and we're gonna have it up either for Mother's Day or just before it. And by the way, folks, if you haven't bought her latest book, do I have you a copy of it sitting around? Oh, no, here it is.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  It's probably on your bedside table.

• 59:52Mike Rowe?

  Well, of course it is, dog-eared, but here's my copy, right here. Oh, no, not the home. It's her fourth book. It's as good as the rest, maybe even better. How did that last event go?

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  Oh, it went very well. Yeah, lots, lots of compliments.

• 1:00:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, did you tell them about killing chickens and hoarders and all that? Or did you just stick with the?

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, oh, no, I just stuck with the usual, lots of humor. Well, they were just curious to know what it is like for a resident in a facility such as this, you know, long-term care facility.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  Because they knew it from an employee's side, but they hadn't really heard it from somebody who was willing to tell it like it is.

• 1:00:40Mike Rowe?

  You know, Chuck, it's really risky.

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  Filled with humor.

• 1:00:44Mike Rowe?

  I mean, if you think about it, there are people who run this Ericsson operation are bringing my mom in to talk to large groups. Wow. They buy her book and she tells them the realities, warts and all. I mean, it's almost always funny, but I think it's terrific, Mom. I think what you're doing, yeah, well, as you know, I'm a fan. I love you. Everybody else does too, so I gotta jump, but go wrap some onions on your feet and get that garlic up your nose and get out there and live your best life.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Okay, Mike, I'll do that. This has been fun. It's always nice to see you guys.

• 1:01:26Mike Rowe?

  All right, well, I have to go narrate another riveting episode of Deadliest Catch.

• 1:01:33Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. I look forward to hearing it.

• 1:01:36Mike Rowe?

  Well, spoiler alert, pot goes over, pot comes up. What's in the pot? Crab? No crab. Crab? No crab. It's crab! Oh, my gosh, let's smoke a cigarette. Pot goes over. What's it gonna be? Crab? No crab. Look at the size of that wave. Oh, my God, I'll smoke another cigarette. Crab? No crab. It's crab! Aw, no crab, it's very sad. Give me another cigarette. That wave's enormous. Yeah, you know the show.

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  I know. You really sell it.

• 1:02:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what? Any season could be our last now. This is season 21.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:02:10Mike Rowe?

  Can't believe that show's still going on. As long as people are eating crab, I think you're safe.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, and crab is very popular. It's very popular here at the home and in Baltimore and in Maryland. It's all about the crab.

• 1:02:23Mike Rowe?

  Well, in Maryland, it's Calinectus sabatius.

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  Really? Okay.

• 1:02:29Mike Rowe?

  Beautiful swimmer, the blue crab. These are just the big Alaskan.

• 1:02:35Mike Rowe?

  Red crabs and opelio crabs and Tanner crabs and all that.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  But they are good meat. I mean, they they must taste good or they wouldn't.

• 1:02:44Mike Rowe?

  I've had, I mean, everything from stone crab to Dungeness. All the ones I've mentioned, I still say a big jumbo Chesapeake Bay Maryland blue crab. Properly prepared. There's just no better meat. It would be a part of my last meal if such a thing were ever offered to me. And it's so difficult. It's such a great example of adversity. You gotta work for it. You know, you're gonna get cut. You're gonna get some of the Old Bay. You're gonna get some of the J O. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt. Yeah.

• 1:03:25Mike Rowe?

  It's not gonna be pleasant. You're gonna wind up rubbing your eye at some point. The Old Bay is gonna get in there. You're gonna be gonna be blinded. You're gonna be crying. You're gonna be bleeding.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  It is a social occasion for sure. Sitting around eating crabs. Um, Marylanders love it. I mean, Baltimoreans especially. It's a great thing to do. But I can't do it anymore because my arthritic hands will not let me get into the crab.

• 1:03:52Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's why dad's there.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:03:55Mike Rowe?

  Even before you were all crippled up with the arthritis, he was making little piles of claw meat for you with back fin.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Mike Rowe?

  That's true love right there.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  It is. It really is. And and you know what? One day we um accompanied Mike on a job over on the eastern shore. He was um preparing crab. And when we left, they gave us a whole pound container of nothing but little back fin balls. Oh, my golly, was that good? That was a real treat.

• 1:04:31Mike Rowe?

  You remember what your husband did? We took him into the to the cleaning and picking area.

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  I remember him sitting next to that woman who really taught him how to pick crabs and told him her life story.

• 1:04:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, there were two women, each of whom had been picking crabs for a long time. It was Sissy and Nicey.

• 1:04:52Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:04:53Mike Rowe?

  And like Sissy had been cleaning crabs for like sixty years and her daughter had been at it for like twenty five. And my dad sit right, right between the two of them. These two unbelievably experienced black women telling my dad. Once you put my dad on a task, he can't leave till it's done.

• 1:05:15Speaker 03

  He perseverates. He must finish a job. He cannot. He can't turn around without going where he meant to go. You know, he can't stop any task until it's complete.

• 1:05:27Mike Rowe?

  Yes, right. I mean, it's a kind of OCD, I think. But he's always used it to as an advantage. It's never devolved into a hoarding thing. But it is remarkable to watch and we're filming the show. We've got beats, we got a day to do and he, he's just, look, there's a pile of crabs at the end of the table. And he's sitting there between sissy and nicey and there's work to be done. He's like, look, son, you can film, you cannot film. I really don't care.

• 1:06:00Speaker 03

  He wasn't about to leave.

• 1:06:02Mike Rowe?

  He's not leaving. He's not leaving till all the meat is out of the crab. And so we had no choice but to move on.

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  It was really funny. Those women, their hands were fairly flying. Oh, they were so fast. You couldn't even. You couldn't even follow what they were doing. And then there's dad laboriously pulling this off and reaching in for this. They were very patient.

• 1:06:27Mike Rowe?

  Mom, I love you. We gotta go.

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  Okay. Love you guys too. Happy Mother's Day, whatever.

• 1:06:35Mike Rowe?

  Happy Mother's Day. Yeah, whatever. All right. I'm looking forward to that story. Make it a great one.

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  Okay, we'll do.

• 1:06:42Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  As in one more than a four. Oh, please, one more than four. Just a quick review with Five Stars 2. From the U, Five Stars will do.

• 1:07:26Speaker 05

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• 1:07:58Speaker 06

  What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce, fresh meat. Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 1:08:12Speaker 06

  Apparently, we celebrate.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

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