Dirty love

Last month in this space I penned a love letter to Mike Rowe, the ubiquitous TV and voiceover guy. To my utter amazement, he wrote one back to me. Here’s the story:

I chose to write about Mr. Rowe because he’d caught my attention on Facebook with a remarkable reply to a young man seeking career advice. I also chose to write about this because it offered me the opportunity to quote his reply at length, thus filling much of the column. Some would call this practice laziness or even plagiarism. Me? I like to think of it as Hamburger Helper for busy writers.

Anyway, I wrote the thing, admired it for a moment, sent it to press and then got back to my regular dirty job.

A few weeks later I opened Facebook and started casually scrolling down until I noticed a post from Mr. Rowe. I was, as our friends across the pond say, gobsmacked:
 

I don’t golf. Nothing against it, I just never got into it. Every so often I’ll go to the driving range, drink a few beers, and aim for the guy in the cage who drives the tractor around, but that hardly qualifies.

However, my friend Scott loves to golf. He plays every day, and subscribes to magazines like Golf, Golf Digest, Golf Magazine, American Golfer, African-American Golfer, Women & Golf, Golf Weekly, Golf Monthly, Golf Tips, Golf Getaways, Golf International, Golf World, and Today’s Golfer. He also subscribes to several publications that chronicle the internal workings of the golf course industry. I’m referring of course, to “Golf Course Industry Magazine,” a publication that’s “leading the on-line revolution in course management.” (To be honest, I had no idea a revolution in golf course management was underway, but the world is a tumultuous place, and it’s hard to keep up.)

Anyway, Scott just informed me that I’m the subject of a very flattering article by Pat Jones, which appears in the current edition. I’ve just read the article, and Scott’s correct - it’s very flattering, and I want to thank Pat for including me in the magazine as well as the revolution. His article is based on my answer to a kid named Parker who asked for some career advice on this very page. For whatever reason, my reply struck a chord, and for the last few weeks my words have popped up in some rather unlikely places. But so far - this is my favorite.

http://www.golfcourseindustry.com/gci0514-simple-hard-work-reward.aspx

Thanks, Pat. I appreciate the kind words.

Sincerely,
Mike

PS. Keep your head down, and swing through your hips...

PPS. One slight correction, if I may. You write that I’m a “big fan of the Green Industry.” In fact, I am not. I’m a strong supporter of environmental conservation, responsible stewardship, and all forms of energy. But I am not aligned with the color green, and somewhat skeptical of the industry that’s grown around it. In fact, I prefer brown…

My first reaction, honestly, was “Holy sh*t!!!” This guy I admire very much had just given me the best backhanded compliment in front of his (get ready for this) 1 million Facebook followers. The post was shared more than 1,800 times and we had 30,000-plus views of the article on our website over the next couple of days.

About 96 percent of the comments on his post (there were 1,150 of them) fell into one of two categories:

“Mike Rowe is a total hunk!” – This came from women (presumably) who loved the accompanying pic of Mike wearing a very eclectic golf outfit.

“Mike Rowe for President!” – This from lots of folks, who, like me, think he is a voice for common sense, hard work and good American values.

A few folks said nice things about my column, particularly my throwaway line that “This country needs way less Kim Kardashian and way more Mike Rowe.” Not a bad turn of phrase, in retrospect. Even a blind hog finds a truffle once in a while.

Clearly, Mr. Rowe got a kick out of the fact that his original words had weirdly found their way into a golf course maintenance publication. However, he gently took issue with my statement that he’s a friend to the “Green Industry.” That is true if he doesn’t like the big business side of our community. I am, however, positive that he is very much a friend to folks like you who do the dirty jobs associated with professionally managing, preserving and enhancing the American landscape.

What struck me most about the whole experience was how completely random it was. One minute I’m wrapping up a mundane day of slogging through sales spreadsheets and performance appraisals and the next minute I’m watching something I wrote blow up on Facebook. Go figure.

So, allow me to say thank you Mike for the lovely shout out, the kind words and the awesome traffic spike on the GCI website. And, best of all, thanks yet again for providing me with some yummy Hamburger Helper for another past-deadline column!