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Apple (1:01)

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Dan Kennedy (1:32)

Hey, this is the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy and summer is officially here. I mean, I'm saying that on the middle of August. In the middle of August, I guess. Yeah, I'm a little late to the party to say summer's officially here, but you know that it's a universal time to live a little easier. The days are longer, the nights seem just as long, and those two things combined are a perfect recipe for fun. But sometimes the fun goes a little too far. And that's where we're going to start our first story this week. It comes to us from a Milwaukee story slam where the theme of the night was unintended. This is Marian Spirlis telling her story live at the Moth.

Marian Spirlis (2:12)

The summer that I was seven, I killed my father's prize rooster accidentally. I was raised on a small dairy farm in the southeastern part of Wisconsin in the mid-1940s. I wasn't a typical daughter of a farmer. I liked being feminine and wearing dresses all year, sundresses in the summer. I was very fastidious, didn't like getting dirty. Found out later that my cousins called me secretly Princess Poo Poo. But I was a typical farmer's daughter in that I loved all the animals that were on our farm. And because I was quite little, the only task I was assigned was to feed and water the chickens and the ducks, which I loved. Weren't very many children that were in the area. So I had to use my imagination, write plays in my head, stories in my head. And I did listen to radio. My favorites were westerns. Love the Lone Ranger and that Silver Steed and Gene Autorey. And when I finished listening to Gene Autry, I would go into the barn and slide on top of the broad backs of our two workhorses, lady and Whitey, and sang Home, Home on the Range. I'm Back in the Saddle Again. And that was kind of my life. The summer that I was seven when this incident happened. My parents were haying. They were bringing haying in from the field, and my grandfather was staying with us for the week to help him. To help them, rather. And so I was left in my own devices because I was such a good little girl. They knew I could safely stay there and not do anything that I shouldn't. But I was bored, and I decided to play the Lone Ranger. So our house was on a slight slope and the barn lowered and the chicken coop was down there. So I ran down the hill and ran through the flock of hens that was below, and they went. And I'm like, well, that was kind of fun, okay. But I remembered that earlier, a couple weeks earlier, my parents had taken myself with them to a movie. And it may have been a newsreel, I don't know, but I saw a plane dropping bombs, and I thought, that's what I need. I need more ammunition to get these chickens going. And so I went down around the corner of the chicken coop where the granary was, and we had shelled corn, so the cob was lightweight. We used them to start our stove as kindling. And so I picked up the front of my dress, my sundress, and loaded it with these corn cobs and went back up the hill and tore down the hill, throwing corn cobs amongst the chickens. And I remembered in the movie they said, bombs away, bombs away. So I did that, and the chickens went, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And I threw one last corn cob. And my father's prize rooster, Charlie, walked out of the hen house. I'm sure he was aghast at what was going on with his ladies. And he walked in front of the corn cob, and he fell on the ground, and I thought, oh, my Lord. And I ran down to him, and I remember shaking him and saying, charlie, wake up. Wake up. Wake up. But he wasn't going to wake up. And I remember seeing the wind blow the feathers on his chest, and he was quite still. And then I realized I had killed this rooster. And I started sobbing. I clutched him to me, and I started sobbing and crying. And my grandfather had come into the pump house to get water, and he ran down by me, and he said, marion, are you hurt? What's wrong? I said, I killed Charlie. And he said, you killed Charlie? And I explained to him what happened. And he engulfed me and Charlie, who I was now holding, and said, marian, it was an accident. It was an accident. You didn't do it on purpose. I said, no, but he's dead, and my father's going to kill me. He said, no, he isn't. And he stopped for a minute because he said, I'm not going to tell him, and you're not either. But at that time, you know, in the 1940s, that rooster would have provided a lot of meat. So this was a big decision on my grandfather's part to help me to do this. And so he said, let's get a shovel. We're going to bury him down by the mailbox. Your father never goes that way. He takes the other driver. And that's what we did. And several nights later, at suppertime, my father said casually, you know, I haven't seen Charlie around. Oh, dear God. My heart stopped. I knew on my forehead it said, rooster Killer. But my mouth was open. I was ready to spill my guts. I was going to just say what happened. And my grandfather quickly said to my father, you know, John, I remember seeing a weasel down at the chicken coop. And my father said, well, he swore. But he said, well, we'll have to keep an eye out for the hens to make sure that nothing happens to them. And my grandfather caught my eye and smiled at me. And it was one of those moments when an adult and a child bond together because you know that that person's got your back and everything's going to be okay. And the lesson I learned was that everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has accidents, even children. And also, if you're going to do a skit, don't ask innocent animals to be part of it.