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The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Singing, Sewing, Suits and Cemeteries
00:57:15
An adolescent boy leaves home and finds a peculiar new family, a fashion guru is forced to improvise, a Baptist finds himself at a gay bar and a young woman discovers the beauty in the hometown she’d left behind years before.
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- [00:00]
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Kathryn Burns
From PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. Hi, I'm Kathryn Burns, the Moth's artistic director. In this hour, we'll hear stories about running away from home ridiculously over packed suitcases, the power of a hymn sung in an unlikely place, and this first story about setting up house in a place that most people would find downright creepy. It was told by the Moth's founder, George Dawes Green, at Union Chapel in London. Here's George live at the Moth.
- [01:52]
George Dawes Green
When I was 15 years old, I lived for a while in a mausoleum. Actually a very short while, less than a week, but it was actually a wonderful time. It was summer and there was honeysuckle and fireflies and I was desperately in love with a girl who was dead and with a man who was living but psychotic. And it was the happiest time of my life. And this is how I came to be there. When I was 12 years old, my parents took me down to Glynn County, Georgia, and that was to me, like being buried alive. Everything was gray. The skies were gray, the Spanish moss was gray. The cicadas were singing that song all the time. And I was lonely and my parents were drunks and I just wait for them to go to sleep. And then I turn on the light and stay up the whole night reading about exploration, mostly Arctic exploration or searching for the source of the Nile, or really anything that was about getting as far away from Glynn County, Georgia, as one could get. And, of course, because I stayed up all night, Mornings were torture to me. Glenn Academy was torture to me. And my grades sort of went into a death spiral through the 30s to the 20s to the teens. And I actually kind of longed for the perfection of absolute zero. But I didn't have the stick to itiveness. So I dropped out of high school when I was 15. And I hitchhiked north. And I got a job in New York City as a messenger. And I got to wear this really sharp tie and jacket. And I loved not being a civilian. And I sneered at all yellow school buses. And for a while, I lived in some flops around Manhattan. And then I went one day, one Saturday, I went with a friend of mine on a road trip up to New Rochelle, N.Y. which is a little suburb. And I don't actually remember why I did it. I guess we were on a drug run. But anyway, we wound up hanging out at this sort of divey apartment full of drug dealers and derelicts. And at one point, I went back to the bathroom, and I saw in a back room. A man sitting at an upright piano and singing operatic. An operatic aria about an orangutan. And I was mesmerized. And he turned around after the song, and he looked at me and. And said, do you play chess? His name was John Orlando. He was about 30. He was kind of a slender. If you can imagine, he was kind of a slender Alfred Hitchcock. And we wound up playing chess for a week. And John's strategy for chess was to gather all of his pieces into kind of a fortress in the rear of the board on the left side, which he called the West. And from there, he would send his knights out on these long, gallant expeditions. From which they'd never return. And it would take me hours to pick my way in there and find his king and kill it. And during the whole time, John would be laughing hysterically. And afterwards, I never really could see the point of competitive chess. I just wanted to play what John called chivalric chess. But why was this original man living in this flophouse with drug dealers? Well, it was. The rent was very cheap. And it was split eight ways. And when I moved in, it was split nine ways. And I used to then commute to my job down in New York City. And then come back on the train back to this drug den every night. And I didn't do all that many drugs, but I did happily help to sort and clean. And it was an utterly depraved life for a 15 year old. And there was a 15 year old girl who used to come by. She was this beautiful redhead and just exploding into her sexuality. And of course she came by for the older guys. She. She didn't even notice me. But I was just painfully in love with her. And when I would just smell her, it would cripple me. Downstairs was this little old lady, Irene, who used to worry about me and tell me that I had to go home. And she would bake me lasagna. And I would tell her, you know, I really have no home because my parents are drunks. And I just loved her. I loved talking to her. And I loved John Orlando, who was unbalanced and who would sit up there at that piano all day long working on that opera about the Bronx Zoo where he had once worked. And he was making all of the keepers and all of the animals sing in these arias. And I think that this opera was driving him insane. Because one day I remember walking up from the train station and John was coming toward me and he had this fedora and he didn't really see me. And he just sort of walked almost past me. And then he stopped and said, Mr. Glo, there's a four ply fousey flying out of here at 5:00. Get a line on it. And then he just walked away. And I was in love with him. I mean, I'm not gay, but this was a physical love. When I was around him, I couldn't breathe. I felt like he was the world. I felt like, you know, I loved him the way that a worm loves its apple. And I think he loved me too, because, you know, the drug dealers were always trying to throw me out. They were always saying, John, this punk kid, he's 15 years old, he's gonna draw some unwanted attention. And John would say to them, no, George stays. I don't know if you've noticed about George, but he has. One amazing thing about him is that he doesn't buy into anything. He just floats through life. I want to see what he's gonna buy into. So he stays. So they threw us both out and then we had nowhere to go. We were homeless and I wasn't going to get paid for a week. And John never had any money, but he said that he knew that there were these mausoleums in the back of the local graveyard that were sort of in disrepair. And so we packed up some blankets and some pillows and some wine and we went and broke into one of these mausoleums. And it had two marble shelves on either side. And under one was the mortal remains of some man. And then under the other was his wife. And John and I sort of made our beds on these marble shelves. And we felt so safe there. The caretaker was old and never came around at night. And the police never would go into that graveyard at all. And we just kind of wandered around and got to know our neighbors. There was a dead 19 year old girl buried there. She had died in 1928 and her name was Hazel Ashe. And her inscription read, she lived for poetry. And I immediately forgot the sexy red headed girl. And when we went back to the mausoleum, I said to John, we have to write poems for Hazel Ash tonight. And he just wrote these horrible, disgusting, obscene verses. And I had to tell him to shut up. And he just laughed at me. And his laugh echoed in that mausoleum. People ask me if it was spooky in there, and I'll say, you know, it really wasn't spooky to me. I will say that if you don't like spiders, you would not have liked living there. And I will say it was clammy and gray and lifeless. And I probably would have been scared out of my wits if John Orlando hadn't been with me. But he was with me every second because he wouldn't spend a moment in that graveyard alone. So if I went out at night to take a leak, he would come shuffling out after me and sort of stand behind me. And in the morning, when I got up bright and early and put on my jacket and tie and went to my job, he went out of the graveyard with me. And then when I came back on the train that night and walked up to the graveyard, he was waiting there by the fence. And we were both so hungry, so we were hungry to the point we had to do something. So we. John had a friend of his, and we walked to the friend's house. And as we walked, we made up a poem about John's friend. And when we got to his house, we recited the poem to the man who in exchange, gave us supper and a few dollars. And then later, when John and I were walking home to the graveyard, John said to me, now you're a professional writer. And I said, oh, come on, John. He just gave us dinner and five bucks. And John said, that's what the hooker said. You're a pro. And I was so proud. And I had a little piece of pie that I saved for Hazel Ash and I put it on her gravestone. And then John and I went into the mausoleum and he sang his songs of the elephants all night. And every now and then he would let out these amazing farts that he called el destructos. And we would have to evacuate the mausoleum. And then the sprinklers came on in the middle of the night, and we just ran around buck naked under the sprinklers. And I was so happy that my scalp ached. And John saw this and he said, you know, you're buying into this, aren't you? And I said, into what? And he said, living in a graveyard. And I laughed, but I wasn't buying into that. I was buying into being with somebody who turned every moment of his life into art. And then a few days later, I was on my way home from work, coming up the graveyard lawn, and I saw that our mausoleum's door had a brand new lock. And I just immediately turned and ran. And I went to Irene's house and she said to me, so now you have to go home. And I said, I can't go home until we find John. So I went looking for John every day. And about two weeks went by. And then one Sunday morning, someone came to get us and said that John was at the chapel on Mayflower Avenue and was singing songs about zoo life in the middle of the mass. And I ran as fast as I could, and when I got there, they were putting John into a police car and taking him to the mental hospital, from where I don't think he ever came out, as far as I know. But as he got into the car, he saw me and he tipped his fedora and said, Mr. Glo, I got to go. And then, so did I. I had to go home.
- [14:49]
Kathryn Burns
That was George Daws Green. George is the founder of the mosque and the author of the critically acclaimed novels Ravens, the Juror, and the Caveman's Valentine. He says he still likes cemeteries and plans to spend a lot of time in them in the coming centuries. Coming up, we all suffer from a wardrobe malfunction every now and then, but it sucks even more if you happen to be Project Runway star Tim Gunn. When the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [15:37]
Production Team
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by prx.
- [15:47]
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- [17:18]
Kathryn Burns
This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Kathryn Burns from the Moth. Now we're going to hear from fashion icon Tim Gunn, star of the reality show Project Runway. He told this at a night of fashion world stories. Storytellers often ask us, what should I wear on stage? They fret about it, but we always tell them the same thing. Wear something that makes you feel like yourself, something that makes you feel fabulous. For some of them it's jeans and a T shirt. For others, it's a sparkly red beaded gown. I'm happy to report that Tim Gunn was one of the most impeccably dressed storytellers to ever grace the moth stage. Wouldn't you be crushed to hear otherwise? Here's Tim live at the Mother thank you.
- [18:04]
Tim Gunn
Thank you so much. About myself, I will say that I care about how I look. I care about the clothes that I wear. I care about the message that they send. And I try to anticipate situations and be prepared for them as well as I can be. So that's the little bit about me. My family figures in this story because it is a family story. My mother and let's go back 12 years because that was when this happened. My mother at that time was in her late 60s and living in a house that she built to retire in in Bethany Beach, Delaware. And I won't say that she cares as much about, well, I shouldn't say that she cares about her appearance, but she's always making excuses for it that there's not so much she can do. And until she loses some weight and gets a new wardrobe and it's that old story. Yet every closet in her house, which is a pretty large house, is filled with clothes. So when I go to see her, I have no place to put anything. I just am spreading out clothes on a bed or whatever. My sister and brother in law are both in academia, not unlike me, and they also care about appearance and they're very, very preppy. Then there's my father. My father had been very ill with Alzheimer's disease. Again, we're going back 12 years. He'd been in a nursing home for about eight years. And I don't know how many of you in this room have experienced this with a loved one, but it is devastating. It's simply devastating. And at the time that he was diagnosed, which had been about eight years before that, the doctor said to my mother, and I was standing there, resign yourself to having this. Tear your family apart to financial ruin and eventually your husband will lose his soul. And I thought, you know, it could possibly tear the family apart, it could cause financial ruin, but lose his soul. So my sister and I would take the family dog to visit dad at Christmas time because the nursing home welcomed pets during the holiday season. And our wire haired terrier would, we'd open the door to the nursing home, she would run through the halls to dad. Somehow she knew where he was, leap into his lap, and there was this happy reunion, even though he hadn't a clue who she was. And this one Christmas, three years before this particular event, the dog didn't know who he was. We tried to put her in his lap and she'd just leap off. And she looked at him as though, who is this? And I turned to my sister and I said, you know, he lost his soul. So from that point forward, we had a whole series of crises. Dad was going, Mother would call, you know, get ready, the time has come. Get ready, get ready, get ready. Well, it didn't come until this one fateful day when she called and I'm sort of. And she's getting into her whole story about it and okay, I know, get ready. She said, no, it's happened. So we're gathering we have to bury him. And he was in Washington and he was being taken to Evansburg, Pennsylvania, where there was a family burial plot. Again, why Evansburg? I haven't a clue, but I'm not going there. So I gathered my things together as well as I could and with no notice at all and headed to Wilmington via Amtrak, where I was met by my mother. We drove to Pottstown, where we stayed overnight with my sister and brother in law and their kids. And owing to the fact that my sister and brother in law pack like they're leaving Romanov, Russia and never returning. We couldn't travel in one vehicle. It was impossible. So the next morning they take off in one car and mother and I are in another. And it was a long trip. It was winter, so it was sleety and icy and not very pleasant. And it was getting dark early and we drove for about six hours and it was a Sunday. Just to give you a. So it's kind of a soulful day and we're about 30 minutes from Evansburg and I realized that I have left my funeral suit in the closet in the guest room at my sister's and I'm wearing a pair of khaki pants and a pink oxford cloth shirt. Remember this was 12 years ago. I've evolved and I just broke out in this hot panicky sweat of what am I going to do? Nothing's open, I can't be pallbearing tomorrow morning in khakis and a pink oxford cloth shirt. And I'm thinking, well you know, my niece is really crafty and maybe if we gave her a couple of sharpies she could fix the khakis. But what's she going to do about the pink shirts? And it went from. And then of course I transferred this panic to my mother who then went into her whole mother thing. This is when you feel completely infantilized about, you know, you idiot, how could you have done this? Well, it happened. So I thought I'll drop mother off at the motel, I'll drive back to Pottstown, six hours, get the suit and come back. But you know what, the really the thing, I was just self flagellating because there was no reason to have taken that suit out of the trunk of the car. It could have stayed in the garment bag, it didn't have to go in. But I'm thinking, oh no, it needs to have a nice vertical hang overnight. Don't ever say that to yourselves. Leave it where it's nice and safe and you won't forget it. So we have the Beverly Hillbilly truck driving behind us with all the luggage strapped to the outside of the car. Not really, but metaphorically it works. And I say to myself, you know something, my brother in law, Jay probably has about 25 suits with him and while we're not the same size, I will make it work. And in fact he was traveling with no fewer than four suits. So not only did I was there a suit for me to wear. There could be a fashion show. I mean, it was simply remarkable. And a white shirt and a dark tie, and I was all set. So I said to my mother, you know, I will never, ever, ever say anything about the fact that they overpack so badly. They were forgiven forever, at least from me because they bailed me out of this tremendously difficult situation. And they still continue to overpack. They do. But I always know that there's something in that wardrobe for me should there be some critical emergency. So I thank all of you. I'm so thrilled and honored to have been here and I thank all of you. Thank you.
- [25:24]
Kathryn Burns
That was Tim Gunn. Tim is the Emmy winning producer, co host and mentor for all 14 seasons of Lifetime's Project Runway. Our next story comes from Warren Holman. He told this at one of our open mic story slam competitions in Houston, Texas. Here's Warren live at the mall.
- [25:58]
Warren Holman
I'm going to tell you about my first visit to a gay bar. Come to think of it, it was pretty much my first visit to any bar. I was raised a Southern Baptist, and if you were raised a Southern Baptist, you know that there are church people and bar people, and the two usually don't come together. Well, it was about 20 years ago and I was taking a class at University of Houston and the assignment was to fit film a series of role plays, family role plays. And most students recruited other classmates to do the role plays. But I had a friend who was an actor, or at least a former actor, and I thought, wow, mine could be really good if I would recruit him. My friend Grant had actually been a professor of drama at University of Houston, and he had been in movies. He was the rather inept team chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys in, in the Movie North Dallas. 40, if you saw that one. But Grant was in his later years in his 70s. He had fallen on hard times. His health was poor, he was short on funds. And I thought, well, he can help my role play a lot and I can help him by compensating him financially a little bit. Excuse me. So we did the role play. It went very well. And then it came time to pay him. He paused and he said he had this sort of mischievous look on his face. And he said, you know what I'd really like you to do is take me out for a couple of beers. Well, we headed down Greenbrier at his direction, and he had me turn left into a parking lot just north of Holcomb. If you're my age or older, you know that's the site of the Briar Patch, Houston's first garage bar. And by that time, there were other gay bars. But this was the one that older men preferred. And as we entered the door, Grant was thrilled. He was in poor health, but you wouldn't have known it for the next two hours. And his eyes were twinkling, and I was happily heterosexual, as he knew. But little did I know that he was now recruiting me for a little role play that he was designing. In this role play, there would be this aging queenish gay man and his younger lover. And he took me around that bar, introducing me to all of his friends, whom I never could see because it was so dark and so smoky. But eventually my eyes adjusted, and there was a piece. It was a piano bar. And at a given moment, the pianist started playing Broadway show tunes. And the men in there knew every word to every song. And I tried to pretend that I knew the words to the songs. And I actually loved it. I've never been in a place where there was so much sort of joy and camaraderie. And at one point, though, they kind of. They asked me to come sit down on the piano bench, and they attributed a song to me. There was some Broadway show tune about an old man who took a young lover, and they changed the words from girlfriend to boyfriend. And so I got to be the feature of that song. And once again, Grant was loving this role play. And then the tone shifted and the tunes shifted, and instead of Broadway show tunes, they were suddenly playing Baptist hymns. I'm not kidding. Baptist hymns. And I knew all the words to those. And so. But the thing was, the words for the first time, started making sense. I mean, this just as I am. Did anyone grow up singing that one? Wow. Those men knew the theology of that song and what it really meant. Amazing Grace. There was a line. Through many dangerous toils and snares and hardships I have already come, but grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will bring me home. And I thought, wow, these songs are beginning to make some sense. And then. And I started thinking, maybe this bar Church Divide isn't. I began to think, I'm in a real church now. These men had been ostracized, you know, from most churches, and they had created one there. And the last song sounded like a hymn. There was a very reverent tone, but it wasn't. I couldn't place it. And when they started singing the words, I realized it was that song from west side Story that was about a young couple, heterosexual couple, in Westside who could not really love the one they loved and be the person they were because of prejudice and. And that sort of thing. And wow. And tears were coming down my eyes. And it wasn't because of all that cigarette smoke in the room either. And I just saw the last few lines haunt me to this day. There's a place for us somewhere A place for us and then someday a time for us Take my hand and I'll take you there hold my hand we're halfway there Somehow, some way somewhere wow. That was one of the last times I spent significant time with Grant. He died not too much after that. And I've always been grateful because I felt like he showed me that place. And a Southern Baptist. Having been raised a Southern Baptist, I suddenly felt for the first time I really got a glimpse of heaven in that bar.
- [32:08]
Kathryn Burns
That was Warren Holman. Warren grew up in a farming community in eastern North Carolina, pretending not to listen to the wonderful stories his father, uncles, and other, quote, old people told him. He says it recently dawned on him that now he's one of the old people retelling those North Carolina stories and a few of his own. When we launched in Houston, Warren's daughter called him to say, I love the moth. I'm so jealous you get it in your city. Warren admitted he didn't quite know what the moth was. Then after the show, called her to say, not only did I go, but I told a story. Oh, and P.S. i won.
- [32:48]
George Dawes Green
A place for worth somewhere.
- [32:58]
Natalie Channon
A place for worth.
- [33:04]
George Dawes Green
Peace and quote, wild.
- [33:08]
Tim Gunn
Opener.
- [33:13]
George Dawes Green
Wait for.
- [33:17]
Kathryn Burns
Somewhere coming up, a woman in rural Alabama finds her new house so overgrown with vines that she needs a chainsaw to get in the back door for the first time when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [33:29]
Production Team
The Moth Radio Hour is produced produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange prx.org.
- [33:45]
Kathryn Burns
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Kathryn Burns. I grew up in rural Alabama, and for those of you who aren't that familiar with the south, we have this green vine down there called kudzu. It looks kind of like ivy and covers over 7 million acres of the deep South. It can grow as much as a foot a day during the summer. My friend Johnny told me that when he was a kid, he got mad at his mama and planted kudzu in his backyard. He spent the next 10 years mowing it nearly every day to keep it in check. So I was excited when our next storyteller, the revered fashion designer Natalie Channen, wanted to Talk about the wildness of the south and how nature is always right at your back door trying to get in. Natalie told her story at a moth event that we produced with the legendary radio duo the Kitchen Sisters. Here's Natalie Channen live at the Moth.
- [34:44]
Natalie Channon
I am from a small town in northwest Alabama, and in that place, and at the time I was growing up, it was about buttoning yourself in, in being tucked in and hiding things away. Because although all the farms and the textile mills on the outside, just on the edge of those mills was Mother Nature. And she was always so close, just right to that edge of all that cultivation. And so in my part of the world, a house that's left alone or not cared for can really melt down into this fertile, fertile, wet, green mass where animals and kudzu wait to grow into the buildings. And so, you know, people hoe and they cut things back and they keep it pruned and they watch and wait for that little slip that's going to come through. So there's this moment in my childhood where I'm walking down the stairs of the church and a friend of the family is coming up the stairs, and she looks at my cousin Pam and she goes, pam, you have just grown up to be the most beautiful young woman, just stunning. And she looks over at me and she goes, and Natalie, you're so, so exotic. And you know, sitting here today, I look back and I know that what she was trying to say was there felt there was this little piece of that outside that she could smell underneath, and it scared her. And so, you know, I hit the ground running just as fast as I could to get away from being tied up and nature. And I tried to run towards exotic and what I thought could find, what I thought I could find in the world. And I traveled around the world and I came back again and I learned how to. I did things I never imagined I could have done as a girl from rural Alabama. But there was a night I arrived back in New York in the year 2000. I was moving away from a marriage that was gone wrong. I was questioning and not finding answers. And that night when I arrived, it was snowing outside and it was really cold and. And lost and all of the. Everything was raw. And I was invited one night to what I deemed this really fancy fashion party like only New York City can do, right? And so I had been wallowing in my self discovery, or you could call it self pity during this time. And I was pretty broke and I didn't have anything to wear to this party. So. So I took a T shirt out of my backpack and I cut it up and I kind of pinned it back together on my body and I sewed it back together again with needle and thread. And so I went to the party that night, and the strangest thing happened that people would, like, see me across the room and they would walk across the room and kind of touch my body, which people in New York City don't really do. You, you know, in the south, you hug people whether you like them or not, but people in New York City don't really do that. But people were touching me and they were asking, you know, what is that? What do you have on? And so the next morning I woke up and, you know, I was really proud that people had liked my shirt, that I had found this approval from the fancy fashion folk. But what really struck me that morning when I woke up was that that although I had been a designer and a stylist for a really long time, it had also been equally as long since I'd made something with my own two hands. And I felt so moved to get up that morning and make another T shirt. And so I made another T shirt and another T shirt, and I just kept making shirts and I kept wearing them. And people would stop me on the street and they would touch me. In the middle of all this making and touching, I had this vision that I wanted to see these 200 one of a kind cut up T shirts sewn back together again and laid out on the floor. And so I started going around to manufacturers in New York. You know, these bags of Salvation Army, Goodwill collected throwaway things that were cut apart. And, you know, they thought I was a crazy bag lady. And so rejection after rejection. Excuse me. Nobody really wanted me to help me make these shirts. And so I'm standing on the street corner on 8th and 38th one afternoon, and I'm looking down at the T shirt and I'm like, it's a quilting stitch. And I realized in that moment that I was going to have to go home because all of the ladies who quilted with my grandmothers were still there in Alabama quilting. And I was like, this is. Is such a great idea. In my mind, I thought, this is going to be so great. I'm going to go home. They're going to love to do this. This is going to be so easy. And so I write a proposal. I raise some money, I call my aunt down in Alabama, I explain the project to her, and I say, I'm looking for A house that can be project headquarters. Can you help me find something? And she calls me back a couple of days later and she's like, I have the perfect house. The house is just behind my mother's childhood home. It's built by my father's father for his very best friend. It is perfect, right? Exclamation mark. And so in December, I rent a car and I drive down to Alabama, stopping at every thrift store along the way and buying all these T shirts. And on December 23, I arrive in Alabama with the friend. And you can't see the house from the road, right? She had forgotten to tell me that the house had been abandoned for the last five years, that no one had really lived in the house since that time. And there's like a little path that goes around the back of the house that used to be a driveway, and we drive around to the back door. And my aunt and my mother have cut a hole through all of the nature into the back door with a chainsaw. And my dream, my project is really just an old mattress thrown on a 1970s vinyl floor in a house that smells of old chicken bones and shut up and animals and things that live on the edges of places. So I go to bed that night and I'm laying on this mattress on the floor and I just start to cry and I cry and I cry and I cry some more. And, you know, I just think I spent my whole life running away from this place that, you know, traveling the world doing these things. And all of this comes to, you know, laying on, on the floor in the middle of the night, waiting for go ghosts or kudzu to crawl up through the floorboards and lay down next to me. And the whole night I can't stop looking around me because all I can think about are all of the heat seeking snakes that are in the house, right? As soon as I'm still, I'm going to feel that cold thing slither up next to me and lay down. So sometime about, you know, in the very early morning, I guess I. I closed my eyes and I fell asleep for a minute and I woke up and it was the most beautiful, crisp, clear December morning. The light in Alabama at this time is absolutely beautiful. It was Christmas Eve. And I get up out of the bed and go over to the kitchen and clean up a little place and make my tea. And I sit down on this borrowed stool and I look around the room and I realize that, you know, it may have 1970s vinyl on the floor, but the walls are completely Covered with heart pine paneling. And I don't know if you know this, but these really old broad heart pine boards from the south were made from the longleaf pine trees, which were called the giants of the South. And so they're hundreds and hundreds of years old, these trees, before they make these boards. And so I think I'm just going to clean one board and, you know, just see what the wood looks like. So I go over and I clean this one board, and it is so beautiful. I mean, the wood is spectacular, right? And I stand there and I look and I think, okay, I can clean one more board. So I clean one more board, and when I finish with that board, I realize that I can do have the resolve within me maybe to clean one more. And so, you know, throughout the day, board, board by board, I move through the room. And by the end of the day, as the sun is setting back behind the kitchen there, I sit back down on the stool and I've cleaned the entire room. And I think, you know, I think, I can do this. So the next morning, I get up and I get a phone and I start calling these women who used to quilt with my grandmothers, right? And I'm like, this is going to be so great. You're going to love it. It's like New York City fashion and Vogue and everything that you could dream of. And they so don't love it. They could care less. You know, they talk to me about their kids and their grandkids and common acquaintances and church and their gardens. And, you know, I show them the shirts and one of the ladies says, you know, my grandmother would say about that, honey, those stitches are so big that you could get your toenails caught up in them. And they laugh and they talk to me about planting turnip greens and the importance of that. But turnip greens are really important. My aunt once asked me, I was telling her about a boy that I was kind of interested in, and she said, yeah, but can he grow turnip green greens? It's true. But what I did find out from having these conversations with the community of my childhood was that the mills had closed down and that there were women and men who were out of work and maybe they would want this work. And so I ran a little ad in the paper that said part time hand sewing and quilting. And about six, 60 women called and about 20 women stuck. And we sewed the 200 one of a kind shirts, and I brought them to New York Fashion Week. And we sent out a little catalog and the first person to walk through the door is Julie Gilhart, who was then the buyer from Barney's New York. And Julie sweeps back in a few days later with her buyers, and they look at all the T shirts and they go, we'll have 12 like this and 12 like this and 12 like this. And I'm like, wait a minute. These are one of a kind shirts, you know, like, how are we going to make 12 shirts like this that says, you know, Smith family Reunion from Roanoke, Virginia, this is not. And they said, just make something like it. And we made them and we brought them to New York. We took the orders. Julie Gilhart and Sally Singer from Vogue went out into the world and told everybody about the work we were doing. All the T shirts had been made with all of the seams on the inside out. That night, when I sewed that first shirt back together again, I had turned everything to the outside so it was raw and exposed, kind of like I was in that moment of my life. And this style, this idea of everything being turned on the outside has really become our signature style. So it's 15 years later and I'm still at home. We have about 32 women who still sew these shirts in the field by hand. Everything completely sewn by hand. We have about 40 of us that work in our studio. We have just opened a new machine sewn text sewer factory in hopes of recreating this community of my childhood. We have a cafe. People come from all over the world now to Florence, Alabama, to sit with us, to sew with us, to eat with us, to laugh, to tell stories. And I live at home and, you know, some days it feels like I'm still cleaning heart pine boards board by board. And I. I live really close to nature, and I can sometimes feel it coming out of the edges and up, around and into my life. But I guess I kind of like it that way. So thank you.
- [48:21]
Kathryn Burns
That was Natalie Channing. Natalie traveled the globe working in the fashion world before becoming the owner and designer of Alabama Channon. Natalie and I sat on our porch overlooking her tomato plants, talking about how all of this is going, how she grows her own organic cotton, which gets made into cloth and then turned into the clothes for her line.
- [48:40]
Natalie Channon
Well, we call it, you know, seed to shelf in the usa. So that's been a really beautiful and sometimes challenging process. And then about a year and a half ago, we opened what we call the factory. So we have really, our flagship stores in Florence, Alabama. It's been pretty amazing because people have been driving from all over the country or coming from all over the world to see. To see that space. And we have a beautiful cafe in the midst of that where we serve all local, organic, seasonal food or as much as is humanly possible.
- [49:18]
Kathryn Burns
We talked about why this whole venture has been such a success.
- [49:21]
Natalie Channon
I think part of that has to do that there are so many people involved in the process. You know, in the studio, so many hands touch the pieces, and then because they are sewn by hand by these artisans who work in their own homes, you know, every piece, even two pieces that are made to be exactly the same are different, right? They have a little bit. One stitch is a little bit bigger than the other one, or there's, you know, the pattern itself is put on in a different way. And so it's. While there is a similarity, it's impossible to have two that are exactly the same. And I think. I don't know, we talk about this a lot. Why people, why the collection resonates so much with our customers and patrons. And, you know, I think we live in a world where things are just stamped out, you know, 100 million at a time. So to see something that has character or a life or an individual spirit, I think means a lot to us today. So it's been interesting and beautiful. You know, I'm really lucky, as we both know. When I Left here at 18 or left the South, I was like, I'm out of here, people. I'll see you. You know, I've got the big wide world. So it's so interesting that today I was able to come home. And all those things that I thought I had to go away to do were really always right in my own back door. Right. And so that's. That's been a wonderful discover.
- [51:02]
Kathryn Burns
When I visited Natalie and her factory in Florence, Alabama, I was overwhelmed by all the heaps of fabric and racks of clothes. They seemed to go on for miles. There's a store attached, plus a farm to table cafe where people from all over Florence gather for lunch every day. Surrounded by gorgeous dresses, I took pictures and you can see them@themost.org while there, you can also pitch us a story of your own. Dozens of pictures have already been turned into stories for our main stage shows around the country, and many have been included on this radio show. So please call us if you have a story you'd like us to hear. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
- [51:54]
Natalie Channon
Trevin.
- [52:12]
Production Team
Your host this hour was the Moth's artistic director, Kathryn Burns. Kathryn also directed the stories and the show. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Whitney Jones and Ben DeVere. Special thanks to the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, and to Houston Public Media who partner with us on the slams. There 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 Regina Carter, Tom Waits and Bill Frizzell. 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, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org.