The Moth - 25 Years of Stories: Joy and Juneteenth

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

This week, a special Juneteenth episode. This episode is hosted by Suzanne Rust. Host: Suzanne Rust Storyteller: Alvin Hall

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slashon to experience a live show near you. That's theMoth.org-FordSlashHuston. Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host, Suzanne Rust. All throughout 2022, for the 25th anniversary of The Moth, we've been taking a look back at every year we've been around. We're up to 2011.

In 2011, we were expanding our slams, and we were on a tour with the USA Network called Characters Unite that included main stages and mouth workshops in high schools throughout the country. Megan Markle, future princess, was even a special guest at an event, where she talked about the power of story to build bridges and to celebrate our commonality. These workshops focused on sparking dialogue for change in the world. For this special Juneteenth episode,

I'm gonna share a story about a person whose worldview was changed. It's one of my absolute favorite stories from the Moths' history. It's called Beyond My View Master Dreams and it was told by Alvin Hall. Stay tuned after the story, then we'll hear a little more from Alvin. Alvin Hall told this at a Moth Main Stage in New York City.

Here is Live With The Moth. We only went to town once a month when I was a little boy. We had a farm, we grew raised, haunted everything that we had. When we went to town, my mother and grandmother would give us a nickel or a dime to buy whatever we wanted as a treat. I so looked forward to that. While my brothers and sisters would go off and buy toys and candy, I would go to the back of the five-in-dime store

to this one area where they had these little bitty discs with bits of film in them and I would buy a few master's slide. I would go through the road and look for places like Rome, London, Paris, and a town called Constantinople. I would then come back home in the truck, go into the backyard, pull out my view master's slide, and point it at the sky, and I would sit there in reverie for hours. I would cross the bus for us. I would go up the

Iful Tower. I would create these travel logs or word I didn't know at that time. In my mind until my mother called me to do a chore in the house. I was raised in a very waspy black family. We did not talk. My parents spoke ins syllables. If they really liked what you did, they would go, mm, mm. If they thought what you did was adequate but expected, mm, mm, mm.

If they thought what you did was horrible, it was, mm, and the lower the register of that, mm, the more judgment was imparted by that. When I was nine years old, my mother, I recall my mother making this statement all the time. She kept saying, I raise you to leave my house. When you got to be 18 years old, all of you, I raised you to leave my house.

My brothers and sisters and I would look at each other and wonder. At age nine, I decided to tell her, I'm going to leave this place. My mother looked at me. She said, what did you say? I said, one of these days, I'm gonna leave this place. She went, hmm. Integration occurred in 1968, and I went from an all black school

named Shadeville, very fallenarian, to the county school. And there I had probably my second fight of my entire high school career. This guy called me something and we got into a fight and I fought to win. At the school, people became aware of me and so they recommended me to a program,

a Lyndon Baines Johnson program, called Project Upward Bound, at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, what a destiny I had. I had. I had. Nonetheless, I got into the program, and there was a lady who ran the program,

the most glamorous black woman I had ever met, a lady named Miss Freddy Grooms. She had a medium-sized afro that was perfectly quaffed every day. She wore clothes that were in blocks of colors. I can see them to this day. And at this program, she really took an interest in me. In my classes, however, I was the eager kid.

I was constantly putting up my hand. Every answer, I knew the answer to everything. And I was really, really on. And the teacher said to me, how do you know so much? And I said, I read the World Book in Cyclopedia. When we had no money at night, my mother, who subscribed to the World Book in Cyclopedia, would say to us, Don, my middle name, pick out the letter Q boy and read something to us.

Pick out the letter B boy and read something to us. Well, we know that I was learning all that stuff. So in class, I was really eager. This does not make me popular with the other people in the program. Eventually, I got into a little scuffle. I was put on parole, but Mrs. Grumes took interest in me and recommended me to her friend, Dr. Float Joe Fleischman, who had started a program at Yale University called Yale Summer High School, and I applied to that program. The day I got that letter, I sat in the kitchen of the house and I knew with everything in me that I was going.

I was going to go if it took everything to make it happen. And I think my parents suspected that. So in the day I got ready to go, I wasn't afraid of anything, not a single thing, because in my mind I'd already traveled to Paris and London and Constantinople. So going up to New Haven, Connecticut, cinch. I got on that plane, got to New Haven, Connecticut, and for the first time in my, I felt like I was home. There was John Wall, John Limley, Alba Clyde, all the tutors and counselors made me feel so at home. I loved it.

At the end of the summer, I had to come back home. I got off the plane, came home. And my grandmother walked up to me, put her hands on my face on both sides, looked into my eyes, and then held me close to her and said, you are never coming home again. You are never coming home again. Ivan applied to college, went off to school, in Maine, had a wonderful time, did well in school. Life was good. It was pretty good. I got a good job. I traveled a lot. I would write my parents postcards and tidal writing. I write these entire narratives. And I would say to my parents, did you ever receive my postcards? My parents would go, mmm, mmm, mmm.

Nothing more was said about the postcards. Curious, I said to myself. Well eventually, I got a job in New York City, a job that I really loved on Wall Street, and things were going really well for me and I started to travel and I still wrote my parents' cards. When I told my parents that I was moving to New York City, my grandmother said, you know that Richard

prior man lived in New York. I was really good to me. And I had, I found a place where I could work, I enjoyed the creativity of being in training on Wall Street, but in one of the recessions I got laid off and I knew that the layoff was coming and I got so mad about the layoff in anticipation of it that I decided I was gonna fight. I was gonna fight when they laid me off. So on the day they laid me off, I said, basically to myself, you're gonna have to pay me

to get rid of me. You're gonna have to pay me. And I fought that day, one of the hardest fights I've ever fought in my life to get a great severance package. When I walked out of that office, I had a severance package that was beyond my dreams. I walked out of the office, got into a taxi, and said, take me to Tiffany's. I took the taxi from downtown to Tiffany's.

I told the taxi to wait. I had wanted these green celerdon bowls, but three and a half years. I would go to Tiffany's and I would just lust after them. And today I was going to give them to myself as a present for that package I negotiated. I had them wrap them in the blue and white box, put them in a bag, and I came down in that side elevator at Tiffany's, got into the bag, and I came down in that side elevator at Tiffany's, got into the taxes, and take me to the dagostinos. I went to the dagostinos,

bought a half gallon of milk, and a box of Cheerios, and then said, take me home. I went home, opened the box, washed the bowls, and poured the Cheerios and and milk in the bowl. And I thought, if I have to be unemployed, every day I eat from these bowls, I'll be happy. And I sat there and I ate my Cheerios blissfully. And as I was eating those Cheerios, I said to myself, it's time to go to Paris.

I had a point at going to Paris. I don't know why, but it was time to go to Paris. So I called and booked a ticket, called a friend of mine, I said, I'm gonna come to Paris. Can I stay with you? He said, sure. I got on that plane to Paris. It was so exciting. Got off at Charles the Gal, took the air, air, and uncharacteristically, I missed my stop. I travel a lot. I never missed the stop. I missed my stop. So I got off of the next stop, came out of the metro,

walking down the street and turned a corner. And it was like everything went out of me. I was in exactly the same spot where that picture was taken. I used to sit and look at through that view master slide. I was in my own dream. I had made it real. I sat there for a moment and then I burst in the tears and I just thought, I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I'm here. And for the next five days, I went all over Paris and I saw every place that was in those view master's light. I did not miss a single one.

That first night in Paris, my friend who lived in the first Aronde's Mall, had a rooftop terrace. And so when I arrived late, he said, oh, I have some champagne and caviar upstairs. So we went up to the rooftop. As the sun was setting over Paris, I watched as all of the lights came up on the monuments, one by one. And as I stood there, I heard my mother and my grandmother say, mmmm, this year is a significant birthday for me, and I've decided that it's time for me to see that city once called Constantinople. Thank you.

That was Alvin Hall. Alvin Hall created and hosted the award-winning podcast series, Driving the Green Book. His many radio programs include guarding the art. Alvin Hall goes back to school, and Jay-Z from Brooklyn to the boardroom. In his landmark BBC television series, Your Money or Your Life, he offered people guidance about fixing their financial problems. Alvin continues to produce training videos about the investment markets for financial services organizations, as well as write books including the stock market explained, your

money of your life, and show me the money. His next book, inspired by his podcast series, will be published in early 2023. I love this story's themes of perseverance, pushing past obstacles and knowing your worth. And ever since it was shared, more than a decade ago, so many listeners have written to tell us that it's resonated deeply with them too. Now I wanted to talk to Alvin himself. On the occasion of Juneteenth, a day that celebrates liberation, I wanted to know when he feels the most free. And here's what he had to say.

I feel most free when, on a cool, crisp day, I take a walk beside a lake, a river, about the ocean. At these moments, I can listen to my own heart, listen to my steps, feel the wind on my body. Look at the broad open landscape of the sky. I feel unburdened, and I feel as if all things are possible. When I asked him more specifically, what freedom means to him, here's what Alvin shared. For me, freedom is a day when I don't have to think about the color of my skin and what it means to others. A day when I don't have to deal with the aggressions and microaggressions of other people. Freedom is when I can be in the moment without anyone's else's judgment intruding on the life that I live and

the things I do that make me happy. That's all for this week. We hope you enjoyed our celebration of Juneteenth. From all of us here at the Moff, have a story-worthy week. Suzanne Rest is the Moff Senior Curatorial From all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week. Suzanne Rest is the most senior curatorial producer and one of the hosts of The Moth Radio Hour. In addition to finding new voices and fresh stories for The Moth Stage, Suzanne creates playlists and helps curate special storytelling events.

This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin- Ness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Solanker. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Captain Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucche, Suzanne Rust, Ingegliedowski, and Aldi Kaza. All Moth stories are true as remembered by storytellers. For more about our podcast information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth podcast is presented by PIRX, the public radio exchange, helping make public radio more public at pirex.org. you