Host: Jay Allison & Viki Merrick
Jay: [00:00:03] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Jay Allison, a host and producer of The Moth Radio Hour.
Viki: [00:00:10] You certainly are. And I'm Viki Merrick, your coproducer of The Moth Radio Hour. And we're your hosts this week.
Jay: [00:00:17] Hello, Vicki.
Viki: [00:00:18] Hey, Jay.
Jay: [00:00:20] So, you may know by now that all through this year, we've been celebrating 25 years of The Moth, and we're showcasing stuff we think you'll like from every year The Moth's been around. And in this episode, we're looking at 2009.
Viki: [00:00:36] Yeah. In 2009, we continued to share some great stories, expanding StorySLAM’s to Detroit and Chicago. And then, we started a little show, you might know, called The Moth Radio Hour.
Jay: [00:00:49] Woot. And [Viki chuckles] we're actually recording right now at Public Radio Station WCAI, which we founded right here in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And this was the first radio station in the world-
Viki: [00:01:02] Representing.
Jay: [00:01:03] -to air the Moth Radio Hour.
Viki: [00:01:06] And now, we're up to 575 radio stations around the country.
Jay: [00:01:11] That's not bad.
Viki: [00:01:13] It's not bad, but you know.
Jay: [00:01:14] But we're going for world domination [Viki laughs] next. Anyway, to mark this anniversary, we want to play a couple of stories. And the first is from that inaugural episode of The Moth Radio Hour, and it's a story that's a special favorite of Viki and me.
Viki: [00:01:31] Yes. I just actually listened to it, and it still holds up to me.
Jay: [00:01:36] We've listened to it probably a thousand times.
Viki: [00:01:3] I was guffawing in my car yesterday. This is from Michaela Murphy. She told it on a Moth Mainstage in New York City. And it takes place right here on Cape Cod.
Jay: [00:01:50] So, here's Michaela, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Michaela: [00:01:57] I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. And for my entire childhood, we were never more than 20 miles away from the core of our universe, the Kennedys. [audience laughter] We were Irish, they were Irish. We were Catholic, they were Catholic. They were family. We were like the relatives that they never got to see. [audience laughter] But we knew they're busy and we knew that they loved us. So, anything that was happening to them was also happening to us. So, their tragedy, plus our own tragedy was a lot.
So, this one Thanksgiving, after dinner and a family fight at grandma's house, we were in the car and we're driving home. And the radio was playing this 10th anniversary of the JFK assassination. I'm sitting in the back seat and I start to cry. And my sister Erin says, “Hey, dad, Michaela's crying.” My father pulls that car right over to the shoulder of I95. He stops it he turns around and he looks at us, and with tears in his own eyes, he says, “Don't you ever be ashamed to cry for that man.” [audience laughter]
So, my parents grew up near Newport, and they got married in the same exact church as Jack and Jackie, St. Mary's. My father gave exact replica jewelry to my mother, that it was replications of the jewelry that Jack gave to Jackie. Every Saturday night after mass, my family would be in the living room and we'd be happily ever aftering to the original soundtrack of Camelot. [audience laughter] Every year during the 1970s, my four aunts would take me and my two cousins on their dream vacation, a rented beach house in Hyannis, on the very cove sharing beachfront with the Kennedy compound.
Every day for an entire week, my Aunt Pat would roll up her sister's hair. My aunts would apply sunscreen to the back of their necks, the backs of the hands and the tops of their feet, and then they would drag their beach chairs down to the beach and they would set them up perfectly, not facing the water, not into the sun for tanning, but perfectly for spying on the Kennedys. [audience laughter] They would sit there all day in the broiling sun with high powered binoculars and keep a constant surveillance.
Every year, they'd have the same exact conversations. Usually around mid-morning, the first sighting would be made, usually by my Aunt Pat. She'd be, “They got Rose out, [audience laughter] walking. Ethel looked strong.” And then, about an hour later my Aunt Gert would say, “How old is Rose now?” And Aunt Momo would make the calculations. “Well, let's see. Jack died in 1963 when she was 74. And Rose' birthday was two weeks last Thursday. And Joe died in 1969 making her a widow at 81. So, 85.” And then, they'd break for lunch. [audience laughter]
So, after lobster and drawn butter and hosing us down, they'd all hustle back to their posts and they'd watch. Every now and then, there'd be something they didn't know, “Hey, who's that? Who's that? Who's that?” So, they'd draw out the family tree in the sand, they'd analyze it, they'd come up with a profile and they'd crack the code, “It's one of Bobby's.” [audience laughter]
Now, any mention of Bobby would always bring up the inevitable, “Oh, I just pray to God they don't tell poor senile Rose about Bobby. It'll break her.” So, then the long afternoon stretch would end with the inevitable annual observation, “You don't see Jackie much here.” And then, all of my aunts would drop their binoculars and look at each other meaningfully.
Now, all of this meant that no one was paying any attention to me and my cousins in the water. [audience laughter] And the summer when we were nine years old, we found something. Now, had an aunt, perhaps in an effort to ease a cramp in her prying neck, just glance towards the water, she might have seen us climbing into this tiny plastic, half inflated boat. She might have cried out in alarm at the lack of oars and life vests. [audience laughter] She might have had a conniption fit to see us shove off and drift into the violent riptide that would sweep us within five minutes out to the open sea and the Nantucket bound ferry. [audience laughter] But and aunt didn't and we did.
It all happened so fast that we were swept out. It wasn't until we realized that we could make out the specific features of the ferry passengers that we were really far from shore. We were so far from shore that my aunts were now reduced to four hopping dots. Uh-uh, it was like Gilligan's island for real. So, an Atlantic swell crashes over our heads. And as soon as the water clears out of our eyes, a powerboat pulls up out of nowhere. And in this powerboat are David and Michael Kennedy. [audience laughter]
So, David and Michael pull us up into the boat, and we are like, “Oh, my God, we are saved by a powerboat.” [audience laughter] So, the powerboat sends us back to shore. We're psyched, because we're saved until we start to watch the four hopping dots morph back into our four crazed, livid aunts. We are so going to get it.
Now, my family, under any circumstances, has this really weird thing. Well, they each have their own weird thing about yelling and getting into huge trouble. Like my Aunt Gert, she gets so freaked out that all she can do is yell out our addresses like “Eileen and Kevin. 275 Hooper Street.” [audience laughter] Michaela, 180 Asylum Road.” I swear to God, I grew up on Asylum Road. [audience laughter] It's a very telling piece of my childhood. [chuckles]
My Aunt Pat would do these things where she would say these things that we were actually nice things, but she'd say them like they were death threats. She'd be like, “Yeah, I'll save you from drowning. You get on that beach towel and you lie in that sun, now.” Or she'd say, “I'm going to buy you a birthday present, you eat that cake, now.” So, we knew that this was what was coming. The Kennedy boys didn't. So, they're vivaciously tanned, and they pull up to the shoreline and we brace ourselves.
Now, what happens is our aunts are out of their minds. They're ready to flay us. But when they see us in the same boat as the Kennedys, it's like they don't have the emotional capacity to handle it. [audience laughter] They snap. They're freaking out to yell at us, but they start fake smiling and trying to act all normal. And my Aunt Momo, she takes on this Kennedy-esque way of speaking, which is halfway between Katharine Hepburn and the Queen of England. [audience laughter] We're looking at them like, “What are you guys doing?” They're smiling the smile. But when they smile at us, it's like, “You just wait.” But they're like, “Oh, David. Oh, Michael, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
They're not mad at us for almost drowning. They're mad at us, because the Kennedys had to save us. Like, “Don't those people have enough trouble? [audience laughter] Now you, like as if our almost drowning was yet another Kennedy tragedy.” So, these poor boys finally pull and pry themselves away from my aunts. They get back in the boat and they're leaving. And my Aunt Momo's going, “Please give our best to your grandmother.” [audience laughter] And now, it's time for our for real punishment, which was that we, for the rest of vacation, had to stay on the beach, because we did not have any respect for the water.
So, it's 100 degrees out. After about a half hour of whining and fighting and emptying out all the Coppertone and kicking sand, we break my Aunt Pat's last nerve and she says, “All right, you can go in the water, but only up to your knees.” So, we're happy for a minute until we get in the water and realize how boring up to your knees is. And then, we get the great plan of having chicken fights. So, we start to have chicken fights, but it's weird because there's only three of us. [audience laughter] But we're doing the best we can to have a chicken fight like that, and knock each other off into the water so we get fully immersed.
And then, my uncle Al, who never, ever played with us, ever comes into the water to play chicken fights with us. He puts his daughter, my cousin Eileen, up on his shoulders, and then I get up on my cousin Kevin's shoulders and we're having chicken fights. And it's like actual family fun for a moment. We're like hitting each other, falling in the water. And then, I take my foot and I accidentally kick the side of my uncle Al's head really, really hard. [audience laughter] His eyeball pops out of his head, falls into the water and sinks. [audience laughter] It pops out of his head and it sinks.
Eileen, Kevin, and I are instant complete shock. Right this minute, there is still a part of me that is on that beach screaming. [audience laughter] It's like, “Oh, my God.” We had no idea that he had a fake eye. We didn't even know that you could have a fake eye. Why would you have a fake eye? [audience laughter] They didn't tell us that Uncle Al had a fake eye because they didn't want us blabbing it to the whole neighborhood. So, they didn't tell us, so we didn't know. Later on, there was Columbo and Sandy Duncan, but this was way before that. [audience laughter] We had no idea.
So, we're all standing there and it's so horrible. I'm like, “Oh my God.” My cousins Eileen and Kevin are staring at me with complete hate like, “You broke our dad.” My uncle Al is standing there, and he's got the lid open, so you can see inside the socket where now it's just like, skin and the eyeball gone. You cannot just say I'm sorry to someone that you just-- [audience laughter] So, I don't know what to do.
My Aunt Pat is hysterically screaming, because that eyeball cost top dollar. [audience laughter] It was a special magnetized eye, so it could keep up with the other one. And now, I had just better pray that vacation was over and that they got that deposit back, because now they were going to have to buy a brand-new top dollar eye that was not in the budget. So, I just didn't know what to do. I was like, “My life is over. I am no longer Michaela. I am now Murph's girl who kicked Al's eye out in the Cape.” And it's awful. Everybody's just crying and pointing at me. And now, my other aunts are getting in on it, like, and who's the blame part of the conversation's happening. So, I just back off into the water. I'm going back and regressing back to where life as I once knew it had ended.
I just stand there and like, I wish I had drowned and I wish the Kennedys hadn't saved me. I bent off into the waves and I just started sifting through sand and shells and pebbles, and it's totally ridiculous, but I will never stop looking for this eye. I'm going to look forever. I keep looking and looking, and I'm sifting through, and then all of a sudden, there is an eyeball in my palm fake staring right at me. And so, I scream, and I drop it back and it sinks back into the water. But now, we know it's possible.
So, everybody gets back into the water, and now we're all sifting through and sifting through, and I pray to God for no more future happiness until we find this eye. I also pray that it not be me that finds it this time. So, after an hour, my cousin Kevin finds the eye, and he holds it up in triumph and he does not let go. And my uncle Al takes the eye. He washes it off and just pops it back in. [audience laughter] And then, he tests it, and it's like keeping up with the other one, so it's working still. And now, it's the weirdest thing, because now we know it's a fake eye. And now, that you know it's a fake eye, it totally looks like a fake eye. I can't believe that I never noticed it wasn't a fake eye before.
So, now vacation's back on, and so everybody gets back into their beach chairs and they start to settle down to begin telling the story over and over like a million times about what I just did. I have not really fully reintegrated back into the family yet. I'm standing apart. I noticed that there actually has been a group of people who've been watching this whole thing. And then, I see something that I didn't notice that no one noticed. That's that two of the Kennedy kids, David and Michael, had taken a walk on the beach. I can tell just by the look on their faces that they had stood there and seen the entire episode, [audience laughter] that they had been there watching us. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Viki: [00:15:01] That was Michaela Murphy.
Jay: [00:15:02] It was. And Michaela’s work has been featured in the New Yorker and been produced off Broadway and at the Clinton White House. She's a cofounder of LIFE, which is Leadership Fueled by Entrepreneurism, an education platform for high school students in Detroit and New York City. And she's currently director of education at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania. I love that story. Vik, can you guess what my favorite line is?
Viki: [00:15:28] I can't, because there's so many. I mean, was it about when the aunt gets whenever she gets mad, she says every kid's name and their address.
[laughter]
Jay: [00:15:39] That's good. No, for me-- The one that sticks with me, just like it did for Michaela was, “Don't ever be ashamed to cry for that man.” [Viki laughs] Oh, my gosh. Just the feeling in that from him to her, and then carried through generations and it just makes you feel the past and that kind of tragedy being carried into the future. And at the same time, it's lite and it’s life is going on.
Viki: [00:16:11] Yeah. She's hilarious. But also, the beauty of her saying that they felt like family because of all the things in common.
Jay: [00:16:18] Right. Right.
Viki: [00:16:20] But when she says, “In any time there was tragedy or their family, it was a lot, because they were both tragedies in their family,” which was a gorgeous moment of big humanity. It's like, we're all in the same family, which I love that part.
Jay: [00:16:34] Right. And there's an eye that pops out. So, it's a good story.
Viki: [00:16:38] [laughs]
Jay: [00:16:41] All right. Well, that happened on Cape Cod over in Hyannis Port, not too far from here in Woods Hole. We can visualize it perfectly. And our next story--
Viki: [00:16:51] Oh, right. Our next story, oh, God, is one of our favorites also. And it takes place right here. Well, right across the Vineyard Sound. And it was told by Buddy Vanderhoop from Martha's Vineyard. But really, you should be the one introducing this, don't you think?
Jay: [00:17:08] Well, not-- I don't know.
Viki: [00:17:11] You're both fishermen.
Jay: [00:17:12] Yeah. Well, we fish the same waters, but he does it with a lot more success than I do. This is a great tale of adventure. He has success a lot, but maybe not every trip, as you'll hear. So, here's Buddy Vanderhoop is live at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs.
[cheers and applause]
Buddy: [00:17:46] Hi, good evening. My name is Captain Buddy Vanderhoop. I'm a Wampanoag Indian from Gay Head, from the Wampanoag tribe of Aquinnah. I had the occasion growing up talking to my elders who were seafaring men and women. My great Uncle Amos, Molly, harpooned and killed Moby Dick, the only white sperm whale that was ever harpooned. I listened to stories for years.
As a matter of fact, for my 10th birthday, my uncle Amos gave me one of Moby Dick's teeth, which he scrimshawed on that trip, which is still my favorite treasure today. Some of the advice that they gave me, they told me that “The ocean is a playground, but you should always respect the ocean, because it can turn on you and harm you and even kill you. So, just respect the ocean,” which I have always done and always kept this in the back of my mind.
One day, I had a tuna fish charter. My boat was broken down and was being repaired. So, a friend of mine lent me his boat, which was a 32-foot wooden boat. The escort, Charles Ogletree, professor at Harvard and head of the law department, was one of my clients. Dennis Sweet, another highfalutin lawyer from Mississippi, was one of his colleagues and friends was there. Charles’s father-in-law was there, who was 78-years-old. And Jen Clark decided to jump on the boat as my first mate that day. So, we put all of our lunches and stuff in the cooler, got all the fishing gear on the boat, headed out of Menemsha harbor.
As we rounded Gay Head, the wind was about 10 miles to 20 miles an hour that day and Charles's father-in-law started getting seasick. But if you've ever been on the boat with Charles Ogletree, it doesn't matter. Once you leave the dock, if you're seasick or not, you're going for the day. So, we rounded Gay Head, headed down for the dumping grounds, which is 40 miles south of Gay Head, a place that was made famous by Frank Mundus in his search and quest for great white sharks, which was done in the 1950s. He caught an enormous amount of great white sharks just south of Martha's Vineyard in those days.
We were in search of yellowfin tuna. So, we get down there. It was a little bumpy going down, but it actually turned out to be quite a nice day. We set the gear out. As soon as we got all eight rods in the water, three of them went off. We landed the three-tuna fish, put them out again. And we were having a great day of fishing. It was beautiful, flat, calm day and we were-- This was late afternoon. We had 13 fish on the boat. It was 03:30 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon. We saw all the other boats heading north, going home. But we decided we'd be a little greedy, because were catching so many fish. We stuck around for another round of fish. Charles hooked into the biggest fish of the day. About 04:30, quarter 05:00, it was about 120 pounds yellowfin. He was in the chair reeling him in.
All of a sudden, I look back and the fish is 100ft behind the boat and he's got a 350-pound mako charging in on the tuna fish. I said, “Charles, reel, reel, reel, get that fish in.” The mako hit the fish, took his whole belly out. I said, “Get him in. Get him in.” So, he finally reeled him in, got him to the boat. I gaffed him, pulled him over the rail, got him on the boat. He only had damage to the underside of him, so most of the fish was still good.
Just about the time that fish hit the deck, the motor died. I said, “Oh, no. Here we are 45 or 50 miles south of the Vineyard and the batteries are dead.” I went over, I looked at Jen Clark, I said, “What happened?” She said, “The motor stalled.” So, I went up, turned the key, no clicks, nothing. The amateur gauge was over below nine volts. So, I said, “Well, maybe if I give it a half an hour, 45 minutes, the battery will recharge itself or come up a little bit, enough to start the diesel motor.” And so, I cleaned the fish, cut the head of the fish off. There were no guts left, because the mako enjoyed those. [audience laughter] I decided I'd put the fish head, the tuna fish head, on a hook to see if we could catch the mako that had the rest of my fish. [audience laughter]
Well, 15 minutes later, Charles hooks up to a pretty nice shark, about a 400-pound shark, and got him in. It was just a blue shark. So, we pulled him in next to the boat. I cut the leader off and then I said, “Well, it's been about 45 minutes. I'm going to try the motor again.” Hit the key, nothing. So, the sun's going down. We're in a bleak situation right now. We're drifting south. We're already 45 miles or 50 miles south of the Vineyard. I look over to the northwest, and the sky's totally black. It was just a nightmare.
And 10 minutes later, we had a major thunderstorm over us. Lightning all around the boat. The wind's picked up to 25 miles, 30 miles an hour. It's getting dark, and then the thunderstorm's over. It's a little bit calm. The seas have built up to four to eight feet. We're dead in the water in the slosh sideways. It's just about dusk. You can just barely see the little piece of light where the horizon was, and I saw a boat on the horizon.
Well, I had brought two 2,500-foot parachute flares with me on this trip as part of my emergency kit anyway. So, I shot one up and it lit up the whole ocean for a mile around us, it seemed. The boat started to turn. I saw the boat turn toward us. And 20 minutes later, the boat is pretty close to us. The two members of the boat, the lobster boat came out on deck and they said, “What's the problem?” I said, “Well, we've broken down, the batteries are dead. We have no way to get back to Menemsha. Could you please tow us back to Menemsha?” And the captain says, “Do you have any beer?” [audience laughter] Charles Ogletree said, “Yes, we have a six pack of red striped beer.” And as the mate said, “Yeah, man.” [audience laughter]
So, they throw a line over. We put the beer in a plastic bag. They pull the beer over, throw a line, we hook it up to the bow cleat. It's four-to-eight-foot seas. It's blowing 25 miles or 30 miles an hour. They start hauling us up north toward Martha's Vineyard. Well, the wind is increasing all the time. It's blowing 35 now. Seas are almost 10ft tall. Waves are crashing over the front of the boat. And all of a sudden, the line parts. Well, these guys are up in the pilothouse of their lobster boat drinking red stripe. They kept on going. [audience laughter] Their steering light's getting smaller and smaller. It's going down in the waves and finally, it's totally out of sight. I said, “Oh my God, these guys don't even know that they dropped us.”
They're drinking beer and having a blast out in the wheelhouse, and here we are back in the slosh and these 10-foot waves now. I mean, it's critical.
Finally, I see the port in the starboard light coming back to us. A half an hour later, they're beside us again. It's blowing 40 miles to 45 miles an hour now. It's really, really getting nasty. I mean, scary nasty. They threw us a line again. They towed us for maybe a mile and the rope parts again. They this time knew that they dropped us, turned around, said, “Well, we can't help you anymore, because the rope's too short. We don't have anything any thicker. So, we're going to call the coast guard right now and we'll stand by you until they get here.” So, they call the coast guard.
Here we are. It's blowing 50 miles an hour now. The seas are building 15ft to 18ft. We're sideways in this stuff. The outriggers are slamming into the mast. It's just a horrible scene. And Dennis Sweet looks over at the other boat. They have deck lights on. They have lights on in the wheelhouse. He said, “I got to get out of here, I'm going to go to that boat. [audience laughter] I'm swimming.” And I said, “Dennis, how are you going to get on the boat when you get over there? And did you forget about the sharks we just caught about an hour and a half ago? [audience laughter] All the blood that's been pouring out of the scuppers of this boat since we've been rolling here in the slop?” So, he aborted that idea pretty quickly. [audience laughter]
So, all of a sudden, Charles, his father, has been seasick all day long. He's huddled in the back of the boat. He's got blankets over him. He hasn't moved one inch in five hours. Charles says, “Buddy, could you go over, and nudge my father-in-law and see if he's still alive?” [audience laughter] So, I went over, gave him a little nudge, he grunted. He was in bad shape, because he'd been dehydrated for now going on 12 hours or 13 hours and he was alive.
So, the boat's outside of us, the coast guards are on their way. All of a sudden, it's blowing 60 miles to 70 miles an hour. It's unbelievable. This is an un-forecasted storm. The weathermen are always right. But this was totally un-forecasted, and we're in 20-foot seas right now. All of a sudden, these two gigantic rogue waves-- I'm talking waves three and a half stories big. Two 30-foot, 35-foot waves. We go up this wave, come back down. The second one hits us so hard, it tips the boat up 90 degrees. The rail goes under the water and it seemed like the whole ocean came on deck at one time. We took on 5,000 to 8,000 gallons of water on that one wave. I'm getting really nervous now. [audience laughter]
Everybody else, I said, “Okay, don't lose your calm. That was really, really bad. I know how bad it was. Everybody put your life jackets on. Everybody get your-- Here's a flashlight for everybody.” I said, “If we get hit by another set of these waves, we're going to roll the boat over. Don't try to go over the sides. Keep your wits about you. Go over the stern, stay together, put your flashlights on, hang on to the boat.”
We didn't get hit with another set like that, thank God, but just to keep people's minds occupied, I had them do a bucket brigade. Charles was in the bilge, Jen was holding the flashlight. He passed it to Dennis and I throw it overboard. It took us about an hour and a half to get all that water out of the bilge, which helped keep everybody's mind off of what was really happening, because it was so unbelievably miserable that it was mind blowing how bad the seas were that night.
I saw a boat on the horizon finally. I had one more of those 2,500-foot parachute flares left. I shot it off, went up, lit the whole ocean up around us. Half an hour later, the coast guard is outside of us sang with their little bullhorn, “We're going to pull up alongside you.” I said, “Don't pull up alongside of us. We have a wooden boat. We're either going to smash into you and sink or you're going to smash into us and we're going to sink.” I think these guys are all from Ohio or Indiana or somewhere. [audience laughter] They'd been to the coast guard academy and they're now doing real time stuff. They had forgotten their booklets, I think, that day.
They were so seasick, they had all their deck lights on. You could see them barfing over both sides of the boat. [audience laughter] They were all so weak. I was out on the front of this 28-foot boat in 25-foot seas, holding on for dear life. I'm like a windshield wiper on the front deck, going back and forth, waiting for them to get a rope over me, so I could hook it up so they could get us under tow, which took over an hour. I was so pissed off. [audience laughter] I couldn't start screaming at them, because they wouldn't have done any good anyway.
But they finally got a rope to us and we're under tow. We're in 20-foot seas. The waves are just coming totally over our boat, which was pretty scary in itself. We had no bilge pump, we had no electricity whatsoever. We couldn't even communicate with the boat that was towing us. So, it took 23 hours for them tow us back to Menemsha. So, all in all, it was a 34-hour tuna fishing trip.
Finally, we got back. Nobody gave a shit about all the tuna fish we had. Their loved ones are on the dock, everybody's getting hugs and tears, and everything is hunky dory because we are alive. I attribute this to my elders that gave me the advice that-- and I'd like to pass this on to everyone in the audience that you have to respect the ocean. The ocean's a great playground, but you have to respect it because it will kill you. Charles Ogletree still goes fishing with me. [audience laughter] He's my best client. Dennis Sweet, he will fish with me if I have two keys, which means you have two engines, so you can get back one. [audience laughter] Charles Ogletree's stepdad will never step foot on another fishing boat as long as he lives. [audience laughter] And that's my story. Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:33:11] That was fisherman, Buddy Vanderhoop.
Viki: [00:33:12] Captain Buddy Vanderhoop is a member of the Wampanoag tribe of Aquinnah in Massachusetts. He owns and operates Tomahawk Fishing Charters on Martha's Vineyard, and is widely known for his ability to catch big fish. Since the story originally aired, he now has a new boat. Hopefully, the battery's working, a 35-foot Viking.
Jay: [00:33:34] Do you remember watching him tell that story over in the Tabernacle?
Viki: [00:33:37] Oh, my God, my hands were sweating. Do you remember how held his hands and he kept looking at Meg, his director, like, “Am I doing all right?”
Jay: [00:33:43] He held his hands at his sides and they were shaking the whole time.
Viki: [00:33:46] And he's a big man. He's like 6’8” or something. He's big, like strong man.
Jay: [00:33:51] Big, strong guy.
Viki: [00:33:52] Yeah,
Jay: [00:33:53] Yeah. He said to me afterwards, he said, “Yeah, that was a scary night, but not as scary as standing up there and telling that story.”
[laughter]
Viki: [00:34:02] Yeah. The building-- I always equate that experience of listening to that story. It was like being in a storm. Because the waves of like, “What, another bad thing? Another bad thing?” It was like one after another. It was so powerful. I literally jumped out of my seat at one point, I think, towards the end and just jumped up in the air. I was--
Jay: [00:34:26] Yeah.
Viki: [00:34:27] Yeah. Totally swept away.
Jay: [00:34:28] It was exciting. So many great stories at The Moth over the 25 years, thousands of them. I don't know, how many episodes of The Moth Radio Hour have we produced? I shuddered to think.
Viki: [00:34:41] I tried to figure it out yesterday with Emily Couch. I think it's like 285 radio hours.
Jay: [00:34:48] That's a lot.
Viki: [00:34:49] That's a lot. [chuckles]
Jay: [00:34:50] Average four to five stories per hour. So, we're in the thousands, and that is the tip of the iceberg. I don't know, do you ever get bored of it? Because I have to say I do not really. Once in a while, maybe I'll hear a story I'm not crazy about, but I feel like if you're bored with The Moth, you're bored with life.
Viki: [00:35:08] Yes, it's true.
Jay: [00:35:09] Or, you hate people or something, [Viki laughs] because man, all the experiences out there, how can you not want to know about more of them?
Viki: [00:35:19] Well, yeah. And also, you have always said something interesting to me, like when I would ask you once in a while, “Do you think that there are a finite number of good stories in the world?” And you always say “No.” Like, you don't even hesitate. [Jay chuckles] But the thing that I love, especially about The Moth stories that you always point out to me is like, you absorb them and then you tell them to somebody else, almost as if they're your own. And again, it's that beautiful encircling of humanity. You step outside of the box-
Jay: [00:35:48] Yeah.
Viki: [00:35:49] -in somebody else's life and experience and you can relate suddenly.
Jay: [00:35:54] Yeah. I tell my kids most stories at the dinner table all the time that aren't mine, but they're getting carried on anyway, which is a lovely human thing.
Viki: [00:36:03] Oh my God, that's a great thing to say. That makes my life feels so much more meaningful for having you say that. That's great.
Jay: [00:36:10] Well, look, it's a great pleasure to produce a show with you, Vik.
Viki: [00:36:13] Oh my god, yeah.
Jay: [00:36:13] And then, with the team at The Moth, who are wonderful, the directors, I mean, they're behind the curtain, but man, oh man.
Viki: [00:36:21] Always inspiring.
Jay: [00:36:23] They make it really work and make it special. So, that's it for this week. We hope you enjoyed a look back at The Moth and The Moth Radio Hour.
Viki: [00:36:34] Yeah. And from all of us here, all of us here at The Moth, as they say, have a story worthy week. But tell us a story.
Jay: [00:36:43] Amen.
Viki: [00:36:44] Next time.
Marc: [00:36:47] Jay Allison is an independent journalist, and one of the Public Radio's most honored producers. The recipient of six Peabody Awards, Jay was the host and curator of This I Believe on NPR, and co-created the acclaimed websites transom.org and the Public Radio Exchange. He is currently a host and producer of The Moth Radio Hour, and executive director of Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Viki Merrick is an independent radio producer, voice coach and editor. She's been a collaborator with Jay for many years, including on four Peabody Award winning projects, Lost and Found Sound, the Sonic Memorial Project, transom.org and The Moth Radio Hour. A special thanks to WCAI in Woods Hole, Massachusetts for the use of their recording studio.
This episode of The Moth podcast was produced by Catherine Burns, Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Marc Sollinger. The rest of the Moth leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Inga Glodowski, Aldi Kaza and Brandon Grant. 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 PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.