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- [00:00]
Sponsor Voice
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- [03:10]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. Happy holidays, everybody. That's really all I have to say to you. We don't have any official business to announce, so let's get right to it. This week on the podcast, we have our Moth Radio Hour holiday Special, a whole episode of stories for you. So grab a cup of cider or eggnog or water. Maybe some kind of kale situation. They actually make juice out of that, I've been told. And enjoy the Moth Radio Hour right here on the Moth PODC.
- [03:56]
Kathryn Burns
From prx. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Kathryn Burns, and this is the Moth Holiday Special. In this hour, five true stories told live. We'll hear about a Christmas request from a dying grandmother, a soulmate for Hanukkah, New Year's Eve in Sing Sing, prison holiday spirit in the emergency room, and this first Christmas story from Tricia Rose Burt. The show was presented at the beautiful Wilbur Theater in Boston in conjunction with the station wgbh. Here's Tricia Rose Burke live at the mall.
- [04:32]
Tricia Rose Burt
Growing up, Daddy liked things to be in their place. He alphabetized our spices, he labeled our pantry, and he used one of those dilemmatic labeler things, spreads, dried goods, popcorn popper. And just like the items in the pantry, Daddy needed my older brother and sister and me to be in our place, too. Now, I adored Daddy, even though his need for order and discipline could seem sort of suffocating sometime. But it was predictable, and there was a kind of comfort in that. I mean, I knew what Daddy expected of me, and I knew what to expect from Daddy. Not surprisingly, there was a very particular way we were to decorate the Christmas tree. Every year. We got a Douglas fir about 10ft tall, and we decorate it with those really big Christmas bulbs. You don't see much anymore, those great big ones in primary red and blue and green, kind of an orangey yellow, maybe some white. And we'd match these big bulbs up with reflectors. Reflectors were supposed to make the bulbs glow more. And we put reflectors over each socket. And then we would methodically screw in each bulb one by one in this long string of lights. And we paid the same kind of attention to the rest of the tree. We had these decorative fake birds. And daddy would tell us to adjust the birds wings so they looked like they were in proper form. Flight tinsel was placed, never tossed. It was like we were preparing an altar. And the most sacred elements of all were the Debbie ball, the Jimmy ball, and the Tricia ball. Now the Debbie ball and the Jimmy ball and the Trisha ball were ornaments that daddy made for us when we were really little. And they're all made out of the same thing. It's a white styrofoam ball, about the size of a tennis ball with colored sequins all adhered with silver straight pins. And on the Trisha ball, on the circumference of the Trisha ball, Daddy spelled out my name neatly in all capital letters, each precisely five sequins tall. And he used four colors, blue, gold, red, green, always in that order. And the colors were never mixed. The letter T was all blue, the letter R all gold, the letter I all red, so on. At the top of the Trisha ball was a ring of red sequins around the ornament hook. And at the bottom of the Trisha ball was a ring of green sequins with a single green sequin placed right where you'd find the South Pole on a globe. I mean, this is exactly the kind of detail that you would expect from a man who labeled his pantry. And I treasured the Trisha ball. Each year, my brother and sister and I hung our ornaments with great ceremony. And as a family, I just thought we were at our best. Decorating the Christmas tree. I mean, it was always magnificent. Then When I turned 16, my family enters into the throes of a social scandal that just turns all order into chaos. Daddy declares bankruptcy. And it was an honest mistake. He was a real estate developer who specialized in historic preservation. And he had been restoring this neighborhood that was really vibrant when he was growing up, but had gotten run down over the years. And I mean, his vision was big and his motive was pure. But it all came together just in time for the 197475 recession. The headlines in our local paper read, Iranian Shah loses riches right next to prominent Realtor declares bankruptcy. All mama could say was, we don't have any money for groceries. Go eat at the country club. Now no one ever really talked about money in my household, and they certainly weren't going to talk to me about it. So I'm just were frantically trying to piece together all these mixed messages. And the best I can come up with is we're supposed to be very afraid and very ashamed. And the thing is, my mother was just as smart as Daddy, if not smarter. But they had that unwritten contract where Mama would provide the children and Daddy would provide financial security. But thanks to bad timing, Daddy wasn't living up to his end of the bargain. But Mama was raised that her very survival depended on a man and his money. And so she was scared to death and just blamed Daddy for everything. Now, along with losing his money, my father loses his mind and starts seeing a woman that we called Pig Face. Her real name sounded just as bad. It was like she was destined to be a home wrecker from birth. She was attractive enough in a cheap, coarse kind of way and was a walking stereotype. She was 15 years younger than my father, at least, had dyed blonde hair. She was a fairly large woman, and everything about her was big. She had this big jewelry and big hair, big patterns and prints on her clothes. She was from Texas, and as they say, this was not her first rodeo. So once Daddy starts seeing Pig Face, my parents separate. And I'm the youngest of three kids. And at the time, I'm the only one at home during all this drama. And the stress is just so intense that in one week, I lose 10 pounds because I can't sit down at the dining room table long enough to eat. So when Daddy leaves, I'm actually kind of relieved. And the first thing Mama does when Daddy leaves is to go into the pantry and rip all the labels off the shelves. Then a couple of months later, the bank comes to repossess the house because our mortgage hasn't been paid. And there's my mother, age 45, asking the banker standing in the doorway. And a mortgage would be what? My mom had a little stash of family money, so the house wasn't repossessed. But she did spend the first year of the separation drugged on the living room couch, thanks to a psychiatrist who prescribed three 5 milligram Valiums a day. So Mama is obviously completely retreating. Daddy's basically living with Pig Face and her two children, which makes me feel like he didn't just leave Mama, he left me, too. And the whole thing is just so hurtful and absurd. I mean, I don't even recognize my parents. They're like pod people, and I don't recognize my life. It's like all the order's been ripped away, like the labels in the pantry, and no one is paying attention to me. I suppose if I'd had some, you know, wild side I could have had this crazy, reckless high school experience, but I was raised to be so good that I just kept overachieving and thinking, maybe if I make an A, someone will notice me. My parents separation lasts for three endless years. And the first Christmas of the separation, my mother announces she never did like colored lights and reflectors, and she replaces them with little white lights. Tinsel is abandoned altogether. The decorative fake birds are flying wildly in all directions. My brother and sister and I keep just hanging our ornaments with great ceremony. And the tree still looks magnificent, maybe even more so as we try to create some kind of beauty in the wreckage that is our family. Daddy and his girlfriend on one side, mom on the other, and us three kids in the middle just trying to dodge the bullets. My parents are exhausting me. Every Christmas, we'd have to spend some time with Daddy and his girlfriend, and she'd show up with that big pig face hair of hers, and we'd all be sitting around wondering how we were going to answer Mama's question. Was that woman there? And Daddy would just glare at us, expecting us to behave. And I'm having a really tough time taking him seriously because this once methodical, measured, conservative man is now wearing a gold chain, driving a lime green Eldorado, and dating a woman who is exactly the opposite of what he raised me to be. And maybe it's because there's just all this pain that we don't want to see. But during the separation, we play a lot of fake family. Fake family is when Daddy would come over for dinner or holidays and we'd act like he didn't have a whole other life and stand in family. And my favorite fake family Christmas is when he stayed for a really long time with us three kids and Mama, and we couldn't figure out why. And then we found out that pig face was really mad at Daddy because she thought she was getting an engagement ring for Christmas, and instead he gave her a blender. So four years after my parents finally divorced, my sister gets engaged. And we're ecstatic. We love who she's about to marry. And after all these years of bitterness between my parents, my family can use some good news and a fresh start. And I want to do a really nice toast at the rehearsal dinner. But I'm really nervous. And I'm not nervous about standing up in front of people. I mean, obviously like that. I'm nervous because it's the first time in years we're going to try to act like a family in public. And I'm not sure that my parents can behave. So I want to do a really nice toast for my sister, but I don't have any ideas. I can't come up with anything. And a good friend of mine says, well, do you have any family traditions? The only tradition we have is avoiding my father's girlfriend and my parents animosity. And he pushes me a little further and he says, are you sure? And then I get an idea. At the rehearsal dinner, I walk up to the podium and I say, in my family we have an important tradition. And I can see Debbie and Jimmy and mama and daddy looking at each other like, what is she talking about? So we have an important tradition that I want my brother in law to be a part of. And even close friends of the family who witnessed this explosion are going, really? And I hold up this styrofoam ball with my brother in law's name neatly spelled out in all capital letters. And there's this collective gasp among my family and daddy gets this really big smile on his face and it's all I can do not to tear up. Daddy's been gone for years now, but there are Christmas balls for all three of the kids, spouses and all six of the grandchildren. I've been meaning to make one for my dog because my husband and I don't have children, which is okay. I mean, it's what's best for us. But it is different. It raises all kinds of questions around legacy and what we pass on. I mean, the fate of the Trisha Ball is anybody's guess. But I still hang my ornament every year with great ceremony because even though I don't know who the Trisha Ball is going to, it always reminds me of where I come from. Thank you.
- [17:25]
Kathryn Burns
That was Trisha Rosebert. Trisha is an artist, writer and performer who's writing a memoir based on her one woman show, how to draw a naked man. That's naked. N E K I D. By the way, that's not just me getting all southern on you. Trisha recently alphabetized all of her spices and has to admit that her daddy may have been onto something that she hasn't labeled her pantry yet. Obviously, Trisha hopes her house will never catch fire. But if it does, the Trisha Ball will be one of the first things she grabs. To see a photo of the Trisha ball, go to themoth.org while there, you can share any of the stories you've heard. We're also on Facebook and Twitter hemoth. In the moment, a hopelessly single 38 year old is told by a rabbi in Jerusalem that she'll meet her husband by Hanukkah. That's coming up next on the Moth Radio Hour.
- [18:24]
Ted Conover
Support for the moth comes from organic valley, committed to the craft of sustainable organic farming for over 25 years. Makers of organic milk, cheese, eggs, butter and soy. Organic Valley bringing the good. The moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic public media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by prx.
- [18:50]
Kathryn Burns
This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Kathryn Burns from the Moth. Holidays tend to generate stories. Families get together and, you know. So tell us about yours. Kwanzaa stories, Hanukkah stories, winter solstice stories, Whatever you celebrate this time of year, we want to hear about it. Call our pitch line, which allows anyone to leave a two minute version of the story. The number to call is 877-799-MOTH. Or you can pitch us the story@themoth.org now we're going to hear from Amy Klein. She told this at one of our open mic story slam competitions in New York City. Here's Amy.
- [19:37]
Amy Klein
So you want to find a husband? The rabbi said to me, I'm 38 old, even by non Jewish standards, and I'm no longer religious. But I will do anything at this point to meet my soulmate, Even visit a crazy kabbalist in Jerusalem who looks like Santa Claus to give me a blessing to get married. Yes, I want to get married. I say to him. He says, okay, take book, open book. Any page. Any page finds a word. Like he's a magician. So I take the book and I point to a word. He says, read it. So says, kishuf. He says, you know what this means? So I guess I say, magic. He says, no, it means curse. You have been cursed. This is why you're not married. Aha. A curse. Okay. It's not my dysfunctional childhood, nor my terrible taste in narcissistic men, but a curse. This is why I'm not married. I remove curse for you. He says, only cost 400 shekel. 400 shekel? I don't have $100 on me. Says, that's okay. You go to ATM, you come back. So I leave the office and I walk past the dozens of religious women praying in the waiting room into the august Jerusalem sun. I know I'll never see him again. I walk back to the bus stop to go to my hotel. I'm like, what kind of sucker does he think that? Like, what does he think I am? I already paid him $20. Who knows what he's gonna do with it. I'm not gonna pay him another hundred dollars to remove this curse. And I'm waiting for the bus, and I'm really pissed off. And then I just start to think, well, if there was a curse, who would curse me? You know, not that I believe in it or anything. I'm just saying maybe it could be one of my single friends. I mean, a lot of them don't want me to get married before them.
- [21:33]
Kathryn Burns
No.
- [21:33]
Amy Klein
I guess they're bitches, but not witches. Then I think, well, what about my sister? My older sister, who's not married, who's hated me since the day I was born and she was 4 years old? She is a very determined person, and she could put a curse on me. The bus came, but I didn't get on it. How could I, knowing that there might be something that stood between me and meeting my husband? So I go to the ATM, and I take out the 400 shekel, and I walk back to the rabbi's office. And I'm wondering maybe if he'll remember me. And I walk back in, and he says, you have money? He remembers me. So I give him the 400 shekel, and he puts it in a plastic bag, and he starts waving it over his head like the ceremony that they do with the chickens before the day of Atonement. And he says. He starts saying these words, this is my atonement. This is my redemption. This is the money that will go in my stead for charity. He puts the money in the drawer, and he says, you will meet someone. He will love you very much. He will please you sexually. He will love you more than he loves his mother. And I'm like, is this going to be a Jewish guy? Then he says, give me your passport. And he takes my passport. I'm like, what now? First he takes my money. Now, is he going to, like, sell me into indentured servitude? That's how he's going to find my husband. And he starts copying it down. Copying, copying it. I look over his shoulders, and there's all these numbers. It looks like a quadratic equation. And he finally slams the passport down, and he says to me, segor b'hanukah. It will be done by Hanukkah. Hanukkah. That's only five months away. It's August now. He said Hanukkah. So I go back to the States. And you could believe that winter, I go to every party. Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, winter, Stolzis. I don't meet anybody. And when my friend says to me, hey, I thought you were going to meet your husband, now I start to cry because I thought so, too. I felt like that time when I was 10 years old and they told me that the Messiah was going to come the next day, and I put out my white outfit on the chair and the Messiah didn't come. My husband didn't come either. But when you're raised religious, no matter how long you leave it, you still can't give up hope. So the next September, when I met Dan, I thought, well, maybe this could be the one. The rabbi didn't say which Hanukkah. You know, we could be engaged by December. But Dan dumped me in October, and in December, he was having a party, so I decided to go to show him what he was missing out on because, you know, guys love that. I got drunk and I flirted with him and I flirted with his friends, and I guess I flirted with a lot of people because a couple of days later, I got a message on my cell phone and someone said, hi, Amy, this is Solomon. I met you at the party the other day. I just wanted to wish you a happy Hanukkah. And we went out the next day, and we got married about a year later. And I just wanted to say that was the best $100 I ever spent. Thank you.
- [24:46]
Kathryn Burns
That was Amy Klein. Amy writes the fertility diary column for the New York Times Motherlode blog and contributes to publications like Slate, Salon, and Newsweek. Our next holiday story comes from Milwaukee. Grand Slam champion Alexandra Rosas, and it's about her mother. Here's a taste of it before I explain more.
- [25:12]
Alexandra Rosas
I'm always afraid I'm going to forget something important, so I write everything down, including what we do every Christmas. I was reading what I wrote down from last year. We had picked up my mother early to spend the day with us, and I had the house decorated in all these little white lights, and I had made my mom's special coffee. And she was sitting, having her coffee, and she's Colombian, and she says, I don't know what you do to make this coffee so delicious, but it's the best coffee in the world. And what my mother doesn't know is that her coffee is so delicious because I add a quarter cup of Baileys to it.
- [25:55]
Kathryn Burns
Every year at our gala event, which we are amused to call the Mothball, Ha ha. We invite some of our slam champions from around the globe to get up on stage and tell one minute excerpts of their Grand Slam winning stories. So here's Alexandra Rosas again with a one minute version of her story about her mother and a Christmas gift.
- [26:15]
Alexandra Rosas
My mother is 80 years old and she's dying. We're driving home together after we've been together for Christmas, and I see her staring at the side of my face. My stomach drops because I know what she wants to say. She says, promise me you will have something under the tree for Christmas from me for the little one next year. I tell her she'll be here to give it to him herself. But I say yes, I promise. I take her shopping. She picks out his gift. We wrap it. She puts it in the basement. December comes and I bring up the boxes for Christmas. I unpack. I start to string up lights. And it's about one in the morning when I see it. It's the gift my mother bought for my son. But she's not here to give it to him anymore. And I've got this child who ever since she died, I have to pretend everything is okay for. He cries. He misses her. He says he just wants to see her one more time. I put the gift back in the box. I can't handle giving it to him.
- [27:23]
Kathryn Burns
So that's how Alexandra ended the one minute version of her story. But I want you to hear where the longer version ends a few minutes later, on Christmas day, after Alexandra finally decides to give her son Auggie his grandmother's gift.
- [27:36]
Alexandra Rosas
I come back upstairs and I say, there's still one more gift. Everybody turns around and looks at me. I look at the tag and I see the swirly letter L of my mother's writing. I begin to read for Auggie, but I can't finish because I don't know how to do this without her. So I bury my face in my hands and my son rushes over. I have made a huge mistake. He looks at the gift. He looks at the tag. When he sees it, his face breaks out into this big smile and he reads. For Augie. Love Nona. Thank you.
- [28:25]
Kathryn Burns
That was Alexandra Rosas. Alexandra is a first generation American who writes cultural memoir and humor. You can follow her on Huffington Post. Latino Voices. She lives with her husband and three children in Milwaukee. Coming up, Dozens of fires break out on the prison floor at midnight on New Year's Eve when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [28:51]
Ted Conover
The Moth is supported by Sacred Heart University's Film and Television Masters program, a one year hands on conservatory devoted to cinematic storytelling located in Stamford, Connecticut. Learn more at FTMA SacredHeart.edu. the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by prx.
- [29:20]
Kathryn Burns
This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Kathryn Burns. Our next story was told by writer and former prison guard Ted Conover. When he first told us about what happens every year at midnight on Christmas Eve at Sing Sing, we could hardly believe it. Here's Ted Conover live at the Stony Brook Southampton Writers Conference.
- [29:45]
Dan Kennedy
So as a journalist, I believe in the value of seeing things myself, seeing things firsthand. And whenever possible, I like to take it to the next level and see if I can also do something with the people I'm writing about, participate for a little while in their lives. I did this with my first book, which is about railroad hobos, with my second, which is about undocumented migrants from Mexico. But the hardest and most intense and stressful of all of these experiences was the almost year I spent as a New York state corrections officer at Sing Sing Prison. So Sing Sing is a hard place to work for a few reasons. One of the reasons is that unlike what you might think from TV, at a maximum security prison, most of the prisoners come out of their cells during the day. And in fact, they spend most of their time moving to places from the mess hall to the gym to the yard to the hospital building to the school. And among that sea of men in green prisoner uniforms, there are little dots of gray with American flags on their shoulder. And those are corrections officers, and they tend to be the rookies who are sent to these most difficult jobs of working with the general population. And being outnumbered is difficult. And then there's another thing that goes on in prisons, at least in New York State, I guess in California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, all these states have a majority of prisoners who are young men of color and a majority of guards who are white like me. And your authority is diminished by a perception that somehow this system is rigged. And even though there are officers of color as well, and at Sing Sing in particular, there are a number of them, including the one who was really my mentor for how to be a good officer. Inmates have noticed the larger picture. And I remember the day one came up and explained it all to me. He said, conover, you know what this is? This is just an update on the plantation. This is the master's house. And in the master's house, you have your field slaves, except slaves wasn't the word he used. And you have your house slaves. And so prisoners like me would be the field slave, and officers, especially officers of color, would be the house slaves. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, go tell it to an officer of color bigger than you and say what happens. But he said, the difference really between us is that when the house burns down, the field slave is in some way kind of happy about this, and the house slave is sad. And I said, yeah, okay, whatever. Get back to your cell. Went back to my stressful life of being there amidst prisoners who would challenge me the way they challenge a substitute teacher in a large urban junior high school every day, trying to reset the balance of power a little by bending a rule or by ignoring a rule and seeing what I would do about it. That happened all the time. It's very strange, stressful. You negotiate, you have to argue, you have to stay calm, because that's one of the great values they were taught, taught us at the Corrections academy in Albany. You have to stay calm. And it's a very hard job. It stressed me out. I pray for the end of the day, and I'd be grateful when the week was over. The stress probably reached its peak about six months in, when I was deemed extended, experienced enough to train my own rookie officers. And I remember the day I was supervising a whole floor of prisoners in A block, one of the giant housing blocks at Sing Sing. She was on her own at the end of the gallery, going cell to cell, taking down prisoners names and where they would be found that afternoon in case we needed to locate them, when a prisoner timed his sexual climax to coincide with her arrival right in front of the bars of his cell. And she came down to tell me about this with a look of desolation I have never forgotten. And for the first time, I lost my temper. I went down there and I yelled at him. I told him he was worse than a loser. He was. He was scum, et cetera. You can picture it. And the reason this was a terrible idea is that everyone got really riled up that I was riled up. And as I walked down, still riled up, I grabbed a mirror that had been left illegally on a prisoner's cell bars, but not quickly enough that he was unable to spit on me and connect with my head, connect his fist right there as I went by, and it hurt a little bit. And the humiliation was worse. But I think the very worst part of it, I realized a day or so later when I was thinking back on how I had noticed his arm hanging out of the bars the. As far as it could go, and thought I should grab that and pull as hard as I can and see what damage I can cause. And I was ashamed of that thought. That's not how I was raised. And yet this was the way this research was making me think and act. And I didn't know if I had it in me to make it to the end of a year of this. Was it worth that to write a book? Is it possible some kinds of experience change you in a lasting and wrong way? It was around this time that a prisoner told me, not a prisoner. My fellow officer was telling me about New Year's Eve. I had been thinking, could I last to the end of the year? A year would be a good unit of time in a place that's measured in units of time like that. Wasn't sure I could. He said, you're so lucky you work days, Conover, because at night on New Year's Eve, it's unbelievable. I mean, it's like nowhere else. And I said, well, so what do you mean? And he gave me a few details, but he didn't really want to talk about it. And I really then wanted to be around for that. So I was able to swap shifts through various strategies. And about 10pm on New Year's Eve, I found myself arriving at work, parked down in the lot by the Hudson River. This is right near the Metro north station in Ossining. Sing Sing spans the Metro north tracks. You have to go over the tracks on an old wooden staircase past an 1826 cell block that still stands. The rest of the prison looks almost as old. It's decaying, it leaks. It was briefly condemned before being reopened. And at night it looks even scarier than during the day. The buildings are connected by covered walkways called tunnels. They're not tunnels, but they feel like tunnels. And at night they feel like catacombs. There are little lights in places where they are not useful and there are dark spaces where you wonder who is lurking. And I was getting a little freaked out as I headed to my job in B block, which is where I usually worked, and opened the door and was a little freaked out because during the day this room is like a gymnasium. The sound of doors slamming, slamming, men yelling, radios playing. Even though radios aren't allowed in Sing Sing. How could that be? You walk in, you smell some marijuana in there often, even though that's not allowed. How could that be? Sing Sing's that kind of place. And as I walked in, I took it all in. There's a central structure in a cell block that's the metal cells. Five floors of them, each holding 128 prisoners, all facing outward, whatever, 64 on each side. And over this metal Structure is a brick structure, kind of a shell, like a cover over a stick of butter, with big glass windows. But it was all very dark except for some little lights over the mirrors of prisoners who were. Were still awake and many of them standing at their bars and backlit. It was like looking up at an apartment building. Late, late at night, I walked up to my office, which is a converted cell on the third floor. I was used to having a baton, but at night you don't need a baton because everybody's locked up and your only job is to check to make sure they're breathing every half hour or so. So I did that for half an hour. I paused outside a cell where I heard a voice saying to another, yo, another year, yo, another year, another year closer to home. You heard, yeah, man. And I thought, wow, my friends are making resolutions. And here the passage of a year is, you know, another hash mark on the wall. It was quiet, got to about 11:30. I went downstairs to talk to my friend Green, who's there. He said, it will be starting soon, Conover, in fact, take a look. And behind me, we looked down on the flats between the cell block and the wall, and a little fire had been set. And it reminded me of the day I'd been frisking a cell down there. That's what you do when you suspend that prisoner as drugs. You take him out of it and then your partner goes in and goes through everything, and if there is old junk, you take it out of the cell. Newspapers, magazines, boxes. While we were doing that, we heard all these hoots and hollers and smelled smoke and turned around and this pile of junk was aflame. Somebody had thrown a match on it while we were otherwise engaged. And it's not going to burn down the cell block because it's made out of cement and metal and brick. But it's scary and it's definitely kind of crazy and chaotic. And we put it out, but it reminded me of that. And he said, you know, you better get upstairs now. The officer in charge is going to be calling to give us instructions. And sure enough, I went up, could hear the phone ring on each floor. It got up to me. I said, yeah. And she said, stay in your office. And I said, okay. Why? She said, just stay there. And I tried, I did try to stay in my office. But the fires, just about quarter to midnight, they start getting lit everywhere. Half a dozen down on the flats and on my floor, probably a dozen. Sometimes it's just a smoking roll of toilet paper. Sometimes it's a big box full of newspapers and the smoke was everywhere. The officer downstairs opened the side windows so all the winter air came in to blow it around. But the smoke kept increasing. A fire alarm bell went off and I thought, wow, the fireman actually come in the prison for something like this. But they won't. In fact, the alarm was soon shut off just because it's an annoyance, they decided and kind of reminded me of a nuclear power plant that's having a terrible systems problem. And the technicians decide just to turn off the bells. The smoke increased in quantity and I remembered as the countdown began just before midnight that in fires, that's how people die. They don't get seared or cooked as much as they suffocate. And it was hard to breathe and very frightening. And as the count went down to 17, 16, 15, 14, I thought of the prisoner telling me about the plantation and how the field slaves might feel a little bit happy if the house burned down. But the difference in the situation was that in his story, they were out in the field and tonight they were in the house and they had lit the fires. And as the clock struck midnight and we had a new year, I wondered, how bad do things have to get in a prison before for they're willing to burn down the house with themselves inside. Thanks a lot.
- [43:36]
Kathryn Burns
That was Ted Conover. Ted spent nearly a year working as a correction officer to research New Jack Guarding Sing Sing, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize to research his many other books. He spent a year riding the rails with hobos and was smuggled across the Mexican border twice. He teaches at New York University. Our final holiday story is told by another grand slam winner, Matthew Dixie. A few months ago, Matt and I were in the studio talking about Christmas. Are you a Christmas person?
- [44:26]
Matthew Dix
I am. My wife is Jewish, right. And I am a big Christmas person. I am not the most religious person, but my Christmases were. They were always a time when I knew they illustrated the problems. You know, I knew when we didn't have stuff and I knew when things weren't going well. And yet there was still magic somehow. There was this magic of Christmas that I loved so much. And so even though my wife is Jewish, we celebrate both. So she's like nine in Christmas years and she acts like a nine year old. So I've got these two little kids who love it and this Jewish wife who loves it. And we do it as much as, you know, we do it all the way.
- [45:04]
Kathryn Burns
Here's Matthew Dix Live at The Moth.
- [45:12]
Matthew Dix
It's 12-23-19. I'm 17 years old. I'm coming out of the record store. My friend Pat sees me. He asks me what's in the shopping bag I'm holding. I tell him it's a concert T shirt. It's a Christmas present for Benji, our friend and my best friend. Pat looks at me a little funny. And Pat's only 14 at the time, but he's already cooler than I will ever be in my entire life. So when he looks at me like that, I always pay attention. Pat tells me that guys don't buy Christmas presents for other guys, and especially surprise Christmas presents. He tells me that he's had girlfriends for like six months and never bought them a thing. So for me to buy Benji a Christmas present is a little odd. I'm suddenly feeling very self conscious about the betta fish in the backseat of my car that I bought at the pet store for Pat like an hour ago. And the comic books for Coug and the sweatshirt for Tom and all the presents I bought for my friends. And I know that Pat is right, that it is strange that I've done this, but it's been a long time since I've had a good Christmas. My parents, the combination of my absentee mother and my evil stepfather and their failing marriage and no money has made every Christmas for years just a misery. But for the first time in my life, I have money in my pocket. I'm a manager at McDonald's making $5.75 an hour. I'm working full time while I'm in high school, and I am the richest person I know. And so I am going to use this money to buy myself a great Christmas. I'm heading home now. I need to get my uniform because I have a shift at McDonald's later and I got to get these presents into the house. It's starting to snow out. It's kind of lovely. I'm driving my mother's 1976 Datsun B210. It's a car about the size of a box of Pop Tarts. I'm coming around a corner and I'm heading down a hill when my car starts to slide into the opposite lane. I look up and I see a white Mercedes Benz coming right at me. They say that in moments like this, time will freeze for them or slow down, and it is absolutely true. In the three seconds it takes before our two cars hit head on, I have exactly three thoughts. The first is, I'm not wearing my seatbelt And I always wear my seatbelt. But in the excitement of buying Christmas presents and the rush to get home, I've forgotten. On the worst day of my life, to forget. My second thought is, in moments like this, I've been told to steer into the skid. But it occurs to me I don't know what the hell that really means. And I still don't know to this day. Day. And my third thought is just one sentence. It's five words long. And I say it aloud. This is going to suck. And it does. When our car is hit, I'm thrown forward. My head crashes through the windshield. My chin catches the steering wheel and the entire bottom row of my teeth come flying out into my mouth. My legs come forward and my right leg becomes embedded in the air conditioning unit down to the bone. And my left leg hits the emergency release brake. It knocks the handle off, but it skewers my left leg. It's all over in a second. And then shock descends upon me and I feel no pain or fear. I climb out of the car. I'm sort of crumpled next to the car. And the woman in the Mercedes gets out and she's completely unharmed until she sees me. And then she vomits and passes out. The first people to arrive at the scene, it's a pickup truck full of teeth. Teenagers. And a kid about my age gets to me first. And he lies me down in the mud and the snow. He gives me a look over and then he says, dude, you're fucked. It is the most accurate medical assessment that I will receive that day. A police officer arrives. He puts a coat on me and I've got broken ribs, so it feels like a thousand pounds. I'm looking up at a white sky and the snow's falling, and I eventually climb, close my eyes. When I woke up again, I'm in an ambulance. There's a woman straddling my hips and she is pounding on my chest, which is now on fire. And there's a man trying to shove a tube down my throat. And the woman starts screaming, he's back. He's back. And I'm wondering who the hell is back, but it's me. I find out later that my heart stopped beating and I stopped breathing for about a minute. No white light. Light. When I get to the emergency room, the doctors get to work on me right away. They're picking out glass. They're getting my legs ready for surgery. They're wiring my teeth down. A nurse comes over and asks me for my phone number, and I give her my parents number. And then I give her the number for McDonald's because I'm supposed to be working that night. And she sort of scoffs at it, but I say no, like I was dead 20 minutes ago. But that drive through does not run well without me. And they're going to have to get someone in. And bless her heart, she calls McDonald's. My parents, they don't show up. I find out later that when they heard I was stable, they go to check the car out first. And I'm waiting for a surgeon because it's December 23rd and they're hard to find. And I'm waiting and I'm feeling alone. But I'm not alone because when I called McDonald's to tell them I was out, those people started calling other people. And the waiting room is now filling up with 16 and 17 and 18 year old kids and one 14 year old boy. And my friend Benji is the first one to arrive. And they can't come into the emergency room to see me because they're not family. But they roll my gurney to the other side of the emergency room and they open a door. And one by one, each one of my friends stands in the door and they wave and they give me the thumbs up and they say stupid things to make me laugh. Benji never gets his concert T shirt and Coug never gets his comic books. And the Beta fish is the only casualty of the car accident that day. But it turns out that Pat is wrong. Because you can give your friends Christmas presents. Because they give me the best one I've ever received. They give me family. And until I meet my wife 15 years later, they are the only family that I have. And it turns out they're the only family that I need. Thank you.
- [51:46]
Kathryn Burns
That was Matthew Dix. Matthew is a novelist whose work includes the books Imaginary Friend and the Perfect Comeback of Carolyn Jacobs. He lives in Connecticut with his wife Alicia and their kids, Clara and Charlie. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio hour and happy holidays from all of us here at the Moth.
- [53:11]
Ted Conover
Your host this hour was the Moths art artistic director, Katherine Burns. Katherine also directed the stories in the show along with Sarah Austin, Janess and Jennifer Hickson. The rest of the Moths directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman and Meg Bowles. Production support from Whitney Jones, Kirsty Bennett and Janelle Pfeiffer. Special thanks to Kathy Russo. 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 Sufjan Stevens. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 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. To get information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website the moth.org.
- [54:40]
Dan Kennedy
That'S it from the Moth Radio Hour and we want to take a minute here. The Moth would like to dedicate this week's podcast to the memory of our friend Max Snyder. Our thoughts are with his friends and family. Thanks to all of you for listening and from everyone here at the Moth, we wish you a very happy and story worthy holiday season.
- [55:02]
Sponsor Voice
Dan Kennedy is the author of the books Loser Goes First, Rock on An American Spirit. He's also a regular host and performer with the Moth.
- [55:11]
Dan Kennedy
The Moth Podcast is produced by Whitney Jones. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Rueest. The Moth Podcast and the Moth Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx. Org.