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- [00:00]
Dan Kennedy
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See guarantee details@turbotax.com guarantees this podcast is brought to you by Stamps.com Summer is finally here and you want as much free time as possible. Don't let going to the post office cut into that free time. Use stamps.com instead. With stamps.com you print postage right from your desk. You won't have to go to the post office. Find parking, wait your turn. Stamps.com turns your PC or Mac into your personal post office. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your computer and printer. Print everything from stamps to shipping labels whenever you need it. Then just hand it to your mailman. Stamps.com is so convenient and easy to use you'll never waste time going to the post office again. Right now there's a special offer for listeners of the Moth podcast, a no risk trial plus $110 bonus offer that includes a digital scale and up to $55 free postage. Don't wait. Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the home page and type in moth. That's stamps.com enter moth. This podcast is brought to you by squarespace.com if you have a story to tell about starting a new business or sharing photos from a recent adventure, Squarespace gives you an all in one platform to bring these stories to life. With modern templates, mobile responsive designs, simple drag and drop tools, and 24 hour support, you can create a professional website or online portfolio in just a few minutes. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase on new accounts, head to squarespace.com and use offer code themoth.
- [03:30]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. We've got an episode of the Moth Radio Hour for you this week. One hour of stories right here on the Moth Podcast. You'll hear from Mikayla Murphy, Graham Shelby, Corey Rosen, Lily B. This is a great hour of stories. Hope you guys enjoyed it.
- [03:57]
Jennifer Hickson
From prx this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson from the Moth and I'll be your host this time. At the Moth, we ask people to tell true stories from their lives. Stories about the moments and circumstances and people that shape them. So it's not surprising that family members, sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins figure heavily into a lot of the stories. All of the stories in this episode feature family dynamics, legends, mysteries, battles and stubborn determination, as in this first story about a family that really loves baseball. Here's Michaela Murphy live at the Moth in Portland, Oregon.
- [04:36]
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When I was a little girl, every Sunday after Mass, my family would make a beeline for the living room and we'd all take our places. My father would sink into his La Z boy recliner, channel 38 and take your shoes off, put your feet up. It's time to meet up with the Boston Red Sox. Boston's for the Boston Red Sox. Relax, relax, relax and drink a Budweiser. And we'd all watch the screen, riveted because the quality of our lives was about to be determined by the Boston Red Sox. For the rest of the week, we would all hold our breath and watch for Carl Yastremsky's next at bat, Don Zimmer's big plan. Oh, and that great green Monster if the Red Sox won. Pizza for dinner. When they lost, my mother cooked and we ate in silence. And we all hoped and we all longed for the year it was going to be our year. And the Red Sox, they were going to win the series. And when it did finally happen, my dad didn't see it. He died suddenly when I was 16 years old watching a Red Sox game. And the medical consensus was that a steady diet of BE beer, cigarettes and Vienna sausage killed my father. But I was there. I know the Red Sox did it. At my father's funeral, as his best friends carried the world's greatest Red Sox van from the church out to the cemetery, the entire congregation stood up. And together they sang Take Me out to the Ball Game. I haven't felt the same about baseball since. Now, my heartbroken family kind of foisted the whole Red Sox mantle onto my little brother Tim, who was 6 years old. And that same summer, there were baseball action figures and baseball camps and birthday cakes in the shape of a baseball diamond. And my Aunt Eileen, who was a nun, a sister of Mercy, actually hired Red Sox players to come to my brother's birthday party. So we had Wade Boggs and Denny Doyle in our living room. Now, I would have nothing of it. I just stood there right in the middle of the whole thing reading Sylvia Plath and rolling my eyes. I hated baseball now. I didn't want to see another game again, and I dreaded the next season. But I needn't have worried, because the next year was 1981 and it was the summer of the baseball strike. Baseball had been so silenced. And then in the middle of that summer, I get a call from my Aunt Eileen, the nun. Hi, Kayla. It's Aunt Eileen. Listen, I just won two tickets to the All Star Game in Cleveland, Ohio with WJAR radio personality Norm Sherman. And tomorrow I'm leaving to go to Rome, Italy, the Vatican, for an audience with the Pope. So I was wondering, if the strike is resolved while I'm with the Holy Father, would you. Could you take your brother to the game? So I figure this is never going to happen. So I say, sure, Aunt Eileen. And she says, you'll get a call. So my Aunt Eileen goes to Italy. She is not gone, like, six hours. And the baseball strike is resolved. And the very first thing that the baseball commissioner does is to reschedule the All Star Game for, like, that two Tuesday to kind of build up the morale of the disillusioned fan. And I get a call, I'm told, to meet all of the other WJAR All Star winners at the Providence Bonanza bus station at 4:30 in the morning. Tell them your Murphy are my only instructions. So I was living in Newport that summer. So the night before the game, I take a bus to Providence and I stay over at my mother's house. And you know, and I'm like 17 years old now and my little brother decides that he's going to wear his little Red Sox outfit to bed so that he'll be all ready to go when the alarm goes off at 3:30. So I set the alarm and we go to sleep and the alarm goes off at 4:30. At 4:30, so the whole house is up and everybody's screaming and blaming and I'm just like, get in the car, get in the car now. So we get in the car, we drive through the still dark streets of Providence, we run into the Bonanza bus station just screaming, I'm Murphy. I'm Murphy. And there are all these old guys standing around with coffee cups and they're like, you're Murphy. They were waiting for you. They just left.
- [09:11]
Mikayla Murphy
Oh my God.
- [09:12]
Sponsor Announcer
Where'd they go? Logan Airport. What airline? I don't know. So we're just standing there and we're looking at this empty bus lane and my little brother is standing there in this little baseball outfit with a catcher's mitt like dangling off his arm like it looks like an ad for the Jimmy fund. And he's standing there and my mother looks at him and then she looks at me and she goes, poor little guy, he's been through a lot. And I say, I know what we'll do. I'll go to the bank and I'll take out the $300 that I've saved up this summer waitressing in Newport. And then we'll go to the airport and we'll get two one way tickets to Cleveland, Ohio. And then we'll go to the stadium and then we'll get there before the first pitch. Where I know from my dad that they don't make personal announcements after the first pitch. And then we'll have them make an announcement to Norm Sherman that we're here and we'll see the game. And my mother just looks at me and she says, that's a great idea. So we go to the bank, I get the money, I go to the airport, I go to buy two tickets to Cleveland. But I can't buy two tickets to Cleveland because that summer in 1981 was also the summer of the air traffic controller strike. So in order to get to Cleveland on time, if our plane left on time for Providence, we could take a plane to Pittsburgh, and if that plane left on time, we could get to Cleveland in time for the game. So I buy the two tickets and we get on the plane and my little brother is sitting there and we're waiting and the plane's not taken off. And we're waiting and the plane's not taken off. And then all of a sudden, all of these other passengers start to bail because their connections are totally hopeless at this point. And I know I should get off this plane, but I can't. And so I do that stupid thing, you know, like, where you go up and you ask somebody, an authority, if they can do anything when they. I can't possibly. So I go up to the flight attendant and I ask her if there's something she can do, and she's like, no, but. And then she gestures to the empty first class cabin and she says, you can move up to first class if you want. So my brother and I are sitting in first class on a plane that's not going anywhere. And we're sitting there, and my brother is going on and on. He had, like, this amazing knowledge of baseball, all these statistics, and he's talking about, like, the starting pitchers, and he's wondering, like, where in the lineup will his favorite player be? Mike Easler of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And to the point where the guy across the aisle from us puts down his Wall Street Journal, and he looks over and he says, hey, are you guys going to the All Star Game? And I say really, really loud, yes, we are. Yes, we are. Yes, we are going to the All Star Game. And then finally, an hour and 40 minutes after its scheduled departure, our plane takes off for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So then I'm standing at the baggage carousel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We have completely missed our connecting flight to Cleveland by, like, an hour. And I have $13 in my pocket, and I'm standing there with my little brother, and I'm kind of like. When the guy from first class comes up to me and he says, hi, my name's Pete. And listen, I know you're trying to get to the All Star Game. And I was thinking that maybe I could rent a car because I'm going to Cleveland, too, and I could drive you. And I think this is exactly what they tell you never to do. Never accept an interstate ride from some guy named Pete that you meet at the baggage carousel in Pittsburgh, you know, And I look at my little brother, you know, and I think, like, we could die. And I say, let's do this. So Pete rents the car, and he's in the driver's seat, and my brother's in the middle, and I'm on the end. And we are driving to Cleveland to get to this All Star Game, and Pete cannot believe my brother's knowledge of baseball. He's just blown away by what my brother knows. He also cannot believe that our mother not only knows about, but has endorsed this trip on her own. You see, he's concerned because he has a daughter who's about my age, and he has a son just like Tim. And I look at him and I think, we had a dad just like you. So Pete drives us to this, like, main box office area. And I walk in, and Pete decides he's going to come with us. And he's got our suitcase, and I've got my little brother. And I walk in saying, I'm Murphy, which, of course, means absolutely nothing to them. And I start to tell them that we're with this WJR thing and are there any tickets? And, of course, there aren't any tickets. And then my little brother asks him, hey, mister, has Mike Easler been up to bat yet? And the guy looks at my little brother, and then he holds up his hand and he says, I'll be right back. And he disappears. But when he comes back, he comes back with this more superior box office guy. And I start to tell him the whole story, and he just puts up his hand and he says, how many tickets do you need? And out of my mouth, I didn't even think about this. I just say, three. And Pete looks at me like I'm like, this scam girl from Rhode island, you know? Like, it's my thing. It's. I get. I just go around, like, conniving my way into all of these major league events, you know? So the guy. The guy lifts up the counter and ushers us in. And we come in and we're told to leave our suitcases there, and we can leave the car where it is. And then we go into the Municipal Stadium, and we're in, like, the underbelly of it, and we're going down all these hallways. And then all of a sudden, I start to hear it, that sound of baseball. And then we follow this guy, and we start to go up this ramp, and the sound gets louder. Then as we go up the ramp, I begin to see it. This sparkling, like, unbelievable flashes of cameras all around us. And then I'm standing there, and I suddenly look down at the field, at the baseball diamond, and I see nine men standing there ready to play baseball. And then my brother nudges me because the usher's taking us to our seats. And we go over to our seats, which are two rows behind then Vice President George Bush. Like, oh, my God. So we're Sitting there. And then, like, this Usher, he's, like, wicked into it, so he starts sending over, like, hats and souvenir stuff. And the game is wild, you know, like, every hit is a run, and it's amazing. And I wasn't even watching it. Pete and my brother were watching the game. I was frantically looking through 72,000 people trying to find Norm Sherman. You know, I'm, like, looking for, I don't know, like, a sign, you know, like a motel room sheet that says, murphy, we're here. You know? And it's not until the seventh inning that I realized that Norm Sherman is a radio personality. I have no idea what he looks like. I'm actually sitting there looking for a voice. And it's the seventh inning, so it's a seventh inning stretch. So everybody stands up to sing Take Me out to the Ball Game. And they're singing Take Me out to the Ball Game. And I'm just standing there. When I look over and I see Pete just toss his arm around my brother, and they're singing this song, and I look at them, and I just think, thank God I said three. When Pete suddenly throws his arm around my shoulders, and together we're singing. And it's 1, 1, 2, 3 strikes, you're out at the old ball game. And then it's over. National League five to four. And what had been this shared experience with 72,000 people came to an end because 72,000 people got up to go home, and I had $13 in my pocket. And that's when Pete said, well, I guess you're coming home with me. So we retrace our steps, and we get our suitcases. And then the other goofy thing is, like, you know, there's no post game traffic for us because we just, like, kind of, like, hung onto the coattails of George Bush's motorcade and just, like, sailed out of the stadium. It was wild. And we're on this highway going north of Cleveland, and we're driving through the night. And then Pete gets off of the highway, and we're driving down this dark road, and then he turns down this other dark road, and my little brother Tim is asleep in my lap when Pete suddenly stops the car. And then he lowers the window, and there's, like, this keypad, and then he punches in some numbers. And then all of a sudden, these lights come on, and they illuminate this wrought iron gate. And written into the top of the wrought iron gate, it says Goodyear. And then these gates swing open, and Pete Goodyear drives us on to his palatial estate. I am like, oh, my God. So then Pete picks up my brother and carries him into, like, the mansion and calls over his shoulder to me to get my mother on the phone. So I go and I get my mother on the phone, and I get her on the phone, and this is what my mother says to me. And Pete's listening in on an extension, so he hears this. Oh, Kayla, thank God it's you. I got the Cleveland police on the other line. I was watching the game, and when I see you, I got worried. Suddenly it's all making sense to Pete. But Pete reassures my mother, who's not particularly worried at this point, that we will be sent home tomorrow on a plane to Providence. Okay, have a good time. So the next day, we wake up and, like, this maid has made breakfast. And Pete, he takes us on a tour of downtown Cleveland and then to his investment banking firm, where his perplexed secretary arranges for two flights to Providence. And then we get to the airport, and here's the other thing. Okay, so it's the air traffic controller strike. So our plane, of course, is totally delayed, but so are all of the All Star players. So my brother and I just go to all of the domestic gates, and he gets these amazing autographs, including Mike Easler of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And he still has these to this day. And then we finally get on the plane, and we fly to Providence, and we get off the plane, and I see my mother down at the end of the gangway, and I just inexplicably burst into tears. And she's completely confused. She's like, what's wrong? I thought you had a good time. Come on now. What happened? And my brother looks at her and says, kinda everything, Ma. And so then my mother takes me to the bus so I can go back to Newport. So I'm on the bus back to Newport, and honest to God, on this bus are these two guys, and they're wearing WJAR All Star hat. So I look at them and I go, hey, you guys. Did you go to the All Star game? And they're like, yeah. And I say, I'm Murphy. They go, you're Murphy? We waited for you. And I say, I know I missed the bus. I didn't miss nothing. By the time we got there, the game was half over. Our seats sucked, the food sucked. How'd you make out? And I said, I had a good time. Thank you so much.
- [20:13]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Mikayla Murphy. She's a writer, playwright, and interactive web specialist who's been telling stories at the moths since 1998. To see a picture of Mikayla, her little brother, and the next generation of fierce Murphy Red Sox fans, visit themoth.org in a moment we'll hear what it's like to finally get a glimpse of your biological father on TV.
- [20:39]
Corey Rosen
The moth is supported by makers 46, a handmade bourbon made only in winter and finished with seared French oak. Staves online@makers46.com Makers 46 Bourbon whiskey, 47% alcohol by volume, distilled in Loretto, Kentucky, reminds listeners to drink responsibly. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.
- [21:23]
TurboTax Announcer
This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.com Squarespace gives you an all in one platform to create a professional website or online portfolio in just a few minutes. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase on new accounts, head to squarespace.com and use the offer code themoth. Thanks again to squarespace.com for supporting the Moth.
- [21:42]
Jennifer Hickson
This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Jennifer Hickson. Our next story is from Graham Shelby. We first met Graham at the Story Slam in Louisville, Kentucky, where we partner with public radio station wfpl. Later, we flew Graham to New York City to tell this story at a mainstage show with the theme Pulling Focus, here's Graham Shelby.
- [22:08]
Mikayla Murphy
When I was a kid, I loved tv. I really loved tv. I was an only child, and other children kind of made me nervous. And the people I trusted most tended to be on tv. And I especially enjoyed detective shows like the Rockford Files and Murder She Wrote and Magnum PI because they were so smart. You know, you'd start off with a mystery and there'd be some suspense and drama, and then at the end they'd.
- [22:40]
Graham Shelby
Worked it all out.
- [22:41]
Mikayla Murphy
It was great. Life was pretty suspense free. But there was this one mystery I wanted to solve. It was my father. I'd never met him. I didn't know where he was. I didn't really know what had happened to him. I grew up with my mom and my stepfather. He was the one who picked me up at kindergarten and grounded me sometimes and, you know, taught me how to tell a joke and catch football and stuff like that. But I was always curious about this other father I'd had, especially because nobody wanted to talk about him now. Over the years, I had put together a few pieces of information I'd, you know, asked or overheard. I knew his name was Jimmy. I knew he was tall. I Knew he liked barbecue. And I knew that when he would get really tickled about something, he would fall on the ground and grab himself and kick his feet in the air. And I knew that because apparently I did that, too. And I also knew that he had been a Green Beret in Vietnam. And when I was still a baby, my mom left him, took me, and we didn't come back. And at some point after she remarried, Jimmy signed some papers so that my stepfather could adopt me. But I wanted to know why all that had happened. And it was hard to get a straight answer out of anybody. And so I kind of did what the TV detectives did, which is take the facts you have and then try to come up with a story that explains it. And so I just went to my mom one day and said, mom, was Jimmy a bad guy? And she said, what do you mean? I said, well, was he a bad guy? Was he mean? Was that why we left? And she said, no, no, he wasn't. He wasn't a bad guy. He was just. He was just messed up by the war. And that was all she really said. What does that mean? Why would the war make it so he couldn't be my dad? And I was secretly mad at all of them. I was mad at Jimmy for screwing up whatever he'd done to make my mom want to leave him. And I was secretly mad at my parents for not leveling with me about what was going on. And I didn't know how I was ever going to get any answers until I was 12. And that's when Jimmy showed up. But he didn't show up in person. He showed up on tv. Apparently, how it all happened was in Vietnam, he had this friend, and the friend asked him, you know, if something happens to me, write a letter to my mom, okay? And Jimmy said, sure. And the friend didn't make it home. And it took Jimmy 13 years to write the letter to his friend's mother. But when this lady got it, she was so moved that she contacted this reporter she knew, and somehow there was going to be a story about the two of them. On Memorial Day, on the CBS Evening News, Jimmy called my mother, first time in years to tell her all this. My mom's explaining this to me, and inside I'm going, what the heck? This. What? This is crazy. This is really cool. This is crazy. But I'm also like, I'm finally gonna get some answers. And mom says, so, do you think you want to watch it? And I'm 12. So I say, yeah, I guess. But as we get closer to the broadcast, I realize I do not want to watch this with my parents. That would be really, really awkward. So I go over to my grandparents house and actually sneak into this kind of little room at the back of the house. And I turn on the tv. It's a little black and white knob. And I'm listening. There comes Dan Rather. He says the story of two soldiers who fought side by side in Vietnam. Only one came home. And now their families find peace of mind years after the agony of war. And then there's this kind of footage of men running around in a compound and there's explosions. And then I hear this voice, and it's Jimmy's voice, and he has this deep, raspy voice. And he says, talking about his friend, and he says the real battle was after I came back. And then they show his face right there on the tv. And I've never watched a moment of TV more closely than I watched that I leaned in. I was like inches from the screen. I can barely process what he's saying. But I'm just looking at his eyes, his nose, and the shape of his chin because I want to see if I can see myself in there. And there's something, but it's not 100% clear. And then the scene changes. And the lady he wrote to, she comes on and she talks about how this letter that she got from Jimmy really, really helped her really solve this mystery that she'd been struggling with of what had really happened to her son. She says, I feel peaceful now. I can put that at rest. And then shows the two of them. They go to a church service, they go to a picnic. And then they're kind of standing in this graveyard next to a headstone, their arms on each other. And Jimmy says, you know, writing that letter was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But I'm really glad I did because I helped this lady who really had been searching. And then they hug and they smile and they disappear. And I'm like, what was that? It was like the emotional equivalent of sensory overload. I couldn't really put it all together in my head, but I would try to, like, just pull chunks out. Like, what did I just see? I felt like I got an impression. For one thing, Jimmy was kind of impressive. I mean, he came off looking impressive. He was kind of strong and noble. Reached out to help this lady. So he was good, but I was also jealous and confused. He reached out from. To help somebody from his past. It wasn't me. So if Jimmy's not a bad guy. Maybe I'm bad. Maybe it's me. Maybe he saw that and that's why he let me go. He fought for his country, fought for his friend, but he didn't fight for me. Time passed. We didn't hear from Jimmy. Then about three years later, I hear about this movie called Platoon, which is supposed to show, like, kind of a realistic vision of what the war was like. And I go see it, and it's, like, amazing and horrible and confusing. And I decide I'm just going to write Jimmy. I'm just going to do it. I get the address from my mom, and I write him a note. And I just sort of introduced myself, I think, you know, I said I'd taken karate. I was trying to sound impressive. And I write him, and he writes me back. So he's glad to hear from me and we can meet sometime. And we kind of keep writing for a while, and we send each other mixtapes. And eventually we start talking on the phone. And he has this voice. He talks like, hey, kid, how you doing? And eventually we meet in person. When I'm 18, I say, all right, I'm ready. Let's meet in person. And it's kind of like when you meet somebody you've only seen on tv, only it was my father. And we're, like, in this parking lot, halfway between his house in Indiana and my house in Kentucky. And I can tell he's staring at my face the way I stared at his on tv, looking for himself. And we have a little awkward hug, and we kind of go sit down in the hotel room. And he says, is there anything you'd like to ask me? And I freeze. All the questions that I've had, where you been? Like, I can't think of any of those. Partly, I think I'm afraid of hurting his feelings. Afraid he might disappear again. So he talks. Then he tells me some stories, and I learn a few things. And he takes out this picture album, and he opens it up. And I don't really get much out of any of the pictures. His family and some time of the war, till I see the very last one. It's a picture of him and his soldier uniform. He's about 21, and he looks exactly like me. And I know this is my father. So after that, I go home, talk to my mom about this. She kind of opens up, tells me some stories. Jimmy and I keep talking. He tells me some stories. And eventually I learned the truth about us. And the truth was, there was nothing wrong with Me. The fake stories that I had made up to tell myself were worse than the real story my parents were trying to keep from me, to protect me from. The real story is that Jimmy grew up with an alcoholic father who beat him up. And then Jimmy went to war. And one night in the war, he asked his three best friends to go wait for him in this one part of the camp until he got off duty. The last thing he said to these guys was, I'll be there in 10 minutes. Two minutes later, the mortar started dropping. Ten minutes later, Jimmy found their bodies. He said it was like walking into a butcher shop. And the truth is also that in the brief time Jimmy was my father, he changed my diapers. He sang songs to me like blackbirds singing in the dead of night and Rockaby Sweet Baby James. And he drank a lot and he smoked a lot of weed. And when my mom asked him to stop, he said no. He said, this baby's not going to change my life. And when she said we were leaving, he cried. And when she asked him to stay away while I was growing up, he agreed. So knowing all this, I asked myself, like, should Jimmy have fought for me? But when I think about it, he was already in a fight inside himself. I still though would have liked it if maybe at some point he would have said, I'm sorry, kid, it wasn't your fault. But he didn't say that. He did one time say, you were better off with your mom, stepdad than you would have been with me. But I missed you, kid, every day of your life. I knew Jimmy the rest of his life and he always thought of his moment on CBS as one of the proudest times of his life. When he died, we showed it at his funeral. I have three sons now, and someday I'm going to show that video to them and I'll tell them about Jimmy. Even though I know that for them he'll always just be a face on tv. But I won't. For my kids, I'm not mysterious. I'm dad. And I'd like to be better at that than I am. But I'm decent. I'm, you know, flawed but well intentioned and loving. Like my parents, including the man who let me go. And if I could say one thing tonight to Jimmy that I never said, it would be, thank you. Thank you for letting me go.
- [34:58]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Graham Shelby. He's a journalist in Louisville, Kentucky. All Moth storytellers have to make tough choices about which details to include and which to leave out. I recently sat down with Graham, to talk about that. There's a scene that I really adore in the story that we didn't have time to get to, and that is the day that the TV show was coming on. You were, watched it at your grandparents house, correct?
- [35:22]
Mikayla Murphy
Right. It was just that I was watching it with, you know, my grandmother and grandfather. We hadn't talked at all about what this was about, but what we were going to see, we all knew it and we all knew, we all knew it, but we didn't talk about Jimmy or anything. And so right before it came on, I just felt like I couldn't watch this with them. Like, whatever this was where it was going to be, it was mine. And I just wanted to see it for myself, by myself and react however I was going to react. So I left like the den with the big TV that had feet on the, you know, on the carpet and went into like this little room where my grandfather slept. And I watched it actually on this little bitty black and white tv. And that's, that's where I saw Jimmy for the first time.
- [36:09]
Jennifer Hickson
And also in talking with you, I got the impression that you didn't want your mother and your grandparents and your, your dad, your stepdad to know that you cared that much or that you were that curious.
- [36:23]
Mikayla Murphy
Yeah. Because I could just, I could always tell that it was a really difficult subject for them. And I think part of what was difficult about it was to know how much it was okay, I could handle. Because his story of being, you know, a veteran who'd been through horrible experiences in war and was an alcoholic and trouble with drugs, like, how much of that can you share with a kid and when can you share what?
- [36:46]
Jennifer Hickson
After our interview, Graham wrote me because he felt he'd left out another important part. He wrote, I don't think good stepfathers get enough credit. We tend to tell stories about reunions with long lost birth fathers. That's what my story is. But we don't talk enough about the men who step in and do the hard, daily, often thankless work of raising children who were sired by other men. That goes for good stepmothers too. If I'm going to thank Jimmy for letting me go, I should thank my dad for taking me in. So thanks, dad. To hear more of my interview with Graham and see a picture of his dad's both of them, visit themoth.org when we come back, two stories from the Moth's Lamb series. One about a cross but fierce grandma and another about an elderly uncle with a wild passion for life.
- [37:41]
Corey Rosen
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange.
- [37:48]
TurboTax Announcer
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- [38:30]
Jennifer Hickson
This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Jennifer Hickson from the Moth the next two stories are from the Moth's Story Slam series, which are competitions would be Tellers show up with a story based on the published theme and volunteers in the audience score each story to determine a winner. For this story, which was a winner, the theme was the Heat is On before you hear the story. If you didn't know on Spanish language television, a novella is a kind of soap opera. There are some other Spanish phrases in the story, but I think you'll get the general meaning from context. Live in Chicago, here is Lily B.
- [39:10]
Lily B
Summer 1985. I'm about 8 years old. Not much I knew at 8 years old. I mean I knew some things. Like I knew that it was hot. It was only 8:00. I'm already sticking to myself. It's hot. I knew that in about 30 minutes all my cousins were going to come barreling through that door because my grandma took it upon herself to babysit all 10 of us all day, all summer. I also knew that at 11:55am she was going to let us go outside unsupervised to play in the fire hydrant. Why 11:55? Because that gave her five minutes to throw a mango and a fruit box or juice box at us so that she could catch her first novella. Because she loved her novellas that I knew. So sure enough, 11:55 came around, we put on our jelly sandals, she threw juice box and mango and we were gone. God help us if we interrupted her. Now we're outside having a ball. You see. It was an especially happy day because somebody the night before had forgotten to turn off the fire hydrant and it had flooded the entire block. We weren't grain. I'm sorry. And so this was our water park. And for a poor little girl in Humboldt park, where you couldn't go to the beach or the pool because they were shooting it up, this was where it's at. And so I knew at 8 years old that I needed me some of that. So there we are running around for unsupervised because my grandma was mean. So having a break from her was just like, yes, yes. And we turned abandoned cars into slip and slides. And there was not a spot on the block that you could walk on without splashing water. This was heaven. You know, around 2, 3 o'clock when the parents started getting home, it was like an unwritten rule that you just rolled your pants up, took your shoes off, walked to your front door, or if you had nylons on, you went around the alley. But anyway, it was unwritten rule. Everyone knew it. Everyone except Dona Lupe. You see, Dona Lupe lived at the opposite end of the corner of the fire hydrant. So she was walking today through the water, pushing her stroller with her little baby angel. Not an actual angel baby, but like her baby named angel, who she thought was an angel. And I'm playing this mean game of tag with my cousin Susie, and I'm running past Dona Lupe and I zip right past her. And then Suzy, who's supposed to be right behind me, is not behind me. And I turn around to witness Dona Lupe grabbing her by the arm and taking off her sandal and hitting her on the opposite arm. Watch where you're going. You splash my son in the face with water. Susie grabs her arm, crosses the street, starts crying on the porch. I follow behind her like, girl, you better go tell Grandma. And through her tears and her snot, she's just like, I can't. Cause she's watching her novellas. And I'm like, you got a point. You got a point. But. But this is not right. I know this. At 8 years old, I know that this is not right. So I'm gonna go take her. I'm the oldest girl cousin, I'mma go tell her. So I run upstairs and I'm just like, I'm going to tell my grandma. And I get to her French doors that lead to her room and I see her feet and I. And I freeze. And I decide to wait for a commercial, but she hears me and she's like, so. Yo, it's me, Lily. Que quieres? Well, you see, we were playing in the street and someone hit Susie. Click como. Which was a rhetorical question because she was already putting her shoes on and grabbing me by the arm and started dragging me down the stairs. Let's go. She passes my cousin at the bottom step and she looks at her and says, y tu pendeja, por que no? This is nada. And drags us to the corner. We get to the corner and you know, back then we don't use doorbells. My grandma, Dona Lupe, and she looks out the window, see Dona Maria que tulipe caste aminita. She starts to explain why she hit her. Well, you know, she splashed my son. Well, like your son is made of sugar. And she comes downstairs, they proceed to lip box for about 10 minutes, lip boxing, just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until Dona Lupe says, well, maybe you should watch your fucking children. Uh huh huh. Y'all already know. Y'all already know. And that is when my grandma snapped and just punched, punched like rock em sock em robots. They never move from where they were and they just punch and they just punch. Never moved, never moved. Until one of them, not my grandma, broke down like a rock and sock and robot and just begged, please, please, please. Yano me pegues. Yano me pegues. And my grandma stopped, wiped her hands on her apron, went back to watch novellas before she walked inside, she said, no hagan lo que hago and God help you if you interrupt me again. I said, I didn't know much at eight years old, but that day I knew my grandma loved me. I knew it from the bottom of my heart, she beat that lady's ass. And today standing here, I know she's up there proud as shit, saying, yabe. Thank you.
- [45:41]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Lily B live at the mall. I asked Lily to translate that last line for me. It's, you see, cabrona, what did I tell you? And Lily's grandma's advice after the knock em sock em fight. It's something you may have heard before. It's don't do what I do. By the way, Lily won the grand slam with that story. You can find all of the stories you're hearing in this hour at the itunes store or on our website, themoth.org where you can also find more about our storytellers. Our final story today is from Corey Rosen. He told this at our very first San Francisco story slam where we partner with public radio stations KQED and kalw. The theme that night was secrets. Here's Corey Rosen live at the mall.
- [46:27]
Graham Shelby
So my story tonight is about, is about my cousin Norman. Norman Wiener. Yeah, that's his real name. So Norman Died. He died in August. August 1st. He died at the age of 82. It was unexpected. Even though he was 82, he wasn't sick. He wasn't dying. He didn't know he was going to die. It wasn't one of those. He'd been sick for a long time and stuff. It was just like he had this lump, and he went to get it checked out. It was kind of a routine thing. The doctor's like, we'll take the lump out. They took the lump out. The lump was fine, but the hole made an infection, and the infection made pneumonia. Pneumonia made no more Norman. Which is really sad because I was pretty close with Norman. And being sort of the designated person in my family, the west coast representative, most of my family is back east. We. They kind of designated that I was going to be the guy to kind of tie up the loose ends. I was going to go to his apartment, kind of go through the things, you know, what was the stuff we're going to keep or was the stuff we're going to get rid of, salvage, that kind of thing. And that's where I discovered Norman had a secret. So let me tell you a little bit about Norman. First, Norman was a real character. Norman was very tall, which was a huge anomaly in my family. We're all normal Jewish height, sort of the cutoff, the five, eight, five, nine cutoff. And Norman was like six and a half feet. He had giant glasses and giant ears and a giant nose. And he would tell these stories and. Oh, Corey, I gotta tell you about this wonderful movie that I saw. It was called Se7en. But it was so dark, Corey. It was dark.
- [48:03]
Sponsor Announcer
Dark.
- [48:03]
Graham Shelby
I mean, this is a dark movie. And when the movie was over, I was looking for my sunglasses. I had my sunglasses on Cory, who would tell these stories about these things. And Norman was a teacher. He spent his life teaching English in high school. And he never married. He never had a partner in his life. So he traveled all by himself. He used the teacher schedule, you know, he would go on these long summer trips. And he was a frugal guy, you know, he saved his pennies. He'd go on, like, those Atlantic crossing, transition repositioning cruises, you know what I'm talking about? Like, sort of cheap. And he'd stay in the hostels with the backpackers like an old guy, because he didn't care. He didn't care. It was like he was there. He loved theater, he loved opera, he loved the arts. And he just took it in and he didn't care about like, comforts, you know, about, like, staying on, like, the concierge level at the Marriott. He didn't care about those things. He cared about, like, seeing things, you know, like, getting experiences. But my whole family, like, a lot of people in my family all thought of him. Like, they talked shit about Uncle Norman, you know, cousin Norman. They would say he was frugal. They would say, he's a cheapskate. They would talk. Talk down about these decisions that he made in his life, which I thought was terrible. You know, they. They. Because I loved the guy. Like, he would regale us with these stories because he really loved. Loved theater. You know, he would say, oh, I saw Lawrence Olivier, Corey. I was in at the Old Vic, and it was fantastic. He was Hamlet. Oh, it was incredible. And he remembered everything. So. So I did a show about 10 years ago called the Asshole Monologues. It was a charity for Crohn's disease. And Norman, out of nowhere, is like, I want to write an asshole monologue quarry about Shakespeare's assholes. There's so many Richard iii, asshole. Like, he would. He wrote and he performed this thing. It was fantastic, and I loved it. And even on my son's birthday, he shared it with Norman. They were one day apart. So when my son Henry turned one, we had a first and 80th birthday celebration together. It was awesome. And he took the train up. It was the cheapest way to come up from Long Beach. And we slept in our guest room, and it was really wonderful. And it was one of the last times that I saw Norman. So I'm in his apartment by myself. Like, I let myself in, and I'm cleaning out his apartment, and I have that weird moment, you know, when, like, you're. I don't know if any of you have ever had to do this thing. It was my first time where you're there clearing out the stuff and deciding what to keep, what to lose. And I'm like, where's the secrets? You know, Because I'm sad, but I'm also, like, alone in somebody's stuff. And it's making me think about, what would it be like in my own house? Like, when I go, what's the weird narrative that people are going to put together when they see my 400 snow globes and my box of random pictures and that little tiny bag of hash in the freezer and, like, all those things that you just have and how you like, oh, that's important. That's not important. And the experience was really overwhelming. And so I packed up the Car. I skipped my flight. I was supposed to fly home, but I just packed up this rental car. I drove all the way at dawn. I spent about 20 hours in his apartment clearing out the stuff. And when I got home, I looked through all these carousels of pictures that he had taken. He traveled to dozens of countries. He had passports, 10 passports filled with visas and stamps and all this stuff. And I got to see his life through his pictures, through his eyes. The trips that he took, it was so overwhelming to see. And they weren't like pictures of him in front of stuff. It was just like what he saw. They were bad pictures, you know, like they're pictures that when you get off the tour bus you take but. But it was really emotional. And then I read the will and that's where the secret was. Because it turns out that Norman was loaded and I was in the will. And all my fucking family who had written off cousin Norman, the cheapskate, the frugal cheapskate who were never nice to Norman. And I didn't want anything from Norman. I just loved him. I loved who he was and how he was. And Norman didn't want to die. He didn't plan to die. He had enough money for 20 years of, of luxury travel, but he was saving it and he gave it, he gave it to my family. And now my, my kids can go to college and, and I miss him so. Thank you.
- [52:47]
Jennifer Hickson
That was Corey Rosen. He's an actor, director, writer and visual effects artist. He's also become a regular host of the Moth Story Slam in San Francisco. To see a picture of the joint birthday party for Corey's son Henry, who was turning one, and Uncle Norman who was turning 80. Visit themoth.org while you're there. We'd love to hear your story. Click on Tell a Story and it will take you on a step by step how to so you can pitch us. Here's a pitch we liked.
- [53:15]
I
The story took place seven years ago when I was eight years old in Baghdad, Iraq. I was coming home from my grandparents house. I had spent the night and my dad was taking me home. About halfway down the ride home, my dad turned to me and said, ahmed, our house was bombed last night. I didn't know what to think. I was eight years old. I was. I was scared at first. Were my parents, Were my mom okay? Were my little sister okay? My dad said they were okay, but I really didn't understand. Then we got home and I understood. I saw what happened to my house, my home. After that my dad decided that we had to leave Iraq and three years later we are in the United States and now I am beginning my sophomore year in high school. I hope to get my story out there and the Moth will provide a great opportunity for that. Thank you.
- [54:27]
Jennifer Hickson
Thanks so much for listening and we hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour.
- [54:45]
Corey Rosen
Your host this hour was Jennifer Hickson. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess and Meg Bowles. Production support from Jenna Weiss Berman and Whitney Jones. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Pokey La Farge and the South City 3 and Rat Tat Tat. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts with help from Vicki Merrick. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange prx.org for more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org There it is.
- [55:51]
Dan Kennedy
An hour of stories from the Moth Radio Hour right here on the podcast. We even had one from Michaela Murphy in there, one of our favorites who is a New Yorker via Seattle via New York again I think. Hope you guys enjoyed the show. Also, one last thing before we wrap it up this week the Moth main stage will be in London for the first time on Thursday, August 28th at Union Chapel in Islington. For more information and to join the mailing list for updates on all of our upcoming events in the UK, visit.
- [56:24]
Jennifer Hickson
Themoth.Org Our podcast host, Dan Kennedy is a writer and performer living in New York and author of the new novel American Spirit. Available now.
- [56:34]
Dan Kennedy
Thanks to all of you for listening and we hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange helping make public radio more public at prx. Org.