Host: Chloe Salmon
Chloe: [00:00:02] Welcome to The Moth podcast. I'm your host for this week, Chloe Salmon. Today we're talking about a true cultural icon, an object of obsession for many, immortalized in countless movies and songs, and the ultimate symbol of freedom. Any guesses? This episode is all about cars. Whether it's your pride and joy or a hunk of junk that gets you where you need to go, or maybe it's both. The cars we spend our time in are filled with stories of close calls, sing alongs, and road trip realizations. My first car was a used green Oldsmobile that I got when I was a teenager. I was really grateful for the freedom it offered me, but it definitely wasn't winning any awards for, like, the coolest car on the road. It was a tank.
I'd grit my teeth every Kansas summer when the AC blew out only hot air and roll my eyes every time, I pulled up to a drive thru, only for the driver's side window to not budge down an inch. One stormy night, driving home from my job at the grocery store, I found myself in the middle of a flash flood on a pitch-black back road. My car stuttered to a halt and died. And I was just completely filled with panic. I called my dad for help and sat and watched the water inch further and further up, hoping that my car would stay on the road. Not only did it stay firmly put until my dad arrived in his truck so I could jump to safety. The next day, to all of our amazement, it started right back up again when I put the key in the ignition. My tank of an Oldsmobile had kept me safe and we cruised together for many more years with much more respect on my end. Our first story this week is from Oscar Saavedra. He told it at a DC StorySLAM where theme of the night was Intentions. Here's Oscar, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Oscar: [00:02:04] How's everybody doing today? [audience respond with excitement] All right, I'm here because of you. You convinced me to do this. [audience laughter] This is my first time here, so I'm a little nervous, [cheers and applause] so make some noise. All right, so as everybody knows, and as he mentioned, my name is Oscar. I am 100% Mexican, born and raised there. So, you know, as a teenager growing up, we all did things of which we remember hiding from our parents. You know, we all have those times where we slip up. So, I'm 15 years old. Of course, I'm a 90s baby. Any 90s babies in here? [audience respond with excitement] Yes. So I'm like watching the Fast and the Furious and I'm like, [audience laughter] [chuckles] I cannot wait to get my learner's permit, [audience laughter] and I'm going to do my thing. So, the day comes and I get my learner's permit, and I'm like, “I cannot wait.”
My dad taught me how to drive when I was, like, 14 years old. I'm waiting for my mom to go to sleep, [audience laughter] and I'm going to just slip out for a little bit. So I go, and I have my best friend, and I'm like, "Listen, tonight we going out, I'm going to take, I’m going to borrow my mom's car, [audience laughter] and we're just going to go out and cruise." He's like, "All right, I'm down." We didn't have cell phones, so we kind of have to set a time where it’s like "I'm going to pick you up at this time, I'm going to flash the lights, just come out." [audience laughter] So, my mom goes to sleep and, of course, me being me, I go out, I take her keys. She had like a van, it wasn't even like a sports car. [audience laughter]
I'm like, "Yo, I look like a soccer mom in this van," [chuckles] So I am like “Whatever, I just want to drive.” And so, I pick him up, flashing my lights, he comes out. And of course, I'm excited. It’s like 2:00 in the morning, and this is, like, in Howard County in Columbia. I’m like, "We good. We good, this is a soccer mom van. No one’s going to pull us over. We don’t look suspect at all." [audience laughter] [chuckles] All right, let’s go." We just cruising. I’m like, and she had the AUX cord. So, I’m like me being me, I’m like, "Yo, put some Daddy Yankee on." [audience laughter] Yo, we just going to cruise." So I’m like, "All right." So, we, like, jamming. We got the volume all the way up. We’re cruising. We’re not even going anywhere.
We have no destination in mind. [audience laughter] We’re just driving. And so, I’m like, "All right, we cruising. We’re cruising." We thinking we cool. And next thing, I run a stop sign, and of course, boom, we get hit from the side. So, I’m looking at him, he’s looking at me. I’m like, "Yo, I’m Mexican, you African-American man, young dude. If the cops pull up, we did not play with us." So, I’m like, "Nah, we can’t." My mama’s going to-- if you’re Mexican, I don’t know about everybody else, but you’re more scared of your mom than you are of the police, [chuckles] [audience laughter] that’s just a fact. So, I’m like, "Yo, I’m thinking of my mom." Like, "Yo, I’m sorry, but we got to leave it." I mean, it felt like a Migos song. We like, "skrrt, skrrt." And we leave. [audience laughter]
Yo, we bailed. He was like, "What are you doing?" I’m like, "Nah." Like, "You don’t understand. No." So, we get back. My intention was to bring the car back in one piece with no scratches. And we’re living in an apartment. There’s no reserved parking. There’s no garages. So, when I came back, the parking spot, somebody took it. And I’m like, "My mama’s going to kill me." Like, "Nah, this is not going to work." So, I park it somewhere else. I didn’t sleep all night. And my mom wakes up, she starts taking a shower because she used to drop me off at school. I didn’t sleep all night. I’m like, "Hey, Ma, I know you’re taking a shower, but I’m going to go get the car, so that we could leave because I don’t want to be late. I got an exam." So she’s like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah go get it."
So I go, and "it’s like a big scratch." The headlights all bent in, and I pull up. I go in the house, and I have to fake like I don’t know what happened. I’m like, [audience laughter] "Ma, somebody hit the car." I’m like, "Yo, call the police." I’m like, "Ma, come." She’s like, "What happened?" And she comes out and she’s just mad. And to this day she does not know. [audience laughter] [chuckles] She does not know what happened. But the funny part is, when I signed up for this, they were like, “You can either have this on record or you can keep it.” So, I was like, “Let me put it on record. And then in a few days, I’m going to tell my mom, “Hey, you ever heard of The Moth? [audience laughter] [chuckles] I got a story there. I want you to hear.” [chuckles]
[cheers and applause]
Chloe: [00:07:17] That was Oscar Saavedra. Oscar, if you’re listening and you haven’t gotten around to telling your mom about the car, now’s your chance. Let us know how it goes. Up next is Nina Slowinski. Nina told this story at a StorySLAM produced by The Moth Education Program at Skidmore College. The theme of the night was Transformations. Here’s Nina, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Nina: [00:07:45] Thank you. Okay. My parents have been divorced since I was, like, a little kid, which is fine. But with that came, like, a lot of associations. My dad kept the house. My mom moved out. My dad got a new car, which was, like, so cool at the time because it was a red Honda CR-V and he was very particular on that choice. He was like, “You’ll always know it’s me when I come to pick you up at school." [audience laughter] That way he wouldn’t fit in with all or he would stand out of, like, the silver cars and the black cars and the white cars and the mundane cars, he thought. But he was really into his car and himself. And my mom moved on pretty quickly, and she is great, and my dad is great, too. But it took him a long time.
I mean, he grew out his hair really long. He went through a lot of different, like, glasses styles. [audience laughter] He had his car littered with CDs on the folding mirror, like Mary Gauthier, Lucinda Williams, Greg Brown. And I didn't know that the radio existed until I would drive with my mom because my dad would just play CDs all the time. And his car had a snack compartment. It was decked out. He had an eyeball on his antenna. He was kind of like this artist growing up, so we kind of stuck with him, I guess. And so, he grew up with the car a little bit, and I grew up with the car a little bit. By the time high school came, I liked spending nights in with my dad doing not weird things. I think I just dressed weird. It would be winter, and I would wear a sundress, a bandana, and Converse, and none of it matched. Not that it has to, but it didn't. And my dad never questioned it once. He would go grocery shopping at night, we’ll take the groceries, put them in the car, that’d be it. We'd come home. We'd go out to Barnes & Noble, I'd get a bad teen romance book like Sarah Dessen or from the Pretty Little Liars series. [audience laughter] I feel really guilty admitting that, but it's true. Then we would go to Five Guys, and he's a vegetarian, so I would get a burger, and he would get the sandwich with every vegetable on it, which didn't taste really good. But he would go in. I would see him go in through the glass, get our order, come out, and we would eat in the car listening to Mary Gauthier and Lucinda Williams as though we were eating in Five Guys, but the music was slightly better. [audience laughter]
And we'd drive home, we would turn the car off, and sit in the silence in the car, just the two of us, even though we were home. That was really important, that we just spent a few more minutes there. We really lived in the car together [chuckles] at times. But the car got older, and I got older, and it was my junior year in high school, and my dad was driving me to my mom's house, as he always did, since I would switch between their houses really often. And he'd gotten a new car, and I'd noticed, and of course, I complained.
And we got in the car, and he's driving me to mom's house, and he pulls into a gas station where his car is. It’s like dead car. And we look at it, and he says, "I just wanted you to have the chance to say goodbye to it," which was really sweet. And it kind of hit me then that we were in a silver Toyota Camry, the car that he'd never wanted, and we were saying goodbye to this red, boxy, oversized car that he'd really wanted for, I think since he was like a kid. And I think in that moment we kind of both grew up a little bit. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Chloe: [00:11:58] That was Nina Slowinski. Nina is a storyteller, theater director, and playwright. She’s grateful to have graduated from Skidmore College in 2019, just before COVID hit, with a Bachelor of Science in Theater. To see a photo of Nina, her dad, and the car, head to themoth.org/extras. Thank you to both of our storytellers this week for sharing their stories with us, and to you for listening. Until next time from all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.
Julia: [00:12:35] Chloe Salmon is a producer on The Moth's Mainstage and StorySLAM teams, a director on the mainstage and a member of the pitchline team. Her favorite Moth moments come on show days when the cardio is done, the house lights go down, and the magic settles in. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by me, Julia Purcell with Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson and Chloe Salmon. The rest of The Moth leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your 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.