444: Jack Teetor—Blind Faith to Blind Logic

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe Episode 444: Jack Teetor—Blind Faith to Blind Logic Release Date: July 22, 2025

Host: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
Guest: Jack Teeter

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Introduction

In Episode 444 of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, host Mike Rowe welcomes Jack Teeter, who shares an extraordinary family legacy centered around his great uncle, Ralph Teeter. The episode delves into Ralph's remarkable life, his innovations in the automotive industry, and Jack's journey in bringing his great uncle's story to the screen through the award-winning documentary, "Blind Logic."

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Ralph Teeter: Early Life and Overcoming Blindness

Ralph Teeter was born in 1895 and lost his vision at the age of five due to a severe eye injury, later developing sympathetic ophthalmia—a condition where injury to one eye leads to degeneration in the other. Despite his blindness, Ralph exhibited extraordinary resilience and ingenuity.

Mike Rowe introduces Ralph by stating:

"He's also a guy who you don't know. 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..."
(00:30)

Ralph's parents raised him as if he could see, instilling confidence and independence. At twelve, he ambitiously built a motor car from scratch with his older brother, showcasing his mechanical prowess despite his disability.

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Perfect Circle: Innovation and Community Impact

Ralph Teeter co-founded the Perfect Circle company in Indiana, which specialized in manufacturing piston rings for internal combustion engines. Under Ralph's engineering expertise and his uncle Charlie's leadership, the company played a pivotal role in the automotive industry's evolution.

Jack Teeter explains:

"Ralph as a person, the way I remember as a kid, was very kind, an incredible sense of humor. He loved to laugh, he loved people, and he had a gift to make everyone feel comfortable..."
(57:22)

The company's success had a profound impact on the small town of Hagerstown, Indiana. Perfect Circle became a cornerstone of the community, providing employment, building infrastructure like schools and libraries, and offering early employee benefits such as pensions and credit unions.

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Unionization and Challenges

During the late 1940s and 1950s, the automotive industry saw a surge in union activities. Perfect Circle faced significant challenges as unions sought to organize workers. Unlike many contemporaries, Ralph and Charlie approached unionization with respect and cooperation.

Jack Teeter recounts:

"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."
(39:23)

Despite initial harmonious relations, tensions escalated when external union forces brought large groups to Hagerstown, leading to conflicts that necessitated martial law and intervention by the National Guard. Ultimately, Perfect Circle maintained favorable terms for its workers, reflecting Ralph's commitment to fair labor practices.

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Ralph's Inventions: Cruise Control and Automatic Transmission

Ralph Teeter's inventive spirit led to significant advancements in automotive technology. Notably, he pioneered the development of cruise control and automatic transmissions—features now standard in modern vehicles.

Mike Rowe highlights Ralph's groundbreaking work:

"He invented the cruise control. That's what people know about him, if they know about Ralph Teeter..."
(24:17)

Despite initial skepticism from industry leaders who doubted the market acceptance of automated features, Ralph persisted. He personally built cruise control prototypes in his workshop, driven by the desire to enhance driving safety and convenience. His efforts culminated in successful collaborations with major automakers like Chrysler, Ford, and Chevrolet, eventually leading to widespread adoption of cruise control in the late 1950s.

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Jack Teeter's Documentary: "Blind Logic"

Inspired by Ralph's legacy, Jack Teeter embarked on creating a documentary titled "Blind Logic" to honor his great uncle's contributions and extraordinary life. After years of dedication, the documentary garnered significant acclaim, winning 15 awards and receiving positive feedback from audiences and educational institutions alike.

Jack Teeter shares:

"I made this thing, I narrated this documentary and it's won 15 awards so far. And by the time you guys listen to this, it'll be available on Amazon and pretty much everywhere."
(02:50)

The documentary not only showcases Ralph's technical achievements but also his personal story of overcoming adversity and leading a company that prioritized community welfare and employee well-being.

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Plans for Feature Film and Future Projects

Building on the success of "Blind Logic," Jack Teeter is now developing a feature film that dramatizes Ralph's life and innovations. Collaborating with experienced writers and producers, including Howie Klausner and Mark Joseph, the project aims to bring Ralph's inspiring story to a broader audience.

Jack Teeter enthuses:

"We have the writer, Howie Klausner, who wrote Space Cowboys and the film Reagan. So I have the film team that brought you Reagan last year with Sean McNamara directed."
(64:08)

The feature film is poised to be a compelling portrayal of Ralph's relentless pursuit of innovation and his profound impact on the automotive industry.

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Personal Reflections and Conclusion

Throughout the episode, Mike Rowe expresses deep admiration for Ralph Teeter's legacy and Jack Teeter's dedication to preserving and sharing this history. The conversation underscores themes of resilience, innovation, and the importance of storytelling in honoring remarkable individuals.

Mike Rowe concludes:

"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... This is an inspiring story."
(65:52)

The episode wraps up with a lighthearted exchange about Rose's renowned banana bread and a heartfelt encouragement for listeners to leave positive reviews and engage with the content.

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Notable Quotes

• Mike Rowe (00:30): "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..."

• Jack Teeter (57:22): "Ralph as a person, the way I remember as a kid, was very kind, an incredible sense of humor. He loved to laugh, he loved people, and he had a gift to make everyone feel comfortable..."

• Jack Teeter (39:23): "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."

• Mike Rowe (24:17): "He invented the cruise control. That's what people know about him, if they know about Ralph Teeter..."

• Jack Teeter (02:50): "I narrated this documentary and it's won 15 awards so far. And by the time you guys listen to this, it'll be available on Amazon and pretty much everywhere."

• Jack Teeter (64:08): "We have the writer, Howie Klausner, who wrote Space Cowboys and the film Reagan. So I have the film team that brought you Reagan last year with Sean McNamara directed."

• Mike Rowe (65:52): "This is an inspiring story."

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Conclusion

Episode 444 of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe offers an inspiring exploration of Ralph Teeter's life and legacy through the passionate efforts of his great nephew, Jack Teeter. The episode not only highlights significant technological advancements in the automotive industry but also emphasizes the enduring impact of individual resilience and visionary leadership. Listeners are encouraged to watch the documentary "Blind Logic" and anticipate the forthcoming feature film, both of which celebrate a remarkable story of blind faith turned into blind logic.

Transcript

[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 youe 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. Oh, yeah.

[Chuck]

This guy is definitely worth knowing. And particularly the subject matter that you're gonna hear about is worth knowing.

[Mike Rowe]

And he's also a guy who. You don't know.

[Jack Teeter]

Yes.

[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, basically in a combustion engine.

[Chuck]

Yes. And it improved lubrication, I believe, of the pistons.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Chuck]

I think, if I'm remembering that correctly.

[Mike Rowe]

Well before the cars were rolling off the supply. Not supply chain. What do you call it? The assembly line.

[Chuck]

Assembly line.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, things were very, very different, you know, before Henry Ford kind of owned the whole thing. Yep. 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 and cruise control. Now, what makes it doubly interesting? And honestly, it would be interesting enough if that's all Ralph Teeter did.

[Chuck]

It's pretty big accomplishments. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

He was blind.

[Chuck]

Totally.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. He lost his vision when he was 5 or 6 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?

[Chuck]

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.

[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. He got onto my radar, which was a phone call from his great nephew.

[Chuck]

Or grand nephew.

[Mike Rowe]

Grand nephew, I suppose. Either grand. 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. And by the time you guys listen to this, it'll be available on Amazon and pretty much everywhere. Yeah, 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. Yeah. And I'm so glad we did. Yeah. 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. Yep, Jack Teeters here. Banana bread is waiting right after this. In my life, there has certainly not been a more interesting time to run a business. And by interesting, I mean horrifying. Their challenges, tariff, trade policies, their dynamic supply chains are obviously squeezed. Cash flow is tighter than it's ever been. And if you can't adapt to all of that stuff in real time, your business is in trouble. That's just the way it is. What you need in times like these is total visibility of every single aspect of your business, from global shipments to tariff impacts to real time cash flow. And that's what you get with NetSuite by Oracle. This is an AI powered business management suite trusted by over 42,000 businesses. Businesses, they're the best. The number one Cloud ERP, for all kinds of reasons. Mostly I think, because it really does bring everything together. Accounting, financial management, inventory, hr, everything in one suite, hence the net. Before the suite. You've got one source of truth. You get the visibility and the control that you need to make quick decisions. And with AI embedded throughout, you can automate a lot of everyday tasks so your teams will stay strategic. If your revenues are in the seven figures, download the free ebook [e-mail] right now, it's called Navigating Global Three Insights for Leaders. It's terrific, it's interesting, and it's free. Whatever your business is, it's a great resource. Check it out at netsuite.com mike for free. Netsuite.com mike, that's netsuite.com netsuite.comnetsuite.com, netsuite.com he said netsuite.com/, mike. Thanks for doing this.

[Jack Teeter]

God, I love your voice.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, 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, right? Ralph Teeter is the star of a documentary called Blind Logic. 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.

[Jack Teeter]

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? 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 the genesis.

[Mike Rowe]

Here's the way I heard it, or at least the way I remember.

[Jack Teeter]

Okay.

[Mike Rowe]

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. It's just gonna be. We get a lot of inquiries, but 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.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, you're absolutely right, because I kind of 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's here, but he'll narrate. And that's great.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, this is 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 any. 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.

[Jack Teeter]

We're pretty lucky about that, too. You know, he's from the heartland, a little town in Chelsea, Michigan. Oh, yeah, yeah. And he brought that sort of Midwestern tone, if you will, to Ralph's here, which is what I was kind of looking for.

[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?

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Not Detroit, like, not Detroit. That's the first thing would surprise people. This story starts in Hagerstown, Hagerstown, about.

[Jack Teeter]

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 are all custom built cars. And this was all before Henry Ford, you know, developed the assembly line and that changed everything. Yeah, but backing up again to Ralph in 1895, the reason why that year is so relevant is he had his accident. Yeah, this is when he. He had an accident. Prying open a cabinet and hit his eye. Stabbed his eye.

[Mike Rowe]

A knife went straight into his eye and he immediately lost the sight of one eye.

[Jack Teeter]

And then the disease moved to the other eye. But here's another important.

[Mike Rowe]

What was the disease, Jack? How does that work? I didn't. It must have been an infection of some kind.

[Jack Teeter]

It was. And I knew you were going to ask that question.

[Mike Rowe]

My job to ask a tough question. That's why I'm here. And I'm not just a narrator.

[Jack Teeter]

I can't think of the name of it. Maybe Chuck will Google it. 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, if they were right or if something wrong, they were used. And he invented this thing different than.

[Mike Rowe]

Like, you know, the old Gandy dancers. Right. They get on these platforms and that was manual. But this was not.

[Jack Teeter]

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 and they were building these railroad inspection cars.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Jack Teeter]

And it kind of exploded. They were purchased worldwide and. But the point of this is, this is where Ralph really developed his mechanical skills. Now he developed those even before his accident. So he loved to play with tools. Yeah, he hung out at the factory. But after his accident, that didn't stop. His passion was tools.

[Mike Rowe]

How old was he again when he lost his.

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

They raised him as if he wasn't blind.

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Do this who can't see?

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, well, he got the help of my grandfather, Dan Teter, who was four years older, and they, they built a motor car from scratch, machining each part by hand.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Jack Teeter]

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 onto the cable, so he would, you know, kind of stay straight on the street.

[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. Same chip, Right. Okay. 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. 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 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 you got. I mean, I was your huckleberry right there.

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[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.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, that's very interesting, because I've thought about that, too.

[Mike Rowe]

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[Jack Teeter]

Speculate from Ralph's standpoint. Having seen for five years gave him the ability to 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. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, they say that when one sense goes, the others become sharpened, right? 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.

[Jack Teeter]

Good point. You're absolutely right. The echoes of when he was young, the echoes of the horses walking in 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 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow. Now that's controversial today.

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

And obviously his parents didn't either.

[Jack Teeter]

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. Her classmate said, well, you're. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, because when she was a young kid, he would play with her and build toys and. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Interesting. It's just. So he just refused to act like a blind person. Yeah, Hard stop. All right, 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.

[Jack Teeter]

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 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 wanted to get his engineering degree. Well, University of Michigan had a great school.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep.

[Jack Teeter]

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?

[Mike Rowe]

There's no playbook for this.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, so his older cousin Neva 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Who's the dean?

[Jack Teeter]

Remember Henry Spangler?

[Mike Rowe]

Right, Spangler, yeah, Henry Spangler.

[Jack Teeter]

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 going to 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.

[Mike Rowe]

They let him try precisely because they knew he'd fail.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, exactly. And he went through. He graduated, came back for his master's. 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, as one does. Yeah, in that time with the cars were, you know, and so they was the Teeter Hartley Motor Company. And so that was going well. But then, okay, 1917, 1918, World War I 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 going to do here, Ralph? You got an office. And he overheard them talking about a problem they had.

[Mike Rowe]

Because he can hear anything a mile away.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, yeah, he can hear anything a mile away. And he overhears a problem they have. They can't balance these turbine rotors in their torpedo boat destroyers. The boats are breaking apart at high speeds.

[Mike Rowe]

So people understand the incredible amount of torque being generated by these turbines. And if they're not perfectly in sync.

[Jack Teeter]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

It's like those sympathetic vibrations that could shake a bridge right to the point where it would collapse.

[Jack Teeter]

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. Come on, what do you, what do you know? You can't see anything. But he, he balanced drive shafts for race cars at Indy and he knew that he could balance these by spinning the rotors in opposite directions.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Jack Teeter]

Now why did he think of that? I don't know.

[Mike Rowe]

Why did he know that?

[Jack Teeter]

I honestly don't know.

[Mike Rowe]

It had never been done.

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

He actually solved the problem. Yeah, he solved by getting the turbines to spin counterclockwise and clockwise contemporaneously.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, 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 any, 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, 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 customers built motor cars were going out of business.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. Because Henry Ford is making it possible, right, everybody to have one.

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

And this is a very simple thing, right? I mean for. So people can visualize it.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, I should have brought some six.

[Mike Rowe]

Inches, maybe in diameter.

[Jack Teeter]

They're. 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 got eight cylinders, there's six in a car. They're going very fast.

[Mike Rowe]

So was it self lubricating at that point?

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Jack Teeter]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

So my friends at SkillsUSA are on a mission to grow their membership to a million members by 2030. And I'm on a mission to do whatever I can to help them achieve that goal. Because as you've heard me say before, SkillsUSA is our country's best hope to close the widening skills gap. They're the number one workforce development organization for students and they've been empowering students to become skilled professionals and career ready leaders and responsible community members for 60 years. I just spoke at their international competition again in Atlanta. I Talked to maybe 22,000 people there at the convention center and it's incredible. I'm telling you, these students, they compete in a couple dozen different vocations and just watching that happen is super cool. But then watching the recruiters from these Fortune 500 companies go down to the competition floor and hire these kids on the spot, it's unbelievable. There's so many good things to say about the organization. I just want to encourage parents who might be listening to get involved. Maybe you can start a chapter in your school. Maybe you can volunteer if there's already a chapter. Skillsusa.org Mike this is a movement. It's not new, but it is a revelation to a lot of people who have never heard of it before. Help us spread the word. See the good work they're [e-mail] Mike and get involved. I'm talking skills US skills US skills USA. 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.

[Jack Teeter]

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 Duesenberg 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. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. But at the time, it was an integral part. And those parts were still coming out of Hagerstown. Right.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah. Now this.

[Mike Rowe]

This is. What did that do to the town to have a company anchored in it that was experiencing that degree of success?

[Jack Teeter]

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 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Sure.

[Jack Teeter]

The company was doing very well because even though automobile sales, new car sales sunk, everybody who had a car had to keep them running.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Jack Teeter]

And the trucks delivering and so on and so forth. And so they were buying piston rings. So. Piston ring.

[Mike Rowe]

Their business was doing good, but recession proof or Depression.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, 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. No matter.

[Mike Rowe]

It was like those company towns you read about. Like Woolrich. Right. The company that makes a great example. 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 Woolrich, and it certainly wasn't the case with Perfect Circle.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah. 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, work with their hands. And as the company expanded, soon they had four factories. And at the height of, I think they had 6,500 workers during World War II, because they had to hire a lot of workers. For wartime production. They converted everything to wartime production, and they hired a lot more workers. And because they had so many workers in these small towns, they knew their responsibility was for the communities. And as I said before, they would build libraries and schools. And at that time, they were paying 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 20s and 30s, 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.

[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. 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.

[Jack Teeter]

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. Uaw, 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 48, 1948, Ralph signed a contract. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

And was it the workers themselves, Jack, or was it purely outside forces coming into unionize? Like, I'm always curious about how these things originate.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, they originate with union reps that Go down to the town, and then they meet with the workers outside of business and restaurants or wherever they. They gather. And they. They try to convince him, hey, look, you guys are working. You need to be protected. And I think to some extent, that was going on Certainly before 1955. 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 2,500 workers that did not understand the value that the company places on employees. 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. They were just workers working a job and wanted. Wanted more money. And they. They probably thought, oh, yeah, the union's going to 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 1200. I think they set up a tent city. They brought violence to the townspeople. The townspeople, I mean, and they weren't local. They were from outside, and they were going to 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Jack Teeter]

And people died. 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. The National Guard came in.

[Mike Rowe]

And, you know, you're oddly understated here, Jack. Like. Like once. Once we start talking about the advent of tanks. I mean. 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 have gone way off the rails.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, Mike. I mean, they could have. They decided to stay in the factory and some managers and workers together, and they were actually armed because they thought they were going to 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 and. Because the mail kept coming. But I'm just.

[Mike Rowe]

I just figured everybody's shorts are going to be filthy at this point. I mean, there's a lot of fear in the air. If you listen to this podcast with any degree of regularity you know that the folks who build our submarines, the maritime industrial base needs to hire 140,000 tradesmen over the next decade. Well, never mind all that. The need is spiraling upwards constantly and the opportunities are now officially extraordinary. These guys are going to be hiring not 140,000, but 250,000 skilled tradespeople and many of them need to be hired right now. This has become an issue of national security and national significance. And individually it's just an extraordinary chance to begin a stable career that offers strong pay in the skilled trades along with some really important work. I'm talking about welding and pipe fitting, electrical, cnc, machining, metrology, additive manufacturing. There's just so much opportunity, guys, and this is an enormous contract. You're talking about three nuclear powered submarines being delivered to the Navy every year for the next decade. Get in on this. Now all the hiring is [e-mail] you have to go there to see just how much opportunity exists. It's worth a visit. Buildsubmarines.com Build, come on and build a submarine. Why don't you build a [e-mail] it was.

[Jack Teeter]

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 fella 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, do the teeters? Tell me about the teeters. Tell me about this Ralph Teeter, you know, and he, and he said, well, no, he wouldn't say anything. He just played dumb. It was really bad. But they got through it. And now here's the interesting thing. They settled on the exact same terms that Ralph offered them.

[Mike Rowe]

Right?

[Jack Teeter]

The exact same terms.

[Mike Rowe]

So there was no material improvement, there was no gain because they were already, he was already treating his workers in relative terms pretty damn well.

[Jack Teeter]

And Ralph's, his feeling was if the union can convince the workers to join, that's another thing. He's not going to get in their way. And they did. One factory joined the union. They kind of caved into the demands. The other three stood strong.

[Mike Rowe]

So what ultimately became of Perfect Circle and Charlie at some point dies.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, he. 1937, he died. And then Lothaire, his son Lothaire took over. 1946, Ralph Teeter became president.

[Mike Rowe]

And right after the war.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, right after the war, around that time, I guess. Well, and during the 50s, they were now selling their products in 91 countries around the world. And so the 50s were kind of 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 because it never fails.

[Mike Rowe]

All great, obvious ideas are initially greeted with insanity. You must be crazy. Who in the world is going to 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 and just sat there like a Christmas ham.

[Jack Teeter]

Rose and I did that, too.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, Rose, by the way. Rose, by the way, is Jack's girlfriend. Quick sidebar. You made me banana bread, Rose?

[Jack Teeter]

Yes, I did.

[Mike Rowe]

Look at this. And there's. What is that? Is that Rosemary on there?

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, Rosemary. And all right, this is on that sidebar. That's kind of her world famous.

[Mike Rowe]

World famous banana bread.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, yeah, everybody loves it.

[Mike Rowe]

All right, well, I'm going to dig into that once we're done talking. I'm just going to let it sit here right now as a. As a tease.

[Jack Teeter]

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 at, we got to manufacture this. They said, there's no way that people are going to pay for the luxury of an automatic transmission, an automatic gear shift. And, well, he sold his patent to Bendix.

[Mike Rowe]

Wait a minute, wait a minute. I forgot that. How instrumental was Ralph in ushering in the automatic transmission?

[Jack Teeter]

Oh, very 1924, the fluid actuated gear shift. There was an automatic gear shift. And his friends, and he had a lot of friends in manufacturing, and they just said, no one's going to pay.

[Mike Rowe]

For luxury of not shifting gears.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, yeah. Because it was going to be too expensive. Well, fast forward to what you were saying about the cruise control. The company didn't want to manufacture it, and, well, he was very disappointed. And. 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 of the cruise control, and he convinced Detroit companies To test it.

[Mike Rowe]

Is Perfect Circle still Perfect Circle?

[Jack Teeter]

No, it was. The last Factories closed in 1995, 100 years after the company was born. It was bought by. Well, 1963, the company was acquired by Dana. That was a big 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.

[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.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, to test it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Jack Teeter]

And Chevrolet, Ford and Chrysler, I believe, were testing. And at the same time, 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, Detroit is testing the product, and so it's getting all this press and excitement, and Chrysler decides. They invite Ralph up. We're going to 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.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, 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 write, 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 going to happen. They're never going to get an automatic transmission. They're never going to take cruise control. No, no, no. Never going to happen.

[Jack Teeter]

Do you know, he said in 1974, he said, if I could have seen, I would have never developed it. The idea, Mike, he came up with the idea in 1936. He, of course, had drivers for him, and one of them was Harry Lindsay, his patent attorney. And Harry was a bad driver. Let's just say it like it is. He was a throttle brake driver.

[Mike Rowe]

He's a Patent attorney.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

He's got a lot going on.

[Jack Teeter]

So, you know, I can only visualize Ralph sitting there like this.

[Mike Rowe]

Geez, Harry, I'm getting nauseous.

[Jack Teeter]

So he. He said to himself, well, okay, I got to 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.

[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. Yeah, 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.

[Jack Teeter]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You know, but just, Mike, before you move on. Yeah.

[Chuck]

I did find the name of that disease, and it's kind of interesting because it's called sympathetic ophthalmia.

[Jack Teeter]

That's it?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

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. It's really crazy. Yeah. But that's what. It's particularly prevalent in puncture wounds to one eye.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[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.

[Jack Teeter]

Correct.

[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 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.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

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.

[Chuck]

Sympathetic ophthalmia. Sounds like I'm lifting.

[Jack Teeter]

That's the term that.

[Mike Rowe]

That's why I keep Chuck every now and then.

[Jack Teeter]

I knew he'd come up with him.

[Mike Rowe]

40 minutes, but he found it.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And he Chimed in at just the right time.

[Chuck]

For the record, I had it a long time ago. I just wait for a minute to jump in.

[Jack Teeter]

So thank you, Chuck. That the. I'm glad you came up with that.

[Mike Rowe]

Fascinating. Really, really interesting. But Ralph married, had kids.

[Jack Teeter]

One.

[Mike Rowe]

One kid, yeah.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, that's Marjorie. 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, 1995. And when I read that book, I. 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, I guess Ralph as a person, the way I remember as a kid, was very kind, an 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 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 Wallacea, where Ralph had a summer home.

[Mike Rowe]

He was kind of a. Like a boat guy, too, on top of everything else.

[Jack Teeter]

Was he. Was he a boat guy? He built speedboats and. Of course he did, yeah. And he became friends with Chris Smith. 1.

[Mike Rowe]

As in Chris Kraft?

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, as in Chris Kraft. 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 Ms. Detroit, too. And that was the late, I don't know, 19, 19, early 20s, I can't remember, but that boat went 70 miles an hour.

[Mike Rowe]

Now, unlike a car, he can drive the boat because he'd get somebody next to him.

[Jack Teeter]

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 on the water. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

70 miles an hour on the water is different. Yeah, 70 miles an hour on macadam. Yeah, Concrete.

[Jack Teeter]

So he loved Lake Wallacea 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?

[Mike Rowe]

Why they look at you? Well, because they knew your resume.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, they knew my resume.

[Mike Rowe]

And real brief. What is that? Just so people understand.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, I worked at Universal Pictures for most of the 80s and in marketing, and I moved into production. So I had. 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 to. 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. Oh, I should backtrack. Before my father passed away, 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 going to make this documentary makes me feel good today. Anyway, I refined the script and. And had 48 revisions. And then 2021, I decided, okay, I'm going to 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 on camera. I'll bring a film crew to Hagerstown. I'll start there.

[Mike Rowe]

Now, were they nervous? Were they enthused?

[Jack Teeter]

They were excited. Well, my cousin Ralph is very excited. And about this, he was named after.

[Mike Rowe]

Son.

[Jack Teeter]

Grandpa. Grandson.

[Mike Rowe]

Grandson. Marjorie. Son.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, of course.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay.

[Jack Teeter]

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 going to get it. I had the script, but. But where am I going to 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 kind of going on blind faith. Anyway, it sort of worked out.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, I'd say it sort of worked.

[Jack Teeter]

It worked out to the point.

[Mike Rowe]

Now, blind faith led to blind logic.

[Jack Teeter]

Led to blind logic which is circling back to one man's vision. The feature film. We're in development of a feature film. Oh, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Terrific.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

That could be huge.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, we're excited about it. We have the writer, Howie Klausner, who wrote Space Cowboys and the film Reagan. So I have the film team that brought you Reagan last year with Sean McNamara directed.

[Mike Rowe]

Mark Joseph.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Mark Joseph was the producer and Dennis Quaid was the star.

[Jack Teeter]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Dennis Quaid sat right where you're sitting.

[Jack Teeter]

I know. I watched that podcast.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you've got Excellent.

[Jack Teeter]

I love Dennis Quaid.

[Chuck]

And Mark Joseph might be there sometime soon, too.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, good. Great. So I love it. What a weird perfect circle. Little world.

[Jack Teeter]

It is, isn't it?

[Chuck]

Well, I didn't even know that.

[Jack Teeter]

Connection. That's the connection. Anyway, we're working on a script now.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow. So what's the reception been like? I hear this thing's winning awards here and there.

[Jack Teeter]

And 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 be released July 8, 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 to.

[Mike Rowe]

You. You did it. You actually did.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, with the help of the distributor. You know, I had to get a distributor, modesty aside.

[Mike Rowe]

And a hell of a narrator.

[Jack Teeter]

We're hell of a narrator. Right?

[Mike Rowe]

Really.

[Jack Teeter]

So we're gonna get out there now, and it's very. It's very exciting because I didn't know if we were gonna ever get it distributed. You never know. You make a film, you hope that people will like it when you screen it. You hope that maybe it's gonna be good enough that a distributor will want it, but you just don't know.

[Mike Rowe]

You don't know.

[Jack Teeter]

You just don't know. And.

[Mike Rowe]

But. 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. 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 said, how am I going to deal with this? My freaking 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.

[Chuck]

Dean of staring them down without any eyes.

[Mike Rowe]

Staring them down without even seeing them.

[Jack Teeter]

That's the funny part. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Staring them down without even seeing them. You know, look, I want to just compliment you again. 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 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.

[Jack Teeter]

Oh, my gosh.

[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.

[Jack Teeter]

Oh, you're absolutely right.

[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 want to be remembered, and they want their. Their ancestors to be remembered. And there's something so poetic and beautiful about that. 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.

[Jack Teeter]

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. 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.

[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 going to open up this banana bread, Rose, if you don't mind.

[Jack Teeter]

You open up the banana bread? And by the way.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, yeah. Are there gifts?

[Jack Teeter]

I have blind logic hats.

[Mike Rowe]

Nice.

[Jack Teeter]

And T shirts for you, Chuck and Mary.

[Mike Rowe]

Great.

[Chuck]

And just so people know, this will air after July 8th. So the. The movie is out now?

[Mike Rowe]

It's out right now.

[Chuck]

Yes.

[Jack Teeter]

Great. Tune in to Amazon and itunes. Comcast. Cox.

[Mike Rowe]

Hey, do you care if when we edit this together, we use some footage from the dock? So.

[Jack Teeter]

No, I'd like you to. I'd like you to. Yeah. In fact, I'll work with Chuck. Anything you need.

[Mike Rowe]

Sure. Yeah.

[Chuck]

Okay, great.

[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 camera so I can give it an honest assessment.

[Jack Teeter]

Oh, that. Oh, that's great. Wow.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, I'm very particular about my banana bread.

[Jack Teeter]

Gotta be careful what you do because this could inspire Rose to open up a little business here. Banana.

[Mike Rowe]

If I take a bite of this and I drive down Santa Monica six months from now, and. Roses. Banana Emporium. Banana Bread Emporium is open for business. We're going to need to talk about a percentage, I'm afraid, because I, you know.

[Jack Teeter]

Oh, yeah, she's. She's very good with giving you a percentage.

[Mike Rowe]

I'll narrate your commercials, Rose.

[Jack Teeter]

Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

You're welcome. Little piece from the end here. Oh, look at the. Oh, it's so moist. That's pretty good banana bread. Welcome. Pretty good banana bread, Rose.

[Jack Teeter]

Well, thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

You're Very welcome.

[Jack Teeter]

Glad you like it.

[Mike Rowe]

Hey, thanks for the swag, the carbohydrates and your time.

[Jack Teeter]

Thank you, Mike and Chuck, thank you. Thank you very much.

[Mike Rowe]

I really admire what you've done, and I hope it inspires other people to tell the stories of their own families.

[Jack Teeter]

I was admired and inspired 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? Well, I'd love that book.

[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.

[Jack Teeter]

Because I love it so much. The stories in here are phenomenal.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, if I do another one, I'll see if I can't get Ralph in there.

[Jack Teeter]

Because, look, the Mel Brooks one.

[Mike Rowe]

That's a good one. That's a good one. Spoiler alert. Now people know it's Mel Brooks. You're killing me, Jack.

[Jack Teeter]

Yeah, but they're going to read it and they won't know it's him.

[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. Right, Jack?

[Jack Teeter]

Grand or great?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, 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.

[Chuck]

They don't call it the Great Old Opry.

[Mike Rowe]

No, that's true.

[Jack Teeter]

How about Ralph Teeter's great nephew?

[Mike Rowe]

That's not bad. But they also didn't call it the Grand Depression.

[Jack Teeter]

No, that's true.

[Mike Rowe]

Thanks for listening, folks. You're a terrific guest. You're welcome back.

[Jack Teeter]

Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

Thanks. And Rose. Yeah? I'll see you at the Banana Bread Emporium. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile.

[Jack Teeter]

Then share.

[Mike Rowe]

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. 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. Not four. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review.

[Chuck]

And not three.

[Mike Rowe]

All you got to do is Leave a quick 5 star review. Definitely not two. All you got to do is LEAVE a quick 5 star review.

[Chuck]

We need five.

[Mike Rowe]

All you got to do is leave a quick Even if you hate it. 5.

[Jack Teeter]

Especially if you hate it. Thank you.

[Chuck]

The Way I Heard it is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.