Host: Jay Allison
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Jay: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show. And in this hour, we present a live Moth event held at the Tabernacle in the town of Oak Bluffs on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. It was sponsored by Atlantic Public Media and public radio station WCAI. And the host was New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik.
[applause]
Adam: [00:00:38] It is wonderful to be here in this amazing space to tell you a few stories. Moth storytelling is special, but it's essentially very simple. You're going to hear 10-minute stories, no notes, nothing to help you when you're up here. And they have to be true stories. They have to be something you bring forward from your life. And the motto, the moral of every Moth story, I've often thought should be that great line from Frank O'Connor, "And everything that happened to me afterwards, I never felt the same about again."
We have a theme tonight. Our theme tonight is Fish Out of Water. And the stories you're going to hear are all about somebody who finds themselves out of place in a strange situation, in a circumstance they never anticipated, in the midst of something that seems utterly alien to them.
And the way we introduce our storytellers here at The Moth, I ask the storytellers before the show. I ask them one simple skill-testing question that they have to answer, so you'll get some sense of who they are and what they're all about. And the question that we chose tonight was, if there was one person you could banish from the beach, who would it be? [audience laughter]
My own answer is anybody who brings the Sunday New York Times to the beach and is there with it flapping in the wind. But our first storyteller said, the one person she would banish from the beach, from any beach, is anyone who has ever said, "It is what it is." [audience laughter] Good idea. Would you welcome please, Jenny Allen.
[cheers and applause]
Jenny: [00:02:25] Hello, hello. So, I sit down at my 13-year-old daughter's computer, because mine is in the shop. And here in front of me on her computer screen is her email inbox. Now, I hardly ever get to see her email inbox, except very fleetingly when I happen to be passing through the little nook in the hallway where we keep her computer, because the school has told the parents that they don't want the children to have their computers in their bedrooms. They should be in a more public and, well-trafficked zone.
So, so far, I am finding that this works a lot better in theory than in real life. Because in real life, if I go anywhere near her computer, she just flings her whole upper body over it and says, "You're invading my privacy," which I am. I'm torn about this, because I have these very mixed feelings about children and the computer and privacy. I feel stuck, because I can see both sides.
Anyway, she and I both know that if she doesn't want me to see what she's doing on her computer, all she has to do is hit one stroke on her keyboard. And whatever she's doing has been replaced instantly by the first sentences of her paper on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. [audience chuckles] But apparently, she just forgot to log out last night. So, I sit there and I scroll down through her email inbox, because I just can't help it. But I don't read her emails. I don't. I don't.
Even though two days earlier, I've heard this parenting expert on the Today show tell the parents of America that we can read our children's emails, and we should and not in secret, he said. He said that the children shouldn't be doing anything on their computers that their parents shouldn't be able to see while standing over their shoulder. I wondered at the time if this man had ever met a teenager. [audience laughter] If he knew how much they don't enjoy having their parents standing over their shoulder, breathing down their necks. But I did see his point. I thought, well, we should be able to know what our kids are doing on the computer, shouldn't we? I don't know, I just feel very insecure about it.
Anyway, so, I do sit there and I read the first line of my daughter's emails, because they're right there in the subject line, right there for me to see. All the emails seem to be from her friends, and they're all very innocuous, although they're taken as a whole, they're a little schizophrenic. Like, sometimes the kids write very childishly, like, "I am so excited for Dunkin’ D's." And then, sometimes they write like gang members. They do. So strange. And here, down a ways in the queue, is a strange one. There's nothing written in the subject line.
And in the email sender's address box, there are no letters or names. Just numbers, a big, long series of numbers. And I think, well, maybe this is junk email or maybe she's ordered something from an online catalog and that's the catalog order number, and they're going to charge me for something every month on my cable bill unless I take care of it right now. So, I think I could open this email. This one I could open. Be like opening a bill, which it may be, or something addressed to occupant. It's impersonal, so I do.
And it's a photograph. It's been taken at a strange angle. It's blurry, but not so blurry that you can't see it's been taken in a bathroom. There are tiles on the floor and a used towel down there. These two large cup bras hanging from a hook on the back of a closed door. And not so blurry that you can't see the star of the picture right there in the foreground. It is a big, erect penis. [audience chuckles] It is. And I think, “Oh my God, who sent her this photograph? It's not from a porn site, because the picture is just too bad and it's too intimate.”
That organ is just right there in your face. I think, “Oh my God, is it someone she knows? Are we about to be a statistic? Is someone from the Huffington Post going to be calling our house asking for a quote on babies having babies? My baby. My baby. Who still gets the children's fare on Amtrak and still loves strawberry milk and making brownies and riding horses.” I think, “Oh my God, maybe it's a stranger, someone she's never met, who's just gotten her email address somehow.” This is so creepy.
So, I decide to print out the photograph. [audience laughter] I don't know why. [audience laughter] Maybe evidence, I don't know. But as I am printing it out, my older daughter Hallie and her friend Desiree stop by for a visit. [audience laughter] Now, they are both 23, and they're all grown up, and they live in Brooklyn, and they're very cool, and they're very great. I figure, well, they will calm me down somehow about this. Thank God they've come, right? I hold out the photograph [audience laughter] and I say, "Look at this." [audience laughter] And these two cool New York City girls, these girls you can't shock, say, "Oh my God." They don't know what to think either.
And then, Desiree says, “Oh, she remembers something. It's a fad.” She read about it somewhere. The boys are taking pictures of their private parts and emailing them to the girls. She says that those numbers in the email sender's address are actually the boy's iPhone phone number. Now, this is before we had a word for it. We didn't know it was called sexting. It wasn't called anything. It was new then. This was again some years ago. And Hallie says, "Oh, mom, it's probably just some boy she knows trying to be funny." So, I call the iPhone phone number, [audience laughter] because I want to know. I want to hear the boy's voice, the boy who thinks he's trying to be funny or whatever he's trying to be. I want him to know that I know.
“Hello.” It's a teenage boy's voice. I can just tell. "Hello?" I say, "Who's this?" "Em," he says, giving me his name. I have this parental urge to say, “Hey, you don't have to give me your name. You don't have to tell me anything. I'm a stranger.” But I don't. And I say, "Hello, Em, this is R's Mother." And he says, "Who?" And I say, "R. Are you a friend of hers?" And he says, "I guess. Kind of." And I say, "Where do you go to school?" And he tells me just like that. It's not my daughter's school. So, I think, well, it seems pretty likely that this is a boy she doesn't know that well. I mean, she's never brought up his name and he's never been to the house and she brings her friends over all the time.
So, I think, “Well, maybe it's just like what Hallie said, ‘This boy she doesn't really know that well, just trying to be funny.’” And I say, "Well, you know, Em, the reason I am calling you is because I found your iPhone phone number on my cell phone pad and I didn't know who called me." And he says after a long pause, "Oh." And I figure he knows, right? He's putting it together. And I say, "Well, nice talking to you. Bye." And he says, "Bye," like he could have just hung up on me, right? But he's polite. He's talking to a grownup. It's just so strange.
So, I think, well, this is a boy she doesn't know that well who's indulging in a really disgusting fad, right? It's disgusting, but it's so disgusting that suddenly, it seems funny to me. And for the next 20 minutes, Hallie and Desiree and I just crack ourselves up about Em and his member. And just while we're laughing about this, I hear the front door open and I realize it's my 13-year-old home from school and I just panic, because I think, oh my God, I've been reading her email and I printed it out, and she's just going to kill me. I don't know what to do. And then, I think, well now, listen, just stop. Don't make it some dark, heavy, heavy thing. Just keep it light. Keep it light.
So, what's my choice? The three of us are standing there with these big grins just flying frozen on our faces. [audience chuckles] She comes into the room and she says, "What?" because she wants to be in on the joke. And I say, "Honey, do you know who sent you this photograph?" And she says, "Yes. Ew, he's disgusting." And I said, "So, you know this boy?" And she says, "Barely. I met him twice. He's disgusting." And I say, "Well, what's his point really? I mean, is he trying to be funny? Does he want to be your boyfriend?" And she says, "I don't know. Ew, he's so disgusting. Why are you reading my email?" [audience laughter] But she's smiling, though, so I think she's going to forgive me, right?
So, for the next few days, Em and his member become this running joke in our family. [audience chuckles] We make these little remarks about what we'd say if we ran into him on the street about him and his member. I think, well, this seems healthy. We're diffusing the situation. It seems like a good idea. I even think about those fads back from when I was a kid, like when I was young, like streaking and skinny dipping at rock concerts, or mooning. Mooning was very big. I think, well, those were all about flaunting your private parts. So, what's the difference between that and sending a picture of your genitals over the internet? [audience laughter]
And I think no, no, those were all just for fun, really. Those were all like group romps. This is very different. This is personal. My God, it is not all right to send a picture of your penis to my 13-year-old. I can't believe how long it's taken me to get upset and really angry about this. And I think, “Why didn't I say to Em while I had him on the phone, ‘Don't you ever, ever do that again. I will send you to jail. I will put you in juvie.’" [audience chuckles]
But now, it's summer vacation and we are in the country here. I come down for breakfast, and I see my 13-year-old sitting there at the table eating some cereal, and I say to her, "Honey, were you shocked when you looked at that photograph?" And she says "Yes," just the way she'd say duh or huh, of course. I think I've been such a terrible mother. I have got to make it up to her right now for being such a terrible mother. And I say to her, "Honey, what he did was wrong, and it's an assault." And “Bye, bye" she says, and she walks out the door. She hates talks. I don't blame her.
Two days later, I see her at the far end of our yard where we have this old wooden swing set that we've had for a really, really long time, and she's swinging out there on it. Now, when there's absolutely nothing else to do, she does go out there and she swings back and forth, just rocking herself into a reverie. I watch her and I think, “Has she gotten that photograph out of her mind? Will she ever?” She's not telling. She just keeps swinging back and forth, back and forth. Thank you.
[applause]
Adam: [00:15:55] Jenny Allen. Jenny Allen.
Jay: [00:16:00] Jenny Allen's humor essays appear in the New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications. She performs her solo show I Got Sick Then I Got Better around the country. If you want to see the picture that inspired Jenny's story, well, that's not at our website, themoth.org, but you can stream the stories for free and send the link to your friends and family.
We'll be back in a moment with stories of disaster at sea and disaster at home.
This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. You're listening to a live storytelling event that was held on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Your host is Adam Gopnik.
Adam: [00:16:47] Our next storyteller is Bill Eville. When I asked Bill who, and I asked in a painfully jocose way, who would you ban from the beach? What kind of person? He actually looked me in the eye and he said with the sweetest temperament and diction, he said, "I wouldn't ban anybody." [audience chuckles] Yeah, exactly. Could there be a nicer guy? It explains why he fled New York from Martha’s Vineyard. Would you welcome, please, Bill Eville.
[cheers and applause]
Bill: [00:17:26] What can you say when you're nervous? You just love everybody. [audience laughter] I met my wife Kathleen when she was 13 and I was 16. Today, she's the minister at the West Tisbury Church, but you should have seen her back then. She was a punk rock and skateboard chick. [audience chuckles] In her backyard, they had this huge skateboard ramp. We used to say it was the second largest in all of New Jersey. I have no idea if this was true, and I didn't even skate. I just like to go over there, because I like Kathleen.
She was the little sister, though, of a good friend of mine, and so we didn't date. This was high school, and there's rules against that sort of thing. But we were good friends, and we stayed in touch all through our 20s. But then, gradually, we started to drift apart, mostly because I didn't know how to tell her how I felt. We even lost touch for a few years. And then, when I was about 28, I got a call one night from a friend from the old neighborhood, Pete. He was calling to tell me that his parents had been killed. They had been out west and looking for a retirement community, and a truck ran a red light.
We all went back to the old neighborhood, Kathleen, too, for the services. I can still see those two caskets, these two brown caskets, right next to each other. And inside were two people that meant a great deal to all of us, two people who had been like parents to us. And immediately after that service, I walked right over to Kathleen and I asked her out on a date. I wasn't going to waste any more time.
For our first date, we both lived in New York City then, and I took her to the finest dive bar in all of the East Village. [audience laughter] It's called the Holiday Cocktail Lounge. And over several cheap whiskeys, I discovered, to my surprise, that she had always been in love with me, too. A few years later, we got married. We decided during the ceremony that since we had known each other for so long, we would walk up the aisle together. She wore a bright red dress. And then, about halfway through the ceremony, this guy in the back row stands up and starts waving his arms around and screaming, and he starts saying, "What about that moment? What about that moment? We get to say why they shouldn't be together." [audience laughter] The whole place went quiet.
And the guy makes his way to the aisle. I thought someone was going to tackle him. He starts walking up the aisle, and then he gets almost to the altar and he winks at us. It was our friend Paul. He had said he might do something unorthodox. [audience laughter] He turns around to the crowd and he says, "Isn't that a weird tradition? How about we flip it? How about we say why they should get married?" Everybody breathed a huge sigh of relief. [audience laughter] And then, they just started standing spontaneously and saying, “Why we should get married.” Everything from "We're both really short" [audience chuckles] to "We both looked really great in a red dress." That's a story for a different time. [audience chuckles] But mostly, they kept saying that we just seem made for each other.
A little over four years ago, we moved to Martha's Vineyard. Kathleen was called to the West Tisbury Church. We had two little kids now, Hardy was four, and Erynna, who everybody knows as Pickle, was six months. Seemed like a great idea. And it has been, other than February. [audience chuckles] But we settled into a routine. I started working at the Vineyard Gazette, and life was good. And then, one day, Kathleen called me at work. She was crying, and I couldn't understand her, and the office was noisy. I took the call outside, and she finally composed herself, and she said, "The doctor found a lump. They have to do a biopsy to be sure, but to prepare for breast cancer."
Usually, my mind, when anything goes wrong, it's like, “Okay, how do we fix it? We can do this. We can do this. We can do this. Check the boxes and we're good.” But I didn't know what to do then. I just kept thinking, not Kathleen. Me, sure, but Kathleen's the greatest person on the planet. Ask anybody. The early diagnosis was pretty good, maybe just a lumpectomy. They did some surgery, but they couldn't clear the margins. Cancer speak for there were still some cancer cells. They went back in again, but they couldn't clear the margins, and then they found it was in the lymph nodes. We knew we were in for the full fight.
We decided early on that we were going to be really open with our kids. Hardy was seven and a half now, and Pickle was almost four. We stalled as much as we could, but then one January, beautiful day, was like a 60-degree day, we said, "Let's go outside." Hardy immediately thought he had done something wrong. But we said, "No, no, no." We went outside, and I still didn't know what I was going to say. But we were walking to his little play area, and there's this stump he jumps around on. I find a rock as I'm going there, and I pick up this rock and I put it on his stump and I said, "This was the lump in Mommy's breast. The doctors took it out."
And then, Hardy just reached forward and he grabbed the lump and he threw it in the woods. And I thought, “Holy shit, this talk is working.” And then, I reached forward and I grabbed some dirt and I put that on the stump and I said, "This was the second surgery." And he swept that dirt away. Then I looked around and I found some sand and I put that on the stump. I said, "They can't get this out with surgery. Mommy's going to have to take some really, really strong chemicals, and it's going to make her hair fall out." Hardy laughed at that. He thought that was funny. But then, he stepped up again and swept the sand away.
And then, he walked over and he grabbed this stick, and he started marching around pretending it was Kathleen, saying, "Good health for me. Good health for me." And so, then Kathleen grabbed a stick and I grabbed a stick, and Pickle, who had been wandering around kicking a soccer ball, she came over to join the freaks, and we all started jumping around. "Good health for me. Good health for me." I didn't really know how much Pickle got out of this little talk.
But then two days later, it was the end of the bedtime routine, and we were lying in bed and we'd finished reading, and she turns to me and says, "Dada, when am I going to die?" And I was like, “Whoa, Pickle, not for a long time. No, no, no. Not for a long time.” I'm hoping now that the conversation is over. But she turns to me again and says, "Will I die before you?" And I said again, "No, Pickle, you're safe. You're not going to die for a long, long time." And then, she says to me, "I want to die before you. That way, I won't have to miss you."
I wanted to tell Pickle then that she was never going to die, that I was never going to die, that Kathleen was never going to die, that Hardy was never going to die, that anybody on the whole planet was ever going to die again in the history of the world. But I couldn't. I wasn't going to lie to her. So, I just held her until she fell asleep. Now, if this wasn't enough, we ended up being really open with the community, too. Kathleen's role as a minister is a really public one. She would preach about cancer, about what she was going through in her sermons.
Being a minister's husband is a strange role even in the best of times. But sitting in the pew when she's talking about her cancer, and she would break down, and I'm up there, I'm sitting there watching a girl I've loved since she was 13 years old, and I can't get out of that pew, and I can't go to hold her, and I can't do anything. Then I remember about two days after one of these sermons, I'm standing in the Scottish Bakehouse, waiting to get a croissant, and this woman comes up to me. I barely know her. She's in her 80s, but full of life. She comes in, and she just gives me this huge hug, and she wraps her arms around me, and she's squeezing me hard, and then she backs off and she points at her breasts, and she says, "These aren't real. [audience chuckles] Cancer took them 30 years ago, but I'm doing great." [audience laughter]
These were the stories we like best. The old survivors. And then, the community, they started bringing over food, and they started taking care of the kids. And then, when Kathleen had chemo, they started bringing over their minister. The congregants started bringing their minister pot brownies and pot sugar cookies. [audience laughter] I mean, these pot sugar cookies were art. They were perfection. They were definitely not their first baking experience. [audience laughter]
Back home, I mean, back when we were just together, I tried to-- The cancer treatment, it took almost a year, and I tried to splice it into three spots. There was the surgery, there's chemotherapy, there's radiation, and surgery. You know what? You're getting chemo. That's some weird shit. Kathleen and I would go into Boston to Mass General every three weeks, and she would have these chemicals dripped into her four hours, these bright red chemicals. The nurse called it the Red Devil. And then, we'd go home. About a day and a half later, she'd leave us.
Are my words for what happened when she became just a ghostly presence on the couch. Pickle would create a little snuggle spot down there, bring in her blankets and her animals, and she would just pet her mother's ankles. She called it her jewel box. When Kathleen's hair fell out, Hardy got this bright blue wig, and he would parade around, and I tried to keep it together, make sure everything seemed normal.
But then, sometimes I would just break down. It would happen in the weirdest times. I'd be walking down the street, it'd be bright, sunny day, and I'd be walking along, and then I'd smell something or see something, and it would flash me back, and I'd just break down, and I'd start bawling. and I’d start bawling so much, I'd scare myself. And then, I'd start bawling some more, and then I'd scare this person who was just walking by, some stranger. They'd come over, and they'd say, "Are you okay?" And I'd say, "No" and then I'd run away. [audience chuckles] But then, I had to be a parent when I went back home.
Then one morning, we're getting ready for school, and Hardy has a tantrum, something about his socks don't fit right or whatever. Something small. But it's a big tantrum. age of three would be annoying, but the age of seven, he thought he was going to grow up to be a horrible person. I start yelling at him, and he starts yelling at me, and we're yelling, and then we get in the car and we're still yelling. And then, we get to the school and we're still yelling and I think I can't take him in like this. So, I keep driving.
Little while he notices, and he says, "Dada, where are we going?" I'm still so angry, I just can't speak, so I just keep driving. And then, he asks again, "Dada, where are we going?" And I sense the fear in his voice. I don't answer again. Not because I'm angry, but because I'm happy. I'm happy about his fear. The tantrum's over, and I've got the control, and I just keep driving. And he keeps asking me, "Dada, where are we going? Where are we going?" His voice gets scary, and then he starts to cry. I keep going, and I can't answer him.
Here I am, torturing my son, my little boy, and I can't stop. I just keep driving. And this goes on for miles. And then, finally, I get to the Tashmoo Overlook and I almost throw up. I'm just sick to my stomach. I turn around, we drive home. We go inside, and we sit on the couch, side by side. I'm apologizing and apologizing. He turns to me and he says, "Dada, the reason I had the tantrum, I wasn't just thinking about that thing. I just started to think about everything. Everything that can go wrong." I tell him I understand exactly what he means.
The last part was radiation. Kathleen had to go in every day to Mass General. So, she moved to Boston. Friends gave her an apartment, and she stayed there, and we stayed back home and held down the fort. The kids and I, we created a calendar and we'd mark off the days, getting ready for that last day. Kathleen had said there was a bell. There's this bell in the reception room, and you get to ring it the last day for good luck. In my mind, I had built that bell up. It was like the Liberty Bell. I was going to ring the shit out of that bell. I was going to ring it, and I was going to keep ringing it, I was going to keep ringing it. The orderlies were going to have to come and take me away. [audience chuckles]
And on the last day, we all went in, me and the kids and my mom and Kathleen's sister. We're treated like celebrities. We're given a tour of the place. And then, we get down and Kathleen finishes her radiation, and she puts back her street clothes, and we all go walking over to the bell. It's a tiny bell. It's about the size of my fist. Kathleen gets up there and she rings the bell, and Hardy rings the bell, and Pickle rings the bell, but then I don't want to ring the bell. Just seems stupid. It doesn't seem like anything's going to change. I'm still scared as hell. And ringing a bell's not going to change anything. And so, I fell back into the back. I just want to go home. So, that's what we do.
Since that day, Kathleen has had checkups every other month. And then, this spring she got her six-month cancer all clear. That was something to celebrate. So, we all got together, and the kids and we're having a big dinner, spaghetti and meatballs, and we're all just laughing and having fun. Then Pickle turns to Kathleen and says, "Mom, remember when you had the cance? [audience chuckles] Remember how we used to snuggle all the time?" So weird. She was nostalgic for cancer. [audience chuckles]
But I also got it. It was a horrible, horrible year, and yet there were so many beautiful moments. Family, the community, so many of you people out there, we all jumped in open arms into cancer. And here we were sitting at dinner, laughing, hanging out just like any normal family, like it had never happened. I got to tell you, that's the weirdest part of the whole thing. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Adam: [00:32:13] Bill Eville. Bill Eville.
Jay: [00:32:19] Bill Eville is a writer and the managing editor of the Vineyard Gazette.
Our final story from a legendary seafarer in just a moment.
From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. You're listening to a live Moth event from the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. The theme of the evening is Fish Out of Water. Here's your host, Adam Gopnik.
Adam: [00:32:51] We have only been on our three-day visa here on Martha's Vineyard for about 24 hours, but already our next storyteller is familiar to me. He's such a legendary figure here. First thing I heard when I got off the ferry is I was on the boat with Buddy Vanderhoop, and people telling me stories about him. He's a genuinely remarkable figure, and he's going to tell us a wonderful story. When I asked Buddy, what's the one kind of person you would banish from the beach. He looked at me and said, "Anyone with clothes on." [audience laughter] Would you welcome please, Buddy Vanderhoop.
[cheers and applause]
Buddy: [00:33:48] 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. I listened to stories for years and some of the advice that 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. [audience chuckles] Charles' 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 to 20 miles an hour that day, and Charles' 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. [audience chuckles] So, we rounded Gay, 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. And 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 were having a great day of fishing. It was beautiful, flat, calm day. 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 we 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-pound yellowfin. He was in the chair reeling him in.
All of a sudden, I look back. The fish is 100 feet 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. And just about the time that fish hit the deck, the motor died. [audience reaction] I said, “Oh no.” Here we are, 45 or 50 miles south of the Vineyard. I went up, turned the key. No clicks, nothing.
The ammeter gauge was over below 9 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 chuckles] I decided I'd put the tuna fish head on a hook to see if we could catch the mako that had the rest of my fish. [audience laughter] 15 minutes later, Charles hooks up to a pretty nice shark, about a 400-pound shark got him in, and 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 a half, 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. [audience laughter] We're drifting south. We're already 45 or 50 miles south of the Vineyard. I look over to the northwest and the sky's totally black. It was just a nightmare. 10 minutes later, we had a major thunderstorm over us. Lightning all around the boat. The wind's picked up to 25, 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. I saw the boat turn toward us, and 20 minutes later the boat is pretty close to us. The two members of the lobster boat came out on deck and they said, "What's the problem?" I said, "Well, we're 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 Stripe beer." 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 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 10 feet tall. Waves are crashing over the front of the boat. All of a sudden, the line parts. Well, these guys are up in the pilothouse of their lobster boat drinking Red Stripe. [audience chuckles] 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.” [audience laughter]
They're drinking beer and having a blast out in the wheelhouse, and here we are back in the slosh in these 10-foot waves now. It's critical. Finally, I see the port in the starboard light coming back to us. Half an hour later, they're beside us again. It's blowing 40 to 45 miles an hour now, and 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 15 to 18 feet. We're sideways in this stuff. The outriggers are slamming into the mast. It's just a horrible scene. 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 that we just caught about an hour and a half ago, [audience laughter] and 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]
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. [audience laughter] 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. [audience laughter]
So, the boat's outside of us, the Coast Guard's on their way. All of a sudden, it's blowing 60 to 70 miles an hour. It's unbelievable. This is an unforecasted storm, 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, 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. 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. And 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. 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." It was mind blowing how bad the seas were that night. The Coast Guard, 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's outside of us saying with their little bullhorn, "We're going to pull up alongside of you." I said, "Don't pull up alongside 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 something. [audience laughter] They'd been to the Coast Guard Academy and they're now doing real-time stuff. [audience laughter] They had forgotten their booklets I think that day. [audience laughter]
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. [audience reaction] I was so pissed off. [audience laughter] I couldn't even 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. It took 23 hours for them tow us back to Menemsha. [audience reaction] So, all in all, it was a 34-hour tuna fishing trip. [audience laughter]
Finally, we got back. Nobody gave a shit about all the tuna fish we had. [audience laughter] Their loved ones were on the dock. Everybody's getting hugs, and tears, and everything is hunky dory because we were 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 [audience laughter] as long as he will live. And that's my story. Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
Adam: [00:47:44] Buddy Vanderhoop. Buddy Vanderhoop.
Jay: [00:47:51] Captain Buddy Vanderhoop is a Native American of the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah. He owns and operates Tomahawk Fishing Charters, and is widely known for his ability to catch big fish. You can see photos of some of those big fish at our website, themoth.org.
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time, and that's the story from The Moth.
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]
Your host this hour was Adam Gopnik, New Yorker staff writer and author of the books Paris to the Moon and The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food.
The stories were directed by Meg Bowles and Catherine Burns. The rest of The Moth's directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, and Jenifer Hixson. Production support from Jenna Weiss-Berman and Brandon Echter. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argot Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest.
Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour was performed live at the event by Carla Kihlstedt. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Atlantic Public Media was a sponsor of this live show along with the Cape and Island's public radio station WCAI. Special thanks to Kitty Burke and [unintelligible 00:49:34].
This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. For more about our podcast, for information on how to pitch your own story, and everything else, go to our website themoth.org.