The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Celebrating The Moth's 25th Anniversary

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

A special episode in honor of The Moth's 25th Anniversary! Five stories spanning a quarter century, each focusing on landmark moments -- from Moth history to global events. This episode is hosted by Moth Artistic Director, Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Hosted by: Catherine Burns Purity Kagwiria chooses a name for herself. Nestor Gomez tries to learn English by watching television. Tony Hendra gets inspiration from a surprising source. Jeffery Rudell's honesty with his parents fails to yield the love, compassion and forgiveness they taught him to value. Wanda Bullard's father trusts a prisoner, with surprising results.

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 slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's theMoth.org forward slash Houston. This is The Moth Ready Hour from PRX, and I'm Catherine Burns. Big news!

This week the Moth is celebrating her 25th anniversary. On June 6, 2.5 decades will have gone by since our founder, George Stoss Green, held the first Moth event in his living room in New York City. To celebrate, we're bringing you five stories, one from each five-year period we've been around. We're going to start with the present and work backwards. In recent years, the Moth has grown from a local event in New York to a truly global organization, and our team is contributed to work being done around the globe to empower women and girls. So we're going to kick things off with a story told in a Moth global

community workshop in 2019 that we taught along with a Ford Foundation during a convening of women leaders from around the world. In Kenya, where a storyteller is from, it's common for people to have three names and children are usually named after the elders. Here's Purity Kaguirya live at the mosque. When I was seven years old, I needed to get baptized. All this time I knew I had one name, Kaguirya, but at the church they said I needed two names. I went home and asked my grandmother what name I should be baptized by, and she said, pick my name. Be called Elizabeth kakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakak I was just two months ago. So her name to me sounded very fresh. Therefore, I was baptized as Puriti Kagueria. Four years later, maybe five years later,

I needed to do my high school final exam. And when I went to register, they said, I needed a third name. And this third name had to belong to a man. I needed to show that I belonged to someone. And all this time no one had ever brought up the issue of me having a father. I knew that my grandmother's father was my father. After all, we all called him Baba. But then I knew that I couldn't pick his name.. This age thing was too old for me to pick his name. So I decided that I'd grown up hearing my mother,

I'd grown up hearing that my mother had a husband called Mutua and I thought, what are the odds? I must be his daughter. So I picked this last name, went to school and said, these are my three names. I got registered. Four years later, I needed to apply Nihari, kakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakak y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana y suwana kakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakak I again had to decide what name I was going to go by. And the registrar said that I needed to drop this mutwa name and pick my husband's name.

And at that point, I decided that I was going to stick with the two names that were on my butt certificate and the ones that I really chose for myself. This is Fiori Chikaguerria. Thank you. That was purity cookwarea. purity lives in Kenya and is now the director of the with and for girls fund and collective the world's only participatory fund by and for adolescent girls. purity is also the mother of two boys.

she wrote, I chose my son's name so that a lot of thought. Each of my sons has four names, so if they want to drop any, they have plenty to choose from. Next we're turning to the year's 2013 to 2017. There was, to put it mildly, a lot of talk about immigration during this time. As is the case today, many of these stories came from abstract or biased news pieces. So here is a story straight from someone who is made America his home. Nestor Gomez was born and raised in Guatemala and came to the US in the 80s to escape the Civil War.

We first met Nestor in our story-slams series in Chicago, where we partner with Public Radio Station WBEZ. Here's Nester Gomez. When I came to the USA with my family, I was 15 years old. I And here in the USA, everybody speaks English. My family and I, we could only speak Spanish, but my family could speak Spanish because I could barely speak. When I was a child, I used to suffer from a speech impairment. I used to stutter. As I grew older, I was able to overcome my storytelling, yes, a little bit.

But when I came to the USA because of the cold-dirt shock, I started storytelling again. I remember thinking to myself, great. Not only do I story in Spanish, now I'm going to story in English too. I'm going to be a bilingual story. And we had a right to the USA at the beginning of the summer, which meant we didn't have to go to school. But instead of spending the time at the lake or the park, we used to spend our time at our apartment,

just watching TV. And the reason was that because every time that we went outside, we felt so different, so alien, we felt like we didn't belong. In fact, the only place that we felt like we belonged was at home. At our tiny apartment, we could watch TV all day long. And we could watch the Le Mundo.

And we knew vision. We could see people speaking Spanish. We could watch the show that we used to watch in Guatemala. And then when our mother came back from work in the afternoon, she used to watch in Guatemala. And then when our mother came back from working the afternoon, she used to wash her novellas. And we used to wash in the novellas. We heard the sub-operas. We just strange because in Guatemala,

I'm making and I'm not supposed to wash novellas. But here we were like, oh my god, novellas. And after a couple of months, we had to go to school. And I remember two weeks after the school got started, my brother came back and he was really worried. He had a worry look on his face. And my brother was going, what are you worried?

And he told me tomorrow I have a test. And I told my brother, why are you worried? You're smarter than me. You memorized everything really well. Why are you worried? You're smarter than me. You memorized everything really well. Why are you worried? He told me because I had to memorize all the names of the states and the capitals. And I had to say them in front of the class is going to be an oral test. Now I was worried. Because as I told you before, I used to stutter. And the idea of an oral test is to cure me today.

In fact, because I had started going to school and I was the oldest, my mother had decided that I was going to become the official translator. Anybody who is immigrant will tell you that your parents made you that translator. In fact, only they prior, we had gone on a side scene tour. And when we got lost, my mother told me that I had to go and ask a police officer for directions.

Now, I usually argue with my mom about those things, but I always lost because I started, so I couldn't really argue. But this time, I decided that I wasn't going to argue with her. So I just walked in front of the family and I approached the police officer and I just pretended to be talking to him. And then I went back to my mom and I gave her the made up directions. We kind of got lost really bad the day.

We finally managed to find our way, but it wasn't because of me, I didn't help at all. So now that my brother came and asked me for help, I decided that I was going to help my brother. I wanted to help my brother. So I started to write down all the names of the states and the capitals on little cards so I could show them to my brother. So I showed him one card. I only way. Perfect. it to my brother. So I showed him one car. I O B O A. Perfect.

I told my brother. He was trying to say I O A. You see, the problem was that in our time in the USA, the only thing that we have managed to learn was the A, B, C, D, E, F, E, the alphabet. We only knew how to pronounce each letter. So we were putting all the letters together to make up the name of that state. So if we messed up I.O.1, you see my name, what we did with Kansas, or with Mississippi, it was horrible. By my brother, the name is just like we've pronounced him,

and then he went to school. So that next day I was waiting for him I asked him how did the days go? How did the days go and my brother started to cry? They may fangom me Everybody was laughing even the teacher told me that I didn't study and I feel so sad for my brother because he has studied really hard and I feel so mad for the teacher and the classmate But I also felt mad because I wasn't able to help my brother. So I told my brother, that's it. From now on, we are no Washington,

no only in Bichong anymore. From now on, when we come back from school, we go into wash, TV in English only. Yes, my brother, say. And that's what we started doing. When we came back from school, we started to watch the code be sure. Before the allegation against him.

We started to watch Roq saying before we learned that she actually hates undocumented immigrants, we started to watch the symptoms on facts before we knew that we shouldn't be watching facts. The symptoms on facts before we knew that we shouldn't be watching facts. And when our mother came from work and started to watch an ovelas, we didn't watch an ovelas, we heard anymore. Instead, we went to a room and we studied and we practiced the word that we have learned. Especially the crazy words from Barnes and Son, Kawabanga. It's my choice, dude. And sometimes our mom will come into the

room and will ask, what's the name of the land of me? Are you guys talking about me? And sometimes we were. But most of the time we were just trying to learn new words. The only time that we allowed ourselves to watch movie in Spanish was on the weekends when we went to rent the Mexican movies. But then one day I decided I'm gonna rent one movie in English. So my mother sent us to the video store

and that's what I did. I rented one movie in English, even without asking her. And that Friday afternoon, first we watched one of the Mexican movies. And when the movie ended, I put the movie in English that I had rented. It was the Eddie Murphy role comedy special. I mean, I thought it was just a regular movie with a beginning middle and a plot, but no, it was this guy regular movie with a beginning middle end at last, but no, it was this guy that was still in young,

really fast and we couldn't understand anything. So I fast forward the movie a little bit, and nothing. I fast forward the movie some more, I'm nothing. I fast forward the movie at third time, and then I saw that Eddie Murphy was moving his leg up and down. Hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, hattu, We knew who Michael Jackson was. He was so freaking funny So my brother and I we started to point at a TV funny funny funny

Pointing at the so the funny funny I was sitting on the floor in between the TV and the sofa And I took around to see my mother to see she was laughing But she was looking at us with a strange look on her face She was looking at us like she didn't know who we were, like we were alien to her, like we were strangers. So I told my brother to go into the kitchen and get some popcorn on some sodas, and my brother didn't like to be boss around, but he liked popcorn and sort of better.

So he ran into the kitchen, and when my brother got the popcorn ready, I took the the movie out and I put one of the Mexican movies instead. And by the time my brother came back with the popcorn, he saw that the Mexican movie was playing. He didn't say anything. He just sat next to my mom and my mother hugged him and they caught a lap together. And I wanted to do the same but I was 15 years old so I was too cool to do that. So instead, I got up and I sat on the other side of the sofa and I just looked at my mom and I looked at my brother. Because I knew that we had to get used to this country, that we had to learn to speak English

so we could get better grades and eventually a good job. But in that moment, in that tiny apartment, we just need it to be a family. Thank you. That was Nester Gomez, since he found his voice, he has not stopped using it. At the time of this recording, he has told a whopping 187 math stories all over the country, which is indeed a math record. Nester produces and hosts his own show called 80 Minutes Around the World. It features the stories of immigrants, their descendants, and allies. Coming up, a story from the set of the classic mockumentary, this is Spinal Tap. The Maw 3D Lour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and Woods Hole

Massachusetts and presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. In this hour, we're celebrating the Moth's 25th anniversary by hearing stories recorded across our two and a half decades. Now we're going back to 2009. This is the period where we began touring, and we began experimenting with new partners and venues

in our hometown of New York City. Our next storyteller, Tony Hendra, was the first editor of the National Lampoon. And as an actor, he played the role of the band manager Ian Faith in the classic mockumentary, this is Spinal Tap. And that was a subject of a story he told in a moth in New York City at the classic mockumentary, this is Spinal Tap, and that was a subject of a story he told in Amath in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art, which was presented in partnership with Dot Fortnight 2009.

We're going to join him mid story, which finds Tony depressed over the death of his friend John Balushi in financial ruin, going through a tough divorce and feeling completely disillusioned with the ideals of the 1960s, especially the promise of rock and roll. Here's Tony Hendra. And it seemed to me somehow appropriate that I was in California, because California is the end. I mean, it's the end of America. You can't go any further, right? And it all was also appropriate that somehow

this magnificent sunset was sliding gradually underneath the horizon and to Stygian darkness. And for the first time in my life, I just wondered what the hell was the point in going on? Now, whoever owned this house, it was kind enough to have left a quarter vodka in it. And I also had with me my very first prescription for valium. So these two things taken together seemed to be to present a perfect opportunity. So I laid out ten valium. I

figured that's how many would take. I took a big, big slug of vodka and took my first valium ever and then took another slug of vodka. Nothing much seemed to happen and so I took a really big hit of vodka, picked up the valium and I looked at them in my hand for a long time and I fell asleep.

And about 14 hours later I woke, and I remember through the fog that I was supposed to be on a movie set, which we precise about four hours earlier, and it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do was be in a movie set, and especially a movie about rock and roll, which at this point I hated. And it didn't have a script this movie. It had to be totally improvised, and I'd never improvised in my life either. But I was a professional, so I jumped in my car and sped across the Malibu hills, and to the location, and they rushed me into a hair and wardrobe,

and so forth and so on, and rushed me to the set, and there were the three stars of the movie, looking absolutely hilarious in their fright wigs. And the set was actually a limo, and I was placed in the limo with them, and somebody yelled action, and we were underway. And they were brilliant. None of them was British, but they all had perfect British accents.

And they were being incredibly funny in character, intimidatingly funny. And I knew that very soon, one of them would turn to me and say something, and I would have to answer. Now, I'd done a little homework. I'd read up on improvisation, and I'd talk to all my friends who've been in improv groups. And the consensus seemed to be that it was one basic rule you had to follow. Listen. Can't bring anything preconceived to improvisation. You must just listen, not just to what people are saying, the other people are saying,

but to what their faces are saying, what their bodies and their movements are saying. And if you do that, just simply answer what you hear, it will work. And now the moment came. The character called David was turning to me, and he was saying something to me. And I could see in his face that his character thought my character was pretty sleazy. This character's name was Ian Lied a lot. And out of my mouth came this voice that wasn't really mine, it was sort of evasive and sort of slimily ingratiating, and it had that kind of nasal wine that was

beginning to creep into everyday English. And it worked. It was amazing. I mean, the scene was enabled to continue being funny. I mean, I wasn't funny, but I helped them be funny. And my friend, the director, was very happy with the scene. So we did another take of it, and it was even happy with that. And when we did another scene, and another scene, and pretty soon the day was over,

and I had completely forgotten all thoughts of offing myself. But more importantly something quite wonderful was happening, which was these stars and the extended cast and myself too, we were all in some way on the same emotional page. We had all sort of arrived at this deep dissolution and disappointment with this wonderful music that when we were younger, we had had such high hopes for that. We actually thought some of us would change things, would bring peace and rationality into life,

would end racism and war. You remember? And it had betrayed us. And it had been betrayed for us. And it had been a source of failures and disappointments and vulgarity and stupidity and absurdity and pretension and so on. And this whole cost was just coming into that and devising and finding all these wonderful

ways in which finality and cynicism and so forth had poisoned this whole area of the art world. And I would actually venture to say that spinalinal Tap actually isn't a mockumentary. Because of this wonderful cinematographer we had Peter Smokler, it was actually a documentary record of a really fascinating collective comedic experiment that took place at a certain point in time and couldn't have been

at any other point in time. And that was a success. And I think that's why it sort of works. That's where it gets its age and authenticity. And I have one little epitaph to this. I haven't a foggy idea what it means, but I'm going to throw it in anyway. This was about five years later.

And spinal tap had been out for about three years, and was sort of on its way to becoming a minor classic that it became. And I got into a cab in New York and my driver was a quintessential acid casualty. I mean, he had, you know, he had one of those bribboned kind of ponytails down to his ass crack, you know. And any, any, any, PyrIRD in the review mirror and he said hey man went you in Spiral tab and I said yeah yeah I played the manager yeah he said man I really dig their music it's so far out he said you know man I was into tap

before they made that movie. That was Tony Hendrack. Tony was the author of the memoir Father Joe, and the co-author of George Carlin's posthumous memoir, Last Words. Tony was a mini-time-moth storyteller, host, and long-time board member. He championed the moth right up until his death in 2021, and we missed him terribly. And to give you a sense of that era, Jesse Klein, now beloved for her best-selling memoirs, and is a writer and executive producer of hits such as Inside Amy Schumer took the stage. And in her Moth debut, had to explain what Google was

to the audience. Here's a clip. Now, I was a nerd, but I was not a geek. So I didn't know what Google was. I didn't know. And I'm sure, right, you all know what it is. If there's one or two people here, I'll explain it. Google is the most powerful thing ever invented on the planet. It is this insane search engine that allows you to be crazy and stalk someone

from the comfort of your own home, right? It is a more important invention than fire or the wheel, as far as I am concerned. That same night, Jeffrey Rudell made his moth debut. This was an era when our open-mic storytelling competitions had taken off in New York, and we were meeting many amazing record tours at these shows. Among them, Jeffrey, live from the New York Public Library's Celeste Barcos Forum, here's Jeffrey Rudan. APPLAUSE At the age of 19, I felt prey to a powerful and deeply

corrupting influence. It dogged me for six years, costing me many a friend, and in the process bringing my family to ruin. It crippled me to such an extent that I have spent the intervening 15 years recovering from it. The influence I speak of is hope. Now, you should know at the get-go, there's nothing

in my childhood to suggest I might find myself on such a wayward path as that. My parents loved me terribly. They taught me right from wrong. They taught me to be courageous in the face of bullies. They taught me patience and forgiveness. They taught me that love would see you through any misfortune. My trouble began on Independence Day, not the Independence Day, but my Independence Day. My Independence Day occurred on Memorial Day, 1982. That was the day I told my family

I was gay. The act itself, mom, dad, I'm gay, was relatively unexceptional. In fact, it should have been more exceptional, and I've always sort of wished that it had been. However, subsequent events overshadowed it, and it pales by comparison. The subsequent events occurred in my absence, after the fact, as I was in my car driving back to college to take my final freshman exams. I remember being on the highway and thinking how, you know, I kind of expected my parents to freak out a little. And to my surprise, they had not freaked out. They'd been calm and cool and collected, oddly calm, cool and collected. But still, I was really happy as I drove back to school. Meanwhile, subsequent events were busy unfolding back home.

My mother was going through the house where I grew up and was gathering together things I had made for her, a jewelry box when I was in 4-H and a painting when I was 16. A box containing the letters that I'd written them from school, which I used to do every week. She was removing photographs from the walls and placing them in little piles around the house, and she was directing my father, who never dared not follow her direction, to take the bed and the desk and the chair

and the lamp and the Smith-Corona, my Smith-Corona even, and to put them all in the front yard next to the rock garden, not too close to the maple tree. My clothes, my books, my bookcases, my report cards, my ferrofosite posters, my shoes, three years worth of interview magazines, the good ones with the Andy Warhol covers, you know. Everything. Then with my brother and my sister and my grandparents watching, my mother removed a cigarette from this tiny crocheted case

she always kept them in. And she lit the cigarette and then she took the match and put it to the pile of things there in the front yard that contained the cigarette and then she took the match and put it to the pile of things there in the front yard that contained the sole and complete record of my existence in my family. It had burned for seven and a half hours, thanks in part to the addition of some lighter fluid to help get the larger pieces of furniture going. All of it, all that was me prior to that memorable memorial day, up in flames. According to my sister, who years later recounted these details to me,

it was a mighty impressive blaze. In their eagerness to feed it, and due to an unexpected wind off the fields around the house, the sugar maple that was older than my great grandfather caught us sparking its branches and was sacrificed. They cut off all communication with me. They emptied and closed our joint bank account. There goes college. They barred the door. They stopped talking, stopped answering my letters,

stopped taking my calls. They stopped anything with me. They just stopped. I was completely disbelieving. I mean, this didn't make any sense. All of my friends had stories about telling their families they were gay, and they all ended the same way. Sooner or later, everything worked out fine.

So I even had a friend named Neil, who's parents had done the same thing. First, they just stopped talking to him, but one year later they were inviting his new boyfriend to come home with him for the holidays. Everyone counseled me to have a little patience and have a little hope. And this is how it starts, slowly, just a little hope, just enough to get you through. But hope is cumulative. A little bit here and a little hope, just enough to get you through. But hope is cumulative. A little bit here and a little bit there.

It builds up in the system until it becomes something toxic, denial. I mean, their reaction had been, yes, extreme, but not the worst that could happen. The thing to do was to be a good son, to make them proud, to earn back their love. So I got a job. And and then another and then a third. Three shifts, three restaurants, six days a week.

That would show them. But they weren't watching. I wrote them letters, lots of letters about nothing. It's a Tuesday and it's hot. Or my new roommate is named Kathy. Or my friends took me out from my birthday yesterday. They didn't write back. Living for me sort of came to a halt,

despite the fact that my life just went on and on. I didn't think about my future, I didn't think about my needs, I didn't think about my sadness, I didn't think about any of it. I didn't have to because I had hope. Every day whispering in my ear, don't give up. Don't walk away.

You're almost there. Don't stop. Don't grow. Don't develop. Don't worry. Just don't make any sudden movements or you'll blow it. So six years went on like this without a word from them. So finally, hurt and confused beyond my ability to hold it in, and frankly finding it really

difficult to maintain the illusion that this was temporary. I decided to kind of make one more attempt to force the issue. So I flew home and showed up unannounced at my mother's office. It was an amazing visit. I asked the receptionist to page my mother and tell her she had a surprise visitor. And I stood there in the lobby, and I remember seeing my mother come down this long hallway toward me, and she was walking, and then she sort of looked up, and she saw me, and then she recognized who it was,

and she turned and walked away again. It was a really amazing 90-second visit. Two and a half weeks later, a black funeral wreath was delivered to me at my office, with a note that said, in memory of our son. Clearly it was time to give up hope and take up therapy. So I talked to a counselor who asked me why I had invited this turmoil into my life. I talked to a minister who suggested a Christian youth camp. I talked to a lesbian who offered to slash my mother's tires if I pay for her flight there.

I signed up for Scream Therapy where I beat pillows with tennis rackets and screamed up senators and you know, pulled a muscle in my shoulder. Mostly I talked to friends and mostly the pain persisted. The sheer weight of it nearly crushed me, or at least that's how it felt at the time. Since it was my constant companion, I spent most of my time turning it over in my mind, fingering it like some sort of psychological worry stone. Over the years, it's been eroded by so much handling. All the remains now is a small, hard, nearly weightless pebble, really.

Worn away is most of the anger and much of the hurt. But one question remains, how was it possible that they taught me love and loyalty in excess of that which they themselves possessed? which they themselves possessed. I have come to believe that it's not possible to understand what they did, not possible for me anyway. To understand it, would seem to indicate that there was some justification for it, and I know for certain that there is not. Still, there's no escaping my parents. This thing they did, this extreme and unfathomable and many layered thing they did tore a whole in the middle of my life. I have spent years and a lot of money, darning that whole while trying to keep the rest of

my world from unraveling. And yet their influence on me is enduring. My parents loved me terribly. I have been courageous in the face of bullies. There is such a thing as too much patience, but no such thing is too much forgiveness. And love has seen me through every misfortune. APPLAUSE Jeffrey Rudell is a writer and paper artist.

Jeffrey's mother died in 2005. They never spoke again after that faithful memorial day. MUSIC They never spoke again after that faithful memorial day. Coming up, a story from the woman whose life and friendship inspired the moths founding. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX, and I'm Katherine Burns. We're here celebrating the Moth's 25th anniversary. For our final story in this hour, we're going back to our earliest days. I'm now going to turn this introduction over to our founder, George Dawes Green.

I started the Moth back in 97, and people always want to know where I got the name from. Well I grew up on an island off the coast of Georgia called St. Simon's and there's not much to do on St. Simon's Island so at night we'd go on over to Wanda Bullard's house which was kind of a ruin and her porch screens were all belled out so moss could get in and they'd go battering around the porch light. And we'd just sit there under all that air traffic and tell stories and drink bourbon. And sometimes we'd drink a lot of bourbon and the stories would seem to get better as the night wore on. And we started to call ourselves the moths. And years later, I was at one of those cocktail parties

in New York City where you can't finish a story because there are scavengers all around you who are just waiting for you to pause so they can interrupt you. And no one in a New York City cocktail party can hold the floor for more than about 20 seconds, which I thought was kind of sad. So I started the moth and we just made people shut up and listen. We had a string of really amazing evenings, but the night I felt proudest of was when we got wandabullard to come up from Georgia. And then George made it happen. And he named it the Moth because he said they were like the Moth that come to the lights

on my porch on Sunday afternoon. People came like the Moth and they listened to stories. So that's why he named it the Moth. And a few years later he called me up on my promise and said, okay, you promised to come to New York. I had never been to New York then. But I went to New York and I told a story about my dad. And it got a good reception. Everybody liked my story and seemed like me too.

Here's Wanda Bullard, live at the mall. I'm here today to tell you a story about my father, George Bullard. He was born in 1900 in a little bit of area up in the Northeast Coral Mississippi that's very rural. Most people would call it Heal Billy Country. They just call it Paradise. So he was one of nine children and he married when he was 20. His wife had two children and his wife died.

So he raised those two daughters. And then when they were grown, he married another woman who turned out to be my mother. She was about 20 years younger than him. And they had two daughters and I'm the last of the last. He was about 50 years old when I was born, but an incredible influence on my life. And one of the things that he did, mostly what he did, was to raise and try and burglow

that hunted quail. And if the burglow business got slowly, he'd pay the house too. But when he got But when he got laid into his 60s, someone topped him in the running for office. This is Bird Outraser. And he ran for Board of Autonomies, which is like City Council. And he was elected. And when he went to the first meeting, he found out that his assignment was that he was the fire commissioner. Now every previous fire commissioner had done the meetings and made political decisions and voted and did those kinds of things, but my father didn't quite understand. And so he went down to the fire department and said, now how am I going to know when there's a fire? And they said, and you need to know because he said,

How else can I know where it go? And to learn how where the fire is? And they said, Mr. Board, you intend to go to the fires? Of course, I'm the fire commissioner. They didn't have the heart to tell it that he was taking a step in a new direction from fire commission. And so they went along and they hooked the fire department telephone to our telephone at home.

I was a teenager. And every time the phone rang at the fire department, it also rang in my house. Not a normal ring, one long, continuous ring, until you picked it up. And then you didn't say anything, you just listened to find out where the fire was. And then my father would hop in his little, that situation wagon and head for the fire. Now, one downside to it was, he didn't say so well at night anymore, so he didn't drive a lot after dark. So as a teenager with a driver's license, my new job was, when the fires happened at two in the morning, I got to drive him there.

I had to keep my jeans and my sneakers by the bed in case of a fire that we had to go with help fight. Now he knew nothing about fighting fires when it was bad, but he wanted to encourage those young men who were out there doing a valid job. Well, after serving two terms, he was past 70 then and some people were saying, well, you still going to go on and I kind of discouraged He said, okay, here that son of a young girl fell, I come in and be the fire commissioner So he stepped down

But he decided after he kind of retired from being the fire commissioner that he missed being around the fire And boom will is such a small town around the fire. And Bernville is such a small town that the fire department and the police department are right at the same building. You can walk from one to the other, just between the door. So he'd gotten really close to all the firemen. And also the policemen, they can't consider them like a grandfather.

So they tried to figure out how they can keep him hanging right on because they loved my father. So they asked him if he wanted a job with a police department. Well, he said, he's always never done that. He said, sure. What can I do? They said, well, when someone said, or needs to be off the day, you could come in and feel it on the radio.

You could be the dispatcher. Take calls, call after the cars and tell the police where to go. That's sort of thing. He said, I can do that. So they actually, I'm never sure how they've maneuvered this. They pay them to do this. So he was going along really normally with that job and everything was looking good. And then one day he got to work and found this most amazing thing. They had a prisoner. Now, all the time he'd been in the months that he'd been there, they had not had a prisoner. So this intrigued my father.

So he'd work on the paperwork a little bit and he'd go back and talk to a prisoner. And by the name of time, he was like a nice young man. He even though he had a hair way down here, which my father hated. So when he went out for lunch, he brought the young guy back a couple of hamburgers and went back and caught two him some more. And he said, son, why are you in jail?

He said, well, I had a little too much to drink last night, Mr. Bowrie, and they arrested me for public drunkenunkenness. My father said, well that's not too bad. Why don't somebody come and pay you bail? Well, I'm from Corinth, Mississippi. Now that's about 20 miles up the road from Boundville. He said, I think if I could see my father face to face, he might loan me the 200 dollars to pay my fine, but I'm not sure how he's going to react to a call from the Boonville jail. My dad mall that I was a little bit, he's a real good mother. And he said, you know, if I were to let you go, because you go up the car and find your daddy, bar the $200 and be back here before my shift is at five.

The young man was like in the direction of this conversation. He said, Mr. Gold, I appreciate it, but they impound my car. So I don't have any way to get to car in this 20 miles. My daddy said, well, is it a blue Chevrolet? He said, as a matter of fact, today, he said, I'll it's out in the park a lot. I can find the keys. So with no authority to do anything with Typhoon the radio, he searched through the desk, found the keys, and not only turned the prisoner loose, gave him a getaway car. About four hot, the policemen started coming back in off the shift, and they went back to check on their prison. They weren't used to having a prisoner either.

And they discovered, they're just mad, they didn't have one. And they said to my father, Mr. Bauer, what happened to the prisoner? And very nonchalantly, because he just didn't see that he'd done anything wrong, he said, oh, I turned him loose. You what? I turned him loose. Why did you do that? Well, he just seemed like such a nice young man and

I told him he need to go get his $200 and come back in place fine They said well, how's he gonna get the car in? He said oh, I gave him his car So there's sitting around mullin around saying okay what are we going to do to make this go away? Because I didn't want my father to be in trouble. They wanted him to be able to continue coming in and hanging out and working on the radio. So they decided, one man said, you know what we'll do? We'll tell, we'll remind the chief of police that George

will work him get him elected. Another one said, I got a better idea. Let's just tear up all the people for it. The arrest report, everything. And let's just pretend none of it ever happened. Now my father's standing over the corner listening and he said, no, we're not going to do either of those things. That young man will be back with $200. I'm waiting here until he gets here.

One policeman observed it might be a pretty long wait. But my father's thinking about that young man and how they had kind of bonded in those few hours. He remembered telling that young man as he lay off, now if you can borrow 200 hours to pay your fine, get a few more and get a darn haircut. That was my own father's only part of his bias to him. So the police and stood around, four o'clock came and went,

four thirty, five o'clock. No young man. Nobody was surprised except my father. My father said, well, he's just running a little late And they waited to 520 530 and they said, Mr. George, your ship was over a five. Why don't you go home? We can take care of this My father said didn't I tell you I was waiting till he got back Yes, so they just started all the guys that had come in at four o'clock wouldn't go home either. Their shift ended. They wouldn't go home.

The new guys were coming in. They were trying to fill them in on what was going on. And all of a sudden, Strangely looking young man walked through the door, nice clothes, clean cuts, short hair. And he walked up to the counter and he stopped. He was looking young man walked through the door, nice clothes, clean cut, short hair. And he walked up to the counter and he stopped. And nobody played him any attention. So in a minute, he said, excuse me. And one of the police went over and said,

can I help you? He said, yes sir. I'm here to play my fine. And he said, what fine? Nobody recognized him but my father. And he said, $200. You guys arrested me last night. And he said $200. You guys arrested me last night. My father's $200.

So I'm here to pay it. And he's counting out $20 bills. Nobody in the room is making a say on their all just and you know, their all stunned. Said my father, of course he knew he was coming back. And they right him out of receipt. And he's looking around the room at all the policemen talking to each other, quiet voices. And he's kind of imagining what the atmosphere was probably

like before he returned. So as a parting thought, when he got to the door, he turned around and said to my father, Mr. Board, I'm sorry I was late getting back, I had the way to line at the barber shop. That was Wanda Bollard. Wanda was a teacher in Brunswick, Georgia. Wanda left this world in 2011, but we we do our best to carry them off forward in her spirit. That's it for this special 25th anniversary episode of the Moth Radio Hour.

We hope you'll join us next time. This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Katherine Burns, who also hosted the stories in the hour were directed by Jennifer Hickson, Joey Zanders, and Leah Tao, with additional coaching by Sarah Austin-Jones. Co-producer, Fiki Merrick, Associate Producer, Emily Couch. The rest of the Moths Leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucce, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glidowsky, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Kaza.

Moths' story is or true, is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our show at MOMO was supported in part by the New York Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council for the Arts. Our theme music is by the Drift, other music in this hour from Ingu Baguiocu, Mark Orton, Spinal Tap, Bill Frisell, and Three-Lague Torso. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, special thanks to the Ford Foundation's Build Women Leaders Program for its support of the Moth Global

Community Program. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by BRX. For more about our podcasts, for information on pitching a your own story and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org.