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The Moth
Kevin Boggs & Anne Driscoll: StorySLAM Favorites
00:19:46
A college kid from a small town in Tennessee has a chance to see the world and a teacher working to exonerate wrongly-convicted criminals is the victim of an attempted mugging. Kevin Boggs’ story comes to us courtesy of SpeakeasyDC.
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- [00:01]
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- [01:38]
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- [02:46]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. For our first story this week on the podcast, we have something a little bit different. There's a live storytelling group in Washington D.C. called Speakeasy DC and they've been doing live storytelling shows since 1997. Kevin Boggs was a really gifted storyteller and a prominent voice in the D.C. storytelling scene. Kevin passed away in March. And after talking with the folks down at Speakeasy dc we're really happy to be able to present this story from Kevin Boggs from a 2012 show that they did. And the theme was Hero's Journey, Stories about tests and quests. Here's Kevin.
- [03:31]
Kevin Boggs
I am from a small town of 3,000 people in East Tennessee. Yes. After I graduated, I traveled a whole 25 miles east to Johnson City where I attended East Tennessee State University, home of the Fighting Buccaneers. Get bucked up? Well, why don't you get bucked up? We were called the Buccaneers, of course, because of that problem of rogue pirates in the Smoky Mountains. I was your average college student. I worked part time at the drive through at Burger King. Here you go. Here's your sandwich. Here's your drink. Have a good night. I was studying psychology and I sang in our 16 member chamber choir. One day my sophomore year, Dr. Genret, our director, said, we are going to Europe. Our choir had been chosen to travel for two weeks in Yugoslavia as guests of the Yugoslavian government. They had opened up their borders and they had separated themselves from the Russian state to make the pot even sweeter. We were going to spend one day in Venice, Italy, and one day in Vienna, Austria. And I all of a sudden imagined myself hearing Beethoven in Vienna, a gondola a and Venice and whatever it was you did in Yugoslavia. I decided that I wanted to be sophistimicated. I was going to go to Europe. This became my quest. So I said, what do I have to do, Dr. Jeannette? What do I have to do on this? And he said, you have to raise $2,000. Well, this is 1985 in East Tennessee. So I did what every poor college student did. I went straight to my parents and my stepfather who was all about independence, said, you want to go, you find the dough. So I quickly did the math about my part time job at the Burger King. There was no way. So like Greece, I started an austerity program. I started clipping coupons from the local newspaper so I could get the $2 chicken box at KFC. I started eating at my grandparents and God forbid I only drank at frat parties. But it wasn't enough. I even returned the new pair of black satin parachute pants with the zippers to the chess king at the mall. I had just received a credit card in the mail because I was a sophomore. So I had bought them and I took them back to the mall and when I returned them, they gave me cash. So I started to think. So I went to every department store in the mall and I applied for a credit card. And five to 10 business days later, when I received my credit cards, you know, I went back to J.C. penney's and I bought a pair of penny loafers and I went over to the Radio Shack and I bought a new Betamax vcr. And then I went to Sears and Roebucks and bought me a Black and Decker chainsaw. I drove home in my 1982 Chevy Love truck, waited a couple of days and then went back and returned everything back to every store for hard earned cash. Then I took that cash, $1,000, and went to the American bank and paid off that loan on my Chevy Love Truck and got a personal loan using my title for a Lien for $1,700. Let us not forget, I am 19 years old and I have already mastered the financial landscape, which led to the prosperity of the 80s and the eventual bankruptcy of Europe. But somehow I am still $300 shy. I have put posters up in my room, I've put pictures up. I have put a big banner that says Belgrader Bust. But I cannot come up with the money. I've sat down and I have done the math. And that night I have to go to choir rehearsal. It's called choir rehearsal, not choir practice, because as Dr. Generate would say, athletes practice, artist rehearse. I was late because I didn't want to have to tell him, but when I got there, everyone was abuzz. Foreigners coming to town. Foreigner, the American, British rock band with anthems such as Urgent Urgent and Jukebox Hero. They're coming to town and we're going to sing with them, he says. I am so excited. I completely forget about Belgrade. I completely forget about Yugoslavia. Two weeks later there, we show up at the Johnson City Freedom Hall Civic center and we rehearse with Foreigner. We go through the whole number that we're going to perform with him. And later that night we are fitted with long, flowing white robes. I must have done really well in rehearsal because they gave me a Tambourine. So we sit there backstage and wait because we're the last song of the evening. And they start to play and they're in the chorus, and we're backstage, we're in the wings. And as the music starts to swell towards the chorus, we march out on stage and I walk downstage to my microphone. And then on cue, I'm like, I want to know what love is. And I start singing and I start swaying in my big robe. And I'm hitting that tambourine and I'm looking at. On the. And people are swaying and singing along. And the guitarist comes over and he does this big solo right beside me. And I'm just giving it all the hip and all the tambourine I have. And I look out over the audience and I am awestruck. I totally forget about Europe. And we come off stage and we go out and we drink and I spend money. And the next day I'm like, oh, my God, what happened? And I go back to choir rehearsal, and I'm prepared. I go early to tell Dr. Ginrett that I could. No way. Now I can go to Europe. And he's like, don't you understand? The Foreigner gig paid. It paid enough that all of us can fly from New York to Belgrade and back. It paid $500 per person. Now I have $300 extra dollars for my trip. So I. And I go to Vienna and I see an opera, and I go to St. Mark's Square and I sip espresso. But I go to Yugoslavia and I go to Dubrovnik and I swim in the Adriatic Sea, and I go to Mostar and cross that famous bridge. I go to Split and see the Colosseums and the ruins from the Romans. I go to Sarajevo and I see the stadium that was demolished 10 years later during the war. I see things that don't exist any longer, and I come back to the United States to this mountain of debt for things I don't even own. There's this. $250 for a pair of Sebago black penny loafers. A blackened Decker chainsaw. $350. A country boy who got to see the world. Priceless.
- [12:02]
Dan Kennedy
That was Kevin Boggs telling a story at Speakeasy dc. For our second story, we're going to go across the Atlantic to one of our newer Slam series in Dublin. The theme of the night was Busted. Here's storyteller Ann Driscoll.
- [12:26]
Ann Driscoll
So I arrived in Ireland September 3rd, 2013, and I came here as a US Fulbright Scholar. It's a US State Department program, cultural exchange program. And the reason I came is I came to work with the Irish Innocence Project at Griffith College. And I'm not a lawyer, I'm actually a journalist. And my reason for coming was to teach the law students that work on this program how to investigate an interview. There are about 20 students, law students at Griffith, that are looking into about 25 cases in which it's believed that somebody's been wrongfully convicted. They work under the supervision of pro bono lawyers. And I came. It was a great year and so wonderful. I came back again this year, but I went home for the summer to Boston. And my last day, I had gone to the ATM machine and taken out €120. And I was walking back to my apartment, which overlooks Griffith College, and I thought, oh, it's your last night here. You should take some photos of the neighborhood. So I did. I took some photos. And then when I got to Herald's Cross Bridge, where I live, I thought, oh, you should take some pictures of Griffith College, too. Now, you have to keep in mind that I worked at an Innocence Project in the States. And basically a lot of the work that you do in investigating wrongful convictions is proving that people have made mistakes, which makes you not very popular with the police and the prosecutors who have made these mistakes. So when I got to the bridge at Heralds Cross, I took some more pictures of Griffith College. And while I was taking pictures, a guy came up on a bike behind me and tried to grab my phone. And what happened next was the best mugging ever. You know, when something like that happens, you don't know how you're going to react. And so I just said, get the fuck out of here. And we started to wrestle. And miraculously, I got my phone back and I thought that was the end of it. Except that when I looked, I had a handbag, a big handbag, and it was caught on his handlebars of his bike. And I could see that he saw if he got away, he was going to get my bag. And I realized immediately that if he got my bag, not only was he going to actually get €150, but my credit cards, my GNIB card, my PPS number, and my passport. And I was leaving the next day. And I knew that if he got my passport, I was not going to make it to see my son get his doctorate in physical therapy. So a mother mode went into play, and I went mental. So we started fighting again. This time I almost pulled his pants off. And then at one point, I ended up on the ground. My pants got shredded, my knees got shredded. And he could see that people were starting to notice. And so he left. He left my bag. He also left his bike. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw this car pull over. And a guy got out of the car and he said, I'm an off duty garda. I saw the whole thing. I've called for assistance. And I thought immediately the irony of this, that I have spent my entire year here tearing down the work of the police. And here they are coming to my rescue. So right after that, a woman came from across the street and she said, I saw the whole thing. He went down under the bridge. He went that way. And she said, by the way, you are the only person I know who gets mugged and then ends up mugging the mugger. And you know, the cop, he was with his daughter, who was probably about 17 or 18. And I said to him, look, I'm fine, you know, you can leave, I'm okay. And he said, nah. I said, you know, your daughter's there waiting. He said, ah, she's probably just texting her friend. And that woman said, yeah, she's probably telling them, my dad offered me a ride, should have taken the bus. So a third guy comes over and he's on a bike. And he said, listen, I follow the guy on my bike. I called the police. I think they have him. So shortly after that, the cops come and they asked me what happened. So I said, I teach at Griffith College. They said, oh, what do you teach? And I thought, I am not telling you. I teach wrongful convictions. So I said, journalism. And anyways, they brought me down to ID the guy. Now, I know that 75% of the wrongful convictions that happen and are overturned on DNA evidence happen because of bad eyewitness identification. And I didn't want to be responsible for somebody else's wrongful conviction. But I went down and this kind of idea is called a show up. And there was two cops and the guy. And I looked at him and I thought, I know he had short blonde hair, but was he that short? I don't know. He was on a bike behind me. I know he had on a navy blue tracksuit because I almost pulled it off of him. But were the stripes white or green? I don't know. And in the end I thought, yeah, it seems like he's the one. But the next day I got a call and the police asked me if I would participate in a couple of interviews. People wanted to interview me, and I declined because I thought it would take a reporter about 30 seconds to find out who I was. So in the end, he was busted, but so was I.
- [19:02]
Dan Kennedy
Ann Driscoll is a journalist, author, teacher, and speaker. Anne has worked most recently with the Irish Innocence Project, Justice Brandeis Law Project, and as a U.S. fulbright Scholar. The Irish Innocence Project is hosting the first ever International Innocence Conference and Wrongful Conviction film festival on the 26th and 27th of June at Griffith College in Dublin. You can find more information at innocenceproject, ie. Thanks for listening to the Moth Podcast and we hope you have a storyworthy week.
- [19:39]
Naturebox Advertiser
Dan Kennedy is author of the books Loser Goes First Rock on and American Spirit. He's a regular host and performer with the Moth when he's not on Twitter.
- [19:49]
Dan Kennedy
Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest Podcast audio production by Whitney Jones. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org.