← The Moth
The Moth
Wendy Spero: Stranger Bonding & Tom Zeigler: The Bronx is Burning
00:21:56
While attending a wedding, Spero is shocked by the increasingly bizarre behavior of two fellow guests. Zeigler fights an out of control blaze during one of the hottest summers in New York City’s history. Wendy Spero is an actress, writer,
Loading summary
Transcript8 lines
- [00:00]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year old's. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years. With millions of users and 25 languages offered speaking Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@RosettaStone.com moth today.
- [01:21]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. Hi, I'm Dan Kennedy. The Moth features true stories told live without notes. All stories on the Moth Podcast are taken from our ongoing storytelling series in New York and Los Angeles and from our tour shows across the country. Visit themoth.org this week we have two stories for you. One by Wendy Spiro, recorded live at our Grand Slam Storytelling competition, and one by Tom Zigler from our main stage. First up, Wendy Spero.
- [01:57]
Wendy Spero
Hello. So last year I received a totally last minute random wedding invitation from an acquaintance from my sociology class in college. We had not spoken in like 10 years. I didn't know anyone going, but I'm really into people watching and it was local and there's always good people watching at weddings. So I decided I would go. And the reception was really large and fancy and I was seated at Table 31 with 11 other equally miscellaneous seeming guests. And as we all discussed how little we knew the couple, I was confident that we were all on the same page thinking the same thing. And the fact that Jane and Rob had considered us important enough to be part of this special day suggested a skewed understanding of human relationships in general and a probable separation within the year. Across from me is this very good looking blond guy with fabulous dimples, about 23 years old, and he is seated next to this equally good looking guy with equally Nordic coloring, about the same age. And I notice that the two start to snuggle and kiss. And I am pleased because they make this excruciating, excruciatingly gorgeous couple. But within minutes, the hugging and kissing devolves right into public displays of affection from another universe. They are literally like entwined. I can't. They are licking dressing off each other's.
- [03:29]
Tom Ziegler
Palms.
- [03:32]
Wendy Spero
They are tickling one another's neck and armpits with arugula. Swear to God. Swear to God. And. And we're all like, huh? And we're trying to chat and eat normally, but it's impossible to focus on anything other than the PDA. And in an effort to break the madness, this 40ish woman sitting next to me turns to them and is like, so how do you guys know Rob and Jane? Cousins, said the dimple guy. Oh, how nice. So you are the cousin? We are the cousins. Silence. Intense silence. So clarification is desperately needed. So I take it upon myself to add, so that makes you guys also cousins to each other. No, no, says the other guy. Massive sigh of relief. We're twins. He continued. We are Jane's cousins. And I just think it does not get better than this. But then it did. Because as I look around at the other members of this fabulous table 31, I feel instant camaraderie. And when the woman next to me excuses herself to go to the bathroom, it was like, understood that the rest of us would follow. And we go. And we form a huddle by the bathrooms. And between hysterical laughter, we ponder the important questions. What the fuck? Are we on Candid Camera? Does the family know? And I'm writhing in excitement. I'm like, oh my God. And I like march back into the reception and I go to the bride and groom and I'm like, hey, love wedding, it's fabulous. So those cousins of yours, they're your cousins? And she's like, yes, the twins. How hot are they? Oh my God, so glad you like everyone. I was like, right? And I run back and I confirm that the blondes are indeed relatives of the bridal part party and relatives to one another. Our plan is to return and at probing yet non judgmental sounding questions. But when we return to the table, right, the twins are gone. They are nowhere to be seen, their jackets are gone. And we just sit there and nibble at our food while analyzing the insanity of it all. And after the cake is clear, it was like the cake was clear and it was like time to go at the end of the wedding and it was like kind of difficult to say goodbye to the people. And I was like, well, you know, nice meeting you guys. Love sharing those moments with you. And although we had barely exchanged names, we then spent like 40 minutes exchanging email addresses on Jane and Rob embossed napkins. No one actually planned on keeping in touch, I think, but we had to go through the motions because after watching ridiculously good looking male twins passionately make out, we had become a tight knit family. Sometimes people do not believe me when I tell this story and that is so frustrating. But it is fundamentally okay because the other members of Tyler Table 31 were there. They were right there with me. Together we saw one brother Tuchel, another brother with arugula. And I trust that although we will never speak again, our bond continues to be just as strong as it was that very humid day in June.
- [07:31]
Dan Kennedy
Wendy Spiro is an actress, writer and comedian, and her memoir, True Story Stories from a Life of Small Highs became an LA Times best seller. She currently lives in West Hollywood and spends a lot of time collecting stuffed animals and learning how to drive. Our second Story by Tom Zeigler was recorded live at the Moth main stage.
- [08:00]
Tom Ziegler
Jesus Christ, Tom, what did you do? It's a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon at the Bronx Zoo. I'm there with my wife, my three kids, they're riding a camel, they're having a ball and they're screaming. What? Excited kids scream, look at me, Daddy. When my wife pokes me in the ribs and says, is it really that horrible being with your family? What are you talking about? She then proceeds to tell me how I look like I would rather be anywhere other than there with them. What she doesn't know is I'm not there with them. I'm 12 hours earlier, kneeling in the hallway of a public hallway of a burning tenement. It's about two in the morning. We're about eight hours into the night tour. We're rolling in on a box. And I'm sitting there thinking, I got seven years on the job already. Where'd the time go? Seven years and I'm in the middle of my seventh summer offensive. That's what we call the summers because the workload increased so dramatically. It was like you're at war during the 1970s if you weren't from around here. This place was crazy. There were more fires, more emergencies. There were than you could possibly imagine. Not too long ago, I saw a kid on. I was doing some photography. Hi, Flash Rosenberg. And I was at the tattoo convention and I saw this kid down on the first floor. He had a 60 engine T shirt on. 60 engine is the firehouse I was appointed into in 1973. So I had to run downstairs and see him. Hey, 60, how you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, retired fireman and all that. I asked him, how you doing for work? What kind of work you getting these days? He looks at me and he says, I've had three structural fires in the last two years. Whoa. 1978, I had six structural fires in one night. Tour. That's how crazy the 70s were. Why were so many things burning? I personally think UFOs came around and sprinkled crazy dust on us. But the real answer is the basic stuff. Greed, jealousy, revenge. Landlords with problem buildings, they thought nothing of putting a match to them, burning them to the ground and collecting the insurance. People having street fights. Somebody kick your ass in a street fight, what do you do? 3 o'clock in the morning, you toss a Molotov cocktail through their window. You catch a live in boyfriend cheating on you, pile his clothes on the bed, put a match to them. There are a million fires and a million reasons and I don't think we'll ever really know why. So we're rolling into the box, look out the window, and we got fire blowing out one window on the third floor. It's lighting up the whole courtyard. It's like somebody has a torch. You can see everything as I'm getting off the rig and I look across the street and the building across the street, Every window is reflecting this fire. It looked like fans at a baseball game up in the stadium cheering on their team. When you get off the rig and you're going into a fire, you have to do what's called a size up. You look at the building to see what you're dealing with. You got to know what you're dealing with. So we have a five brick 40 by 80 occupied multiple dwelling. We got fire out one window, but the fire's blowing out the window and lapping straight up the building. This is the summer. The windows above are open. It's going right in the windows. This is going to be a second alarm, easy. The first two companies there are Engine 9, 4 and Ladder 48. That's my firehouse. Their first do. If you ever seen a fire, you see all these fire trucks and all these firemen running around. It looks crazy, but there's a plan. You operate in the order that you get there. First do they're going to the fire, they're going to the fire apartment. Second DO companies, they're going to the floor above the fire. Everybody's got a position and you Got to find that position. You got to do it. Okay, so the engine gets there first. There's fire engines and fire trucks. They're not interchangeable. Fire engine is the apparatus with the hose on the back. They'll pull up in front of the building, take off the needed amount of hose. The fire engine will drive to the hydrant hookup. They climb up the stairs carrying their hose. Their job is to extinguish the fire. That's it. They're there to put out the fire. The truck company, who is very much better than the engine company. The truck company's job is to facilitate the engine putting out that fire where they're to perform ventilation, entry and search. Whereas everybody in the engine goes to the fire. When the guys climb off the truck, they're going in all different directions. The chauffeur will position the apparatus in front of the building to operate the aerial ladder, put it to the window. If he's got to rescue somebody, put it to the roof, whatever he's got to do. One person will go to the roof, probably the most important position. You have to get the roof open. He'll pop open the roof door, take out the skylights, because fire, heat, smoke rises and anybody in that building above the fire is going to die. If those doors and skylights aren't open, another guy will go to the fire escape. He'll climb up the fire escape, try to get into the apartment off the fire escape. And if he can't get in, once the engine starts moving in, he'll use his tools to take out the glass, provide ventilation. Those three guys are the outside team. Then there's the inside team, the officer and the two members of the forcible entry team. Tonight I'm part of the forcible entry team. We run up the stairs, we pass the engine because they're carrying their burden and we just got tools and we're much better than they are anyway. And we get up there first and there's the door smoke seeping out of the bottom three locks. Take my Halligan tool. A Halligan tool is like a crowbar on steroids. That's the best way I could explain it. Put my halligan tool into the door, between the door jamb and the door. And my partner takes his axe, his eight pound axe, and he starts slamming it into it. Bow, bow, bow. We're driving it. It's brute force and it's finesse. You drive it in a little bit, you angle it out, you drive it between the door and the jamb separating it pow. Pop the first lock. But when we pop the first lock, the door is pushed in on the top and all that smoke's coming out in the hallway. That's why you start at the top locks, because that smoke's coming out and it's immediately banking down. Drop the tool six inches, hit it. Bam, bam, bam, pow. We pop the second lock, drop it again, Bam, bam, pow. We got the third lock. By this time, the engine's in position. They have their hose flaked out. They bled the air out of it. They're ready to go. Engine, you ready to move in? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Open the door, Open the door. We pop the door, the fire comes out. The engine cracks their nozzle, putting 180 gallons of water a minute on this fire. They're pushing it back, they're pushing it down the hallway. We start crawling in behind. We got a search and vent as they're moving down the hallway. We start searching the rooms. You search a room by going into it, putting one hand on the wall and just following the wall around. Your other hand is searching out like this for people, laying down as you're walking, as you're, excuse me, crawling along. You never stand in a fire. Ceiling is a thousand twelve hundred degrees. You stand up in a fire, you're going to the burn center. Everything's done. On your hands and knees of your belly. Crawl along the wall, vent the window. Search, search, search. I'm crawling down the hallway and I feel a door in a doorway. That's a bedroom. Living rooms, kitchens, they don't have doors. I got a bedroom. Open the door, I go in and I'm praying that there's nobody in this bedroom. Not only because I don't want to see anybody get hurt, but I don't want to find another victim. Because soon as you touch a person, you own them and they live in your brain for the rest of your life. So I'm crawling in, I'm crawling in, I'm searching around, I'm fattening the window. Bump into a bed. Surprising how many people get rescued by bumping into them. I bump into the bed. I reach up, slide my hand across the bed. Fuck, there's a body there. All these things you see in the movies. The fireman lifts them up, throws them over the shoulder and gallantly runs out. Bullshit. I reach up, I grab it, I feel it. I grab a handful of this person's clothes and I just slide them off the bed onto the floor. Let gravity help me. Bam. Straight onto the floor. Lift the Corner of my mask and I scream, I got someone. You want to let somebody know that you got a victim? They're going to call somebody and there's going to be help coming to meet you. I'm figuring this is a big kid or a small teenager because weighs like nothing. I'm crawling out and I'm dragging this person along with me. You drag them head first because you don't want to take them down the stairs feet first. The head goes. Drag this person out into the hallway. Rip off my mask, and I look down and it's the smallest, skinniest, oldest woman I've ever seen in my life. But I got her out. She's in the hallway. She's out of the fire. She's got a chance. We beat the clock this time she's gonna make it. I take her, I lift her, I carry her downstairs. I put her on the dirty black and white tile floor. I kneel down beside her. My partner Eddie, comes along. He positions her head to start giving her the three breaths that begin cpr. Takes the web of his hand and he squeegees that snot and the soot off of her mouth. Because after you've been breathing in a fire, your whole face is painted black with snot and soot. He squeegees it off, slaps it away, gives it the three breaths that begin cpr. Now it's my turn. I got to depress the chest about 2 inches for these compressions to be. For the compressions to work. I'm fireproof tonight. Sometimes I go into these buildings, and the only thing that gets me in there, I'm so scared. The only thing that gets me in there, it's the guys I'm working with going in there, and I ain't letting them down. Sometimes I go in there and I'm fireproof. I could eat that fire. Tonight I found this woman. I got her out. I am fucking fireproof. I am strong. I got adrenaline flowing through me. I position my hands on her chest, I rock back, I straighten my elbows, and I rock forward. The sounds of her ribs busting echoes off the walls. And as her chest collapses, I swear to God, I feel her breastbone touch her spine. If she wasn't dead yet, she is now. I hear Eddie say, jesus Christ, Tom, what did you do? And those words are echoing in my head. At the zoo the next day, when I hear my kids say, look at me, Daddy.
- [20:14]
Dan Kennedy
Tom Ziegler was born and raised in the Bronx, where he has lived for 58 years. He joined the New York Fire Department in 1973 and spent 27 years with the NYFD, first as a fireman, then as a fire marshal and then a lieutenant. He's been married 34 years, has three children and four grandchildren, and is now a flight attendant on JetBlue. Our podcast host, Dan Kennedy is the author of the recently published book Rock An Office Power Ballad. Learn more@rockonthebook.com he is also the author of Loser Goes First. The Moth is a nonprofit organization. Consider supporting our free podcast by going to our podcast contribution page or by becoming a Moth member at the Moth, where you can also buy moth stories on CD, including Tom's story, which is featured on Audience Favorites Volume 5. And please tell us what you thought of today's episode. Tell us what you think of the Moth podcast in general. What do you love? What do you hate? What would you like to hear more of or less of? Email us@podcastthemoth.org thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you'll have a story worthy week Podcast audio production by Paul Ruwest at the Argo Network Podcast hosting by PRX Public Radio Exchange helping make public radio more public@prx.org.