The Moth - American Dreams: Icons - The Moth Podcast

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

As America approaches it's 250th anniversary, we’ve decided to explore the American Dream - not just the singular American Dream, but all of them. Because our dreams contain multitudes. We’re dedicating our Spring Mainstage season, as well as some special podcast episodes, to exploring that theme.  To kick that off, on this episode, we have two stories about American Iconography, but with a twist.  This episode was hosted by Suzanne Rust. Storytellers: John Garcia and his father bond over bigfoot. Lynn Swisher Spears and her community help a neighbor see the cornfields one last time. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Let's talk groceries, specifically your groceries, with Instacart. You want your groceries just the way you like them, right? Well, the Instacart app lets you do just that. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences up front, helping guide their choices. Instacart, get groceries just how you like. Welcome to the Moth. I'm Suzanne Rust. America at 250.

250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 250 years of starting a new yearning for freedom, 250 years of the American dream. But what is the American dream? Who exactly is allowed to have one? And what happens when the idea of America meets the reality of what it is? As America approaches this anniversary,

we've decided to explore the American dream, not just the singular American dream, but all of them. Because our dreams contain multitudes. We're dedicating our spring main stage season, as well as some special podcast episodes, to exploring that theme. To kick it off, on this episode, we have two stories about American iconography, but with a twist. First up, every culture has its folklore, and America is no exception. John Garcia told this at a Denver Grand Slam, where the theme was Comfort Zone.

Here's John, Life the Month. My parents told me the worst part was when they drove around it, how its body stayed completely still, but its gaze followed them into the switch back. And it was dark, really dark. They were driving over a remote Rocky Mountain Pass, and out there, high beams only take you as far as the tree line. And behind that, a curtain of nothing.

But here, illuminated by the headlights of an old Toyota, of an old Toyota was something. They told me it had arms and legs, shaggy hair all over and could seemingly stand upright. But if you asked them, they'll tell you the same thing they told me. It wasn't human. I was six years old when I first heard this story. Christmas Eve at my grandparents,

and while the word Bigfoot hadn't yet entered my vocabulary, there was an earnestness in my parents' voices. voices. And that scared me. What scares me as an adult is knowing that I would believe in Bigfoot longer than I would believe in Santa. My mother is the straight man in my parents' straight relationship. And while she may prefer to keep the bones of this story buried, my dad is the kind of guy who keeps a shovel in his back pocket. The old man knows how to spin a yarn, and while I truthfully remain a bit of a skeptic, he's been right about enough things through the years to keep me on my toes. Bigfoot has become an unlikely lifeline for us. We'll call whenever a new video

pops up and discuss whether the blurry figure is just a guy in a gorilla suit or the real deal, and I don't know how many times we've watched the Patterson Gimlin tape, which you all know it. It's the one with like the Bigfoot pose. And he'll say something like, look at the way Patty's thighs jiggle. That's not a suit. That's real muscle. So Patty is the name of that Bigfoot. also my mom's name. You might be wondering if that's Freudian or Oedipole. No, bipedal, because Bigfoot walks on two legs. The Bigfoot story hasn't changed, mostly through the years, but other things have.

Dad and I are still close, but fishing trips are few and far between, and conversations can get a bit heated, come election time. Time forges a natural distance, and that's fine. I don't like watching old John Wayne movies anymore, and once he heard me listening to Sufian Stevens, and he said, and I quote, this sounds exactly how liberals think. Broken clocks, but Bigfoot. It's exactly the type of thing we can still bond over.

He sits comfortably in that then diagram of life between politics and purpose, right in the middle, next to, B-movies, burritos with green chili, blindly believing the Denver Broncos are going to win the Super Bowl every year. And of course, big game hunting. I've heard the Bigfoot story around the campfire almost every year since I was a kid, so when my dad asked me to join him on another elk-tum hunting trip,

of course I was game. Wild game. But this was a new area, unproven. and on the drive up my dad told me that this was an area where mysterious tree knocks pierced through the silence, where arched tree structures lined the dirt roads, and phantom noises echoed from the dark timber. By God, that's Bigfoot's music. The next morning, we were in our spot before dawn, just watching, waiting, listening, and like many wonderful days hunting, we didn't see a thing. And that was fine, because

What I was really hoping to track was the quiet I used to find in hunting with him. Like when I was six and I fell asleep overlooking a ravine. He had to carry me back. And now I'm the one leading the trail and while I'm not carrying him, I can feel the weight, both from the gear and the years. And I'm also very aware of the setting sun and how easy it is. to laugh things off when songbirds are whistling melodies against a blue sky, and how when the sun dips behind the ridge,

how pockets of pure darkness creep into the trees, and anything could be watching from behind that curtain of nothing. It was just light enough to see the trail and nothing else, and about a quarter of mile from camp I looked left and froze. 30 feet ahead, 10 feet in the air, a pair of white eyes staring right into mine. And they were surrounded by a coat of wavy, wild, reddish-brown fur. My dad was oblivious, but in my cold sweat, I knew in that moment I was looking at Bigfoot.

And then the most amazing thing happened. It slowly raised its arm and waved. Then my eyes adjusted and not Bigfoot, a bearded bow hunter in a full camo suit sitting in a tree stand. When I pointed him out, my dad assured me that had it actually been Bigfoot, he would have blasted him straight to Vahala with the old dissector. But with his arm around my shoulder, I felt relief, not just because we weren't standing 30 feet away from a 10-foot crypted, but also the day we find Bigfoot is the day the old man and I stop looking. Hope that day never comes. That was John Garcia.

John sees himself as a father first, a friend's second, and a creative third. Between small adventures, he reads in coffee shops, rides his bike on warm days, and scours Denver's thrift stores for vintage audio treasures. We asked John if he and his father had gotten any evidence of Bigfoot one way or another. Here's what he said. I'm not eager to find Bigfoot, but I like believing there's still some undiscovered magic out there. In a world that feels increasingly fractured,

shared myths have been away from my dad and me to stay connected. That's so lovely to hear. American Dreams is the theme of our spring main stage season. And I've been struck by how differently our storytellers approach that theme. And it got me thinking about my own story. My paternal grandparents moved to New York from Panama and Jamaica, to create what they hoped would be a better life. I know for a fact that some of those dreams were deferred,

but I also know that they were proud of what they built here. There are so many stories, told and untold, that illustrate the struggle, the spirit, the humor, and the beauty of what it means to live in America. And I'm really excited that the moth will be shining a light on the vastness of those experiences. If you'd like to see those stories live, we're having main stages all throughout the country.

For a show near you, check out our website at the moth.org slash mainstage. In the meantime, another story about American dreams. Back in a moment. Welcome back. Now we head to the middle of the country, where farm life has defined so much of the American dream. Our next story is from Lynn Swisher Spears, who told this at an Asheville Story Slam where the theme was endings. Here's Lynn Swisher Spears. This is a story from my youth, a long time before I began my transition. And so it's going to be told from the perspective of who I was then, a young man growing up in the Midwest.

I was raised on a small farm, and one of the things you learn early on from that experience is you can never do it all by yourself. You always need help. That's because on a farm, there's just never enough hours in the day, nor are there enough days from April to October to do all the things that have to be done. And so out of necessity, you find yourself calling upon your neighbors to lend you a hand, and they in turn look to you to do the same for them. There's that old saying, many hands lighten the load. Well, nowhere is that more true than on a farm. Now our little farm, it was surrounded by four other neighboring farm families. North of us was Paul's place.

Paul was my father's cousin. He was a crusty old guy. Underneath that coarse exterior, he was a real soft touch. Paul was married to Blanche, a fiery redhead with a foul mouth, and an uncanny knack to antagonize any person that crossed her path. We put up with her. We had to. She was family.

South of us was Leonard's place. Now, Leonard's last name was Bird. And so everybody called him Chick. That's a wry Midwestern humor for you there. Chick was a tough as-nails kind of guy, wiry. You'd never seen him without a half-smoked cigarette dangling out the side of his mouth. Chick was married to Helen, a beautiful, fragile woman who always had a kind word for everyone. East of us was Tom's place.

Now, Tom was Paul and Blanche's son. He was long and lanky. He also had a foul mouth, which we all assumed he inherited from his mother. Tom had a long succession of wives, so many I could never remember all their names, but it does help to explain his nickname, which was Tom Catton. And then there was Glenn's place, which was west of us. Glenn was a big lump of a man, married to Lois, a big lump of a woman. They had six kids, each and every one of them, a big lump.

Anyway, these five families, we would work together all summer long, from planting to cultivation, to harvest. Some of the work we took on would take every spare hand we had, like balin hay. My father, Dale, he'd drive the tractor that pulled the baler. Chick would stand on the front edge of the wagon behind the bailer. He'd pull the bales out as they came out, thrown back to me in the back of the wagon. I'd stack him up five or six high. It'd take us 30 minutes to fill a wagon. And then Paul would drive out on a tractor with an empty wagon.

We'd swap them out. He'd take the full wagon back to the barn where he and Tom would offload the bales onto the elevator up into the hayloft, where Glenn and his sons would stack him up. We'd work straight through to mid-afternoon, then we'd take a break, and then all the women would come out. My mother, Helen, Lois, Blanche, whoever the hell Tom was married to then. They'd bring us lunch. Ice tea, hand-salid sandwiches, sweet apple pie. We'd find a shady spot beneath the hay wagon to sit and eat and talk.

And then after the women left, the men would break out the smokes and the beers, and we'd talk some more. And we would, then we'd go back to work, and we'd keep working until it was too dark to see. The next morning we'd get up and do it all over again. This was the important thing. Nobody ever kept track of who did what. There just wasn't any need. Without saying a word, everybody knew exactly what needed to be done. Everyone did their fair share.

One summer, I'd come back from college to help out. We were short-handed. In the spring, the chick had gotten real sick, and put him in the hospital. Turns out it was the cancer. And so all summer long, the four families, we would work our crops, and we would tend to our chores,

and then we'd go over to Chick's place, and we'd work his crops and tend to his chores. Most evenings, we'd wind up in at the hospital sitting around Chick's room talking. Now, nobody ever wanted to talk about the challenges Chick was facing, and that was going to be way too hard. And so instead, we would talk about easy things, the weather, the price of corn,

maybe how the high school football team might do in the coming fall. It was on one of those evenings late in the growing season. Chick was sitting up in bed, and he looks over at my father, And he says, how them crops look, Dale. And my father said, well, they look good, Chick, the crops look real good. And Chick says, yeah, I figured that. I'd just like to see it for myself. And my father says, well, you will, Chick.

You're going to get better. And you will see them crops. And right then, Chick, who was already pale and drawn turned ash, and he looked around the room at everyone there and back at my father. And in a voice just barely louder than a whisper, he said, Dale, I ain't getting better. I ain't ever getting better. And so right then, without saying a word, everyone in the room knew exactly what needed to be done. And so we unplugged chick from the tubes and wires

that had him hog-tied. We slid him into a wheelchair and slipped him out the back door of the hospital when no one was looking, put him in a pickup, and we drove out to his cornfield, out to his farm and parked alongside his cornfield just as the sun was setting. Now, Paul, the Krusty guy,

he had big, powerful forearms. He pulls Chick out. of the pickup and slings him over his shoulder like chick was a sack of potatoes and carries him out into the middle of the field, sets him down between two rows of corn growing up straight and tall. The rest of us gathered round. Glenn plucked a stem of brome grass to chew on and then plucked another one and handed to chick.

And then we just sat there for a long time not saying anything, just looking at the crop. After a good long while, chick says to my father, you was right, Dale, the crop looks good, looks real good. And my father says, don't it? Don't it, though? It was way past dark before we got Chick back to the hospital. Head nurse stormed in gave us all hell. Tom told her to shut the fuck up. We turned and walked out. Two days later, Chick died. That fall, the four families would harvest chick's crop. They made sure all the proceeds got directly to Helen, plus a little bit more, because that's what you do for a neighbor out on a farm. They'd buried Chuck. up on a hillside overlooking a cornfield so that for all of eternity he could look out and see for

himself how them crops was doing. That was Lynn Swisher Spears. Lynn was a storyteller, architect, and in her retirement, a songwriter and musician. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2023, leaving behind two children and countless friends. That's her music you're hearing in the background from an album called Walking the Cat. Sounds like Lynn got it all in. Work, art, and friends, life. Feels like the real American dream to me. That brings us to the end of our episode. Thanks so much for joining us.

From all of us here at the Moth, we hope you have a story-worthy week, whatever your American dream is. Suzanne Rust is the Moth's 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 Janice, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger.

The rest of the Molles leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Clucay, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardonale, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Orenia. The Moth podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, the moth.org. Ever listen to The Moth and thought, I have a story to tell? We'd love to hear it. The Moth Pitch Line is your chance to share a two-minute pitch of your true personal story. Record it right on our site at the moth.org, or call 877-799 Moth.

That's 877-799-6684. Here's the thing. We listen to every single pitch. Your story could end up on our podcast, our stage, or inspiring someone who needs to hear it. Share your story at themouth.org or call 877-799 Moth. Everyone has a story worth telling. Tell us yours.