Host: Jon Goode
[overture music]
Jon: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jon Goode. And there's one thing I know to be true, every day I learn something new. Here are three things I've learned recently. Number one, not long ago I ate at a Michelin Star restaurant. I learned that the reason it's called a Michelin Star is because the meal costs as much as new tires. Number two, if a person in New Orleans comes up to you at 03:00 in the morning on Bourbon Street and asks if you want to see something, the answer is no. The answer is always no. And number three, all of life is a teacher and we are but humble students.
In this hour, we bring you five stories where our storytellers learn a little or a big something along the way. Our first story comes from Dan Souza. He told this at a StorySLAM in Boston, where we partnered with PRX and Public Radio Station WBUR. Here's Dan, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:01:16] Thank you. So, when I graduated college, I didn't want to work. [audience laughter] I just didn't want a job. So, I did what I thought at the time was the smartest thing possible. [coughs] Excuse me. And that was to go teach English in a rural town in Hungary about 30 minutes from Romania by myself. Yeah, I didn't know why no one else applied for the position. [audience laughter] I just thought I was a really good applicant. [audience laughter]
So, I arrived there. When I was in the car from the airport to the village, the coordinator, who her name was Kata, she was explaining to me what was going on. She's like, “So, you're the only American I'm hoping in the village.” And I was like, “Oh, that's cool. I'd love to meet a lot of different people. Who else is going to be there?” She was like, “Oh no, I'm sorry, I misspoke. You're the only foreigner who's going to be in the village. Just going to be you and 1,500 Hungarians.” [audience laughter] And so, I was like, “Great immersion. [audience laughter] That's a hot thing. I don't speak Hungarian, so probably learn a lot. [audience laughter]
So, we get there and I settle into my apartment which turns out to be a small little room attached to the schoolhouse where I'll be teaching. I share a wall with the teachers, like lounge, teacher's lounge. In the teacher's lounge are 40 middle-aged women who arrive about 05:30 in the morning and have really, really loud conversations about, I guess what happened the night before or dreams they had. [audience laughter] I can't imagine what happened. So much happened since when they left the day before. [audience laughter]
So, I wasn't getting a lot of sleep. Every time I left my apartment, I was just stared at. Hungary is not a homogenous society, it looks wise, but it's 1,500 people, and they know who the American guy is who's here to teach. So, I'm just constantly getting stares. I feel really weird. I feel really separated. So, for my first couple of weeks, I go and do the classes, and I pretty much spend my time in my apartment discovering the world of Hungarian beer and wine and [audience laughter] figuring out how to get the BBC on my TV.
So, I'm not feeling great about my decision at this point. But the weekend after the second week, they had a school fundraiser at the local restaurant, which was basically a big function hall, a leftover building from the Communist bloc era. It's all concrete, but they strung up a bunch of flyers, and they made it this big thing. So, I went to it. And Kata, the coordinator, quickly informs me that I'm the guest of honor for the night. [audience laughter] And so, what that means-- In various countries, I'm sure it means different things. In Hungary, that means every three to six minutes, someone will come by and do a shot with you. [audience laughter] And so, it's a little bit like college. [audience laughter] And so, I don't want to be rude, so I do a lot of shots with different people in my role as guest of honor.
So, the night goes on, and I'm feeling a little more comfortable because I'm pretty drunk. And then, the music starts. So, some of my students get up and do some traditional dance while a band plays. And it's great. We're all dancing a little bit. And then, Kata turns to me, and she says, “They want you to sing.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Oh, well, I'm not really a singer. I don't really sing.” They're like, “No, no, no, no, you have to sing.” And I was like, “I have to sing. Okay. So, I will.” [audience laughter]
So, I get up into the stage area, and they hand me a mic. I've got a fair amount of courage at this point just from what I've been consuming. And so, a song comes on. But just the backing track to the song comes on, and it's Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. I don't know how many of you listened to that song a lot in high school and college, but I didn't listen to it very much. [audience laughter] Just busy with other stuff. [audience laughter] So, I definitely knew the tune in my head, but the words were very few and far between. [audience laughter] But I just started into it, because I had a lot to drink at this point.
So, I said, “The colors of the Rainbow are pretty and bright. [audience laughter] They're not my favorite colors, [audience laughter] but that's alright. [audience laughter] And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.” [audience laughter] Everyone in the place stands up and a round of applause that I have never seen before in my life. [audience laughter] 300 people stand and start applauding me. And in that instance, I realized two things. One, I'm not a stranger in this land. I am a celebrity. [audience laughter] And two, no one here speaks English [audience laughter] at all. So, then I just go for it. [audience laughter]
“I see Ninja Turtles fight [audience laughter] with nunchucks and bows [audience laughs] They'll kill the foot, as I already know. [audience laughter] And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.” [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
Much like this. Much like this. I feel like I'm back there right now. And I don't stop there. [audience laughter] “I hear my sister fart. We're in church. She gets in big trouble, but I still get dessert. [Audience laughter] And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
[cheers and applause]
Jon: [00:08:11] That was Dan Souza. Dan is the editor in chief of Cook's Illustrated at America's Test Kitchen. I asked if he learned any Hungarian. He said, yes. He did learn to say hello, which is szia. He likes saying it to people he passed on the street, because it always seemed to improve their mood. But what Dan never learned were the lyrics to What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong.
[What a Wonderful World song]
Our next storyteller who's going to learn something today. I said that in my Kevin Hart voice is coming to you from our open-mic StorySLAMs in Madison, Wisconsin, where Public Radio Station WPR is our partner. Jen Rubin is not only a wonderful storyteller, but the regional producer of The Madison StorySLAMs. A dual threat, or rather a dual delight because neither you nor I want to be threatened twice. Here's Jen, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Jen: [00:09:31] So, it took me climbing a glacier to get a new perspective on life. I don't know if it was the altitude or what, but it suddenly occurred to me that my life sucked. I wasn't doing the work I wanted to do. I was still in the Midwest. I hadn't managed to get back to New York City. I hadn't had a relationship that lasted longer than a few months. Maybe it was the altitude, I don't know, but it became clear to me suddenly that the problem was that I was just too passive, that I didn't take any risks and that from this day forward, I was going to be spontaneous.
So, I got back home and I told my friends this, I was pretty excited about the new plan, and they said, “You can't actually plan to be spontaneous.” [audience laughter] Do you misunderstand the word?” But I knew I was onto something and it was going to happen.
So, fast forward a little while, I started dating someone. We were together, I don't know, six months, nine months. We were in the kind of cagey stage of a relationship where, “I don't know how I feel about you. How do you feel about me?” kind of thing. “I don't know about moving with you to New York,” that kind of thing. And so, I was getting stuck in inertia, and I had spent many years inertia and I was hoping not to spend more time there.
I went out for drinks with one of my very practical friends. I was having one of those evenings you can have in your 20s where you dissect your life in excruciating detail, every inch of it. As we were talking, she said to me, and Ruth was a problem solver, and I was not a problem solver, she said, “It sounds to me like you should just propose to Matt.” Matt was my boyfriend.
I thought about it for a minute, and I realized the only relationships I had managed to sustain for longer than four months were the unrequited ones that I had been in. I was looking to not have a longer relationship that was requited. And so, I thought about it and I said, “You know, that's a great idea, because that really sounds like something a spontaneous person would do. [audience laughter] So, I am going to propose.”
And so, by the time I got home, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to propose anymore. But I walked in the door, and my housemate handed me the phone. It was Ruth, my practical friend. And she said, “So, what's your plan?” And I said, “Well, I don't really have a plan.” And she said, “Okay, what are you doing Saturday night?” And I said, “Well, actually, as luck would have it, I'm going to the movies, so I can't propose.” And she said, “Well, what are you doing Friday night?” And she got me, because I had no plans. [audience laughter] I said, “I'm going to propose to Matt.”
I hung up the phone, and I quickly called Matt before I chickened out and I said, “Pick me up on Friday. Look good,” and called an Italian restaurant in town, made a reservation. And then, it occurred to me that I had only four days to prepare.
So, on Monday, I tried on every outfit in my closet until I found the one that I look best in. Tuesday, I drove through a snowstorm to get the engagement leather jacket, because I figured I had to give him something. [audience laughter] And then, on Wednesday, I developed my fail-safe plan, because I really hoped that with this new perspective on life, I was going to be bold while I did this bold thing, proposing. But I also knew myself, and if only one thing went wrong, I would be completely derailed. I would probably say something so self-effacing he would have no idea that I proposed.
So, I made sort of like a Burma-Shave on index cards. And on each index card, I wrote one thing I loved about him, color coded. And then, on the last one, it said therefore…
And that would be my cue to propose. I really hoped I wouldn't use this. I really hoped I'd be bolder than that, but it just made me feel good knowing that it was tucked away in the leather jacket box.
So then, Thursday-- What did I do, Thursday? Oh, Thursday, I thought about every possible answer he could give me. I thought there were nine. [audience laughter] And so, I wrote out answer for each one. And then, on Friday, I took the day off of work and I rented romantic comedies to get in the mood. [audience laughter] And then, I realized I couldn't just stick the leather jacket in my purse, so I went and dropped it off early at the restaurant and I said, “Could you bring this out with dessert?” And they said, “Sure. What's the occasion?” And so, I said, “Well, it's his birthday,” which some of you are smarter than I was at the time, because I thought, well, what if he said no and then I'd be embarrassed in front of total strangers. So, that's what I did.
So, anyhow, fast forward to the meal and it's clear something is a little off because I'm not eating. And then, they come for dessert and they ask what we want for dessert. And Matt, in an unprecedented move, said, “I'm full and I don't want dessert.” And so, I in also an unprecedented mood, because I usually eat all the bread at restaurants, I said, “Actually, I want dessert. We must have dessert.”
So, Matt goes and excuses himself, because he doesn't know what's about to happen, but he knows something's about to happen. So, the dessert comes out. There's, , as you can imagine, the candle on the pie, and they're singing Happy Birthday, and it's one of those restaurants where all the waitstaff sings Happy Birthday [audience laughter] and the whole restaurant sing Happy Birthday. Matt's just saying it's not my birthday. I'm making eye contact with nobody. [audience laughter] And then, they leave and then Matt looks at me and I pull out the index cards in defeat and I hand it to him and I'm like, “Just read it.”
So, he reads each card. He gets to the therefore… I do rise to the occasion and I do ask him if he will marry me and he does say yes right away, which is lovely. But I can't really leave it there, because the problem is that I hadn't told my instinct about my new perspective. My instinct has screwed me my whole life. And so, I said, “Are you sure? [audience laughter] Don't you need a little time to think about it?” Because that was what I thought he would say, but he was sure and he didn't need any time. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jon: [00:16:02] Jen Rubin recently published We Are Staying: Eighty Years in the Life of a Family, a Store, and a Neighborhood. She says, she's sure she can make you care about an appliance store you've never heard of, if only you'll read it. Challenge accepted, Jen Rubin. Challenge accepted. You can find a link to We Are Staying at themoth.org.
Jen said her wedding was a lowkey outdoor fair on a humid New Jersey day, where she was surrounded by family, friends, fun and a funky klezmer band. Three words I never anticipated hearing in the same sentence are funky and klezmer band. So, thank you for that, Jen. I asked Jen if she'd learned to be more spontaneous. And she said, “Mostly no.”
[whimsical music]
After our break, a young girl going head first down a slide and a lady sliding up the piano scales, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
Jay: [00:17:32] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Jon: [00:17:44] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jon Goode. This is an hour all about learning and lessons. Our next story is from husband, part time writer and full time stay at home dad, Matty Struski. He told this at The Moth StorySLAM in Los Angeles, where we partnered with Public Radio Station KCRW. Here's Matty.
[cheers and applause]
Matty: [00:18:07] When I ask my daughter, I say, “Rain, what do you do when you topple over?” She answers, “I get back up.” Rain just turned three in November. She's already toppled over more times than I can count. And for her, it can be incredibly frustrating. As a parent, it can be downright heartbreaking to see. And in most ways, she's just like every other kid out there. She loves space and animals and the movie, Frozen, and dinosaurs and playgrounds. There's this one playground we go to all the time that that's got a structure that's actually shaped like a dinosaur. It's got steps for a tail, and a bridge and a tunnel for a back and a slide for a face. It's as amazing as it sounds. And she loves the thing.
And other kids can run and jump all over this thing really easily. And for Rain, it's a bit of a challenge. She primarily gets around doing something called a commando crawl, which is exactly what it sounds like. She's on her elbows and her belly, and she drags herself from place to place. So, she drags herself up the steps, and over the bridge and through the tunnel. And as she's doing this, other kids are running by her and literally jumping over her. She doesn't see anything weird about that. It's not odd to her. She's just doing her thing and having a good time.
And in reality, it's pretty miraculous she's here to do any of this. She was born almost four months early via emergency C-section. She was just over a pound when she first came into the world and she was stone cold silent. It was the most terrifying night of my life. The doctors didn't want to talk about the odds of her survival, at first. They said, “These kids are resilient. Every kid's journey is different. So, try not to pay attention to what other kids are doing and just focus on your kid.”
And more than once, it looked like she wasn't going to be coming home at all. And eventually, after five months intensive care, she did. And amazingly enough, she started preschool in September. And so, naturally, my wife and I started thinking about where she would be going to college, [audience laughter] and we decided it would be Harvard.
I actually grew up in a town not far from Boston. So, recently, we took a trip back east to see some friends, and some family and to show Rain our future stomping grounds. And one evening we said, “We're going to go for a walk.” And so, we put Rain into her gait trainer. And a gait trainer is this assisted walking device, where it's got wheels and a bar that she holds onto, and you strap her into it for additional support. It basically allows her to practice walking upright without falling over.
When she's in this thing, she stands out from the crowd in it. But she doesn't care that she stands out. Other kids don't seem to care. A lot of them don't even notice it. But other adults, and I've noticed mostly parents, they notice it when she's in it. When they see it, they see her cerebral palsy and they see her disability and they see her as different. They often have this look of pity in their eyes. And as a parent, it drives me nuts, as I have the hardest times with it.
So, we go out into the city, and we end up in the north end of the city, which is the oldest part of the city, and it's one of the most beautiful parts of the city. It's got these really charming narrow streets and it's got this beautiful cobblestone, but the cobblestone presents this real challenge for Rain. Her gait trainer is getting caught up on it, and it's taken us forever to get anywhere and she's getting really frustrated. I have this moment where I think, how is she going to live in this city when she gets older, and how is she possibly going to be able to go to Harvard?
And on top of that, the streets are packed with people. It's a really nice night. I can see people staring at her, and they have that familiar look in their eyes, and I start to just get really pissed off. I want to grab people and I want to say like, “Do you have any idea who this kid is? Do you know how hard she's fought just to be here? She spent the first two months of her life on a ventilator. She's had five major operations, and she's had two infections that literally almost killed her. And that was in the first five months of her life. So, please don't look at this kid with pity, because she doesn't need it. She's already stronger than all of us.” But truthfully, it hurts to see people looking at your kid like this.
We get through the evening and the trip ends and we come back to Los Angeles, and I'm still feeling a bit down about how that walk in Boston went. But Rain, she doesn't care about that. She wants to go to that playground. So, we go and we get there, and she crawls up the steps and she crawls across the bridge and through the tunnel. And normally, she would turn around and come back to me. And tonight, she decides she's going to do something different. She looks over her shoulder at me and flashes this little smile, and she decides that she's going to go down the slide by herself for the first time. And not only that, she's going to go face first. And before I can get over, there she goes. [audience laughter]
I can tell by the looks on other parents faces that it has not been a graceful descent, [audience laughter] so I go running over there and she's at the foot of the slide and she's a mess. She's got dirt in her face, and wood chips in her hair and she's wailing and I'm like, “Oh, man.” But she's wailing with laughter and she just thinks it's the funniest thing she's ever done. [audience laughter] She looks up at me and she says, “Dad, I toppled over. I'll get back up.” I'm beaming with pride at this moment.
I think back to what the doctor said when she was first born and I'm thinking, “Man, she is resilient. Her journey is her own journey. Our journey together as a family, it might not be a typical one, but that's a good thing. I just need to stop focusing on the looks that people are giving her and I need to focus on the things that she can achieve.” And in this moment, I think about the rest of her life, and the life she's going to lead and the adventures she's going to have and the path she's going to walk. At this moment, it feels wide open to me. That path may or may not lead her to Harvard, but if it doesn't, it's not going to because some damn cobblestone stops her. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jon: [00:23:52] That was Matty Struski, coming to you from Los Angeles. When Matty told that story, he had just received Rain's diagnosis. He said that telling it was therapeutic and helped him confront unprocessed feelings. Matty says, Rain is doing really well these days. She's graduated from her gait trainers and now gets around mostly using a wheelchair or a walker. I asked him if he's told her about Harvard. He said “Yes. And she's into the idea of going, so long as it doesn't interfere with her dreams of singing on Broadway, becoming a famous author or owning a horse farm.”
And of course, I asked Matty what he learned from Rain. He says, “She teaches him that it's okay for things to be hard. It's okay to be frustrated. It's even okay to fall flat on your face, because all of those things happen, whether you have a disability or not.” To see photos of Matty and his daughter, Rain, go to themoth.org.
Diane Harari, our next storyteller, comes to you all the way from Sydney, Australia. This is where hosts typically do a very poor Crocodile Dundee impression. I will refrain this time. Diane told this story at a Sydney StorySLAM, where we partnered with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABCRN. Here's Diane, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Diane: [00:25:26] It's September 2014. I'm sitting in a room with about 100 other people, and I'm about to do my first ever piano recital. A few months beforehand, I decided to take up piano lessons again. I hadn't actually had a lesson for 30 years, but I've always loved playing piano. I'm not particularly good at playing piano. I'm not terrible at it either. It's just something that I really enjoy, because I have to immerse myself in it, because I have to try very hard. So, it's one of the few times that I'm totally present in the moment and weird things can happen, like I can hear my kids talking to me, but apparently, I can't talk and play at the same time. So, I just can't possibly answer them until I get to the end bit and stuff. But I decided I was going to have some lessons just because I wanted to get better at doing some stuff.
And years ago, when I first had lessons, it was all about scales and practice, and it was a really horrible experience. But this time around, I had a young teacher called Tim who was in his early 20s, and he used to come to my place and he never once asked me to do a scale and he didn't really care whether I practiced or not. He was really relaxed and just warmly encouraging. I felt that Tim kind of got me. We had a thing going on there.
So, a few months into it, when he said to me, “Look, I'm having a piano recital for my students at the end of the year, and I'm just wondering if you'd like to be part of it.” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” And he said, “Look, a lot of the students are younger students, but there are some older students there as well.” And I said, “Look, that's not a problem. I'd love to do it.” And sensing that he had a live one there, he said, “Well, would you like to do two pieces?” And I'm like, “Yeah, not a problem.”
So, I told some of my friends that I was doing this recital. And they all said to me, “Wow, you're so brave,” which I'm old enough to know is code for, “Are you completely out of your mind?” [audience laughter] But I thought, well, what can go wrong? I've got the music in front of me, I'll practice, it'll be fine. And sometimes you got to put yourself out there and just go for it.
Unfortunately, the lead up to the recital was not quite what I'd hoped it would be, and things got ridiculously busy at work, and I had to travel and I was nowhere near a piano for the three weeks before the recital. And it was suboptimal preparation. But I was confident there on the day in September that I could just wing it. It would be fine, adrenaline would kick in and it'll all be good.
And so, I rock up to the venue. It's this beautiful room in Melbourne University. It's this old building, built in 1888, and there's sunshine streaming in, and there's these stained-glass windows. I'm sitting there. I've got my son, Dylan, who was 11 at the time and he's sitting next to me as my wingman. We watch as everyone comes in. Tim had said that they were going to be younger students, but I figured that they were going to be high school students. Most of them were five or six. [audience laughter] I was wedged in between Three Blind Mice and Mary Had a Little Lamb. [audience laughter] But that was okay, because I figured this would really make me shine. [audience laughter]
Anyhow, the kids get up and they start doing their pieces. Look, I don't want to be mean, but they're a bit ordinary. [audience laughter] But the audience was full of love. Like, they were clapping like nobody's business. It was fantastic how supportive they were being. And then, it was my turn to get up. And so, I get up there and I start playing. I'm still feeling really good. I get about five or six bars in, and I make this massive error. I just froze. I actually had no idea how to recover from this position.
And that was when I noticed that all this light is streaming in, and it's flaring off the plastic pockets where my music's in. I can't possibly play in these conditions, and so I stop and I pull out the music and put it in front and start again, like an old person who has no embarrassment [unintelligible [00:29:25] [audience laughs] And I start playing. And the whole time, my head's just going, “Don't go too fast. Don't go too fast,” and so I play so ridiculously slowly that I've totally lost all my timing. And it's just appalling. Like, the whole thing is the worst experience of my entire life. I cannot wait till it's finally over. I get to the end of the piece and I'm like, “Thank God,” until I realized that there was a second one and I had to go through it all again. [audience laughter]
I finish it and I'm like, “Oh, God, I just want to get back to my seat.” I've got to be fair, the audience were very warm with their applause. But by now, I knew that they were a really unreliable audience, because they had clapped little Johnny. And Johnny was shit ass, let's be honest. [audience laughter] And so, I get back to my seat, and Dil is sitting there and he looks at me, full of love, and he goes, “Oh, mum, you were great.” And for a moment, I really believed him, [audience laughter] until I recognized that he was using exactly the same voice that I use when he or his brother has done something completely lame. And the only thing between them and a shattered ego are the kind words that I've got to say.
Now, the worst part of this story, is that I actually was so mortified that I stopped playing piano for five years. It was only a few months ago that I sat down again and I just thought to myself, what the hell was I thinking? I love playing piano. I've never wanted to perform. I just want to do it for me. I just want to do it as the background to what my kids are doing. It makes me happy and I'm pretty sure the dog enjoys it. [audience laughter] And that's it. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jon: [00:31:09] That was writer and corporate communications expert, Diane Harari. Diane lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her sons, Liam and Dylan, and their family dog, Nala, who remained steadfastly indifferent to Diane's piano playing.
I loved hearing the lesson of Diane's story that there are things that we will find, lose and then have an even greater appreciation for when we discover them again.
The Moth produces hundreds of events each year, and the stories are told by people like you. What are some of the lessons you've learned in your life? We'd love to hear them in really any personal story that matters to you. You can record your pitch right on our site, or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed for Moth shows all around the world.
In a moment, a story of tragedy, community and determination, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[soft piano music]
Jay: [00:32:35] The Moth Radio Hour is Produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Jon: [00:32:49] You're listening to The Moth Radio hour from PRX. I'm Jon Goode. In this hour, we've been hearing stories where the tellers win some and learn some.
Our last story is from a man who dared against all odds to do what no one else would. And I had the honor of hosting the night he told his story. Here's Burnell Cotlon, live at The Moth Mainstage in New Orleans.
[cheers and applause]
Burnell: [00:33:16] I had a wonderful childhood growing up here in New Orleans, in the Lower Ninth Ward, maybe about 15 minutes from where we're standing. I know everybody think they had the best parents in the world, so did I. I learned a lot from my mother as well as from my father.
My father was an entrepreneur. He had a barber shop in the Trinity area, not too far from here. It's a community hub. Everybody hung out at my dad's barbershop. He supported everybody. One day, my dad was cutting this drug dealer's head and another drug dealer came into the shop, a rival dope dealer. He shot the guy that was in my dad's chair and the guy had died. And the guy told my dad, “You didn't see nothing, you don't know nothing and you better not say anything.” Then he walked out.
Now, my dad could have easily looked out the way and said, “I didn't see nothing,” when the police came, but my dad made a sacrifice. He decided to do the right thing and he wanted to testify. They offered my dad protective custody. He told them no.
So, fast forward, my dad was supposed to go and testify at court. He stepped out the front of his house, and they did a drive by and they killed my dad, the day he was supposed to testify. That devastated me and my family and my entire community. It changed my whole life. I ended up joining the military and I became a military police soldier. I did the whole time in Germany, of all places [unintelligible 00:35:01] [audience laughter]
I was over there long enough to learn the language. I did everything that a police officer was supposed to do and not supposed to do. I seen a lot of bad things, but it wasn't all bad. I even helped deliver the baby, so that was fun. It was fun. But something inside of me was still missing. I didn't do the whole time, I ended up coming back home and I went straight back to the Lower Ninth Ward. And it was fun. I found a great job. I was a manager at McDonald's. I bought my first house. I used my VA home loan to buy the house in the Lower Ninth Ward. Since about 2001, I thought I was going to live happily ever after I had 48 wonderful neighbors. Like I said, it's about 2001 and 2005, everybody knows what was coming in 2005.
I saw it on the news. I didn't pay no attention to it. The day before Katrina hit New Orleans, I was at work. And I gave away all of the food at McDonald's. I gave away everything. I actually went home, went to sleep. My mom kept calling my phone. She called me a good 12, 13 times. I ignored all the phone calls. But I finally picked it up. I've never heard my mom sounded like this. I remember exactly what she said. She said, “Son, you was not born for a Hurricane Betsy. So, you don't know nothing about a hurricane. You spent your entire adult life in the military in Germany.” She said, “Please, please come and evacuate with me.”
I didn't want to do it at first. I said, “What about my brother Kevin?” She said, “Kevin is not going to go, but I want you to come.” So, I remember grabbing two pairs of pants and a shirt, and I went and grabbed my mom's. We normally would take six hours to go from here to Fort Polk. It took us 18 hours, because the whole city was evacuating. We ended up going to a shelter in Fort Polk. Once we got there, something I never thought I would see again, they gave me another army cot. [chuckles] So, we all went to sleep and we woke up the next morning, and it was like about maybe a good 65 or 70 of us around this one little bitty, small TV in the shelter. And we watched the city of New Orleans go underwater.
Everybody cried. I stepped away. I went outside and tried to maintain my composure as best I could. FEMA came in and they sent everybody everywhere. I ended up going to New York, and then they sent me to San Antonio, Texas. I still was missing New Orleans. I knew a lot of police officers, so I was able to go back to New Orleans, because they wasn't letting anybody in the Lower Ninth Ward. But I was able to go back in there, and they snuck me in there.
I went where my house used to be. My house was here on its foundation and Katrina took it completely off its foundation and sit it in the middle of the streets. I remember going back to where my bed was. I remember we had pictures. I remember where I had a TV. I don't have any pictures of my grandparents. I know what they look like up here, but having it physically, it was all gone. The smells, it was horrible.
To be honest with you, I cried. I cried because just losing everything and having to start all over, I don't wish that on anybody. But FEMA gave me a FEMA trailer and I was able to rebuild my personal house. I went from having 48 wonderful neighbors. Even still today, I have three neighbors. That's even today, I only have three neighbors in the Lower Ninth Ward about 15 minutes from here.
After I got my personal house together, I drove up and down the Lower Ninth Ward. I noticed we didn't have anything. The closest grocery store that we have in the Lower Ninth Ward, it's Walmart in the next city. I called up all the big box stores. I called Walmart, I called Winn-Dixie, I called Rouses, and I begged them to come to bring a supermarket to the Lower Ninth Ward. I'm embarrassed, because it's the first time I ever heard this, they all told me that they're not coming back because the Lower Ninth Ward is a food desert.
I didn't know what the hell a food desert was. So, I called up the US Department of Agriculture and they said, “That's a lack of grocery store within a three-to-five-mile radius of a certain area.” So, I said, “Well, since they're not going to do anything about it, I am.” I drove up and down the Lower Ninth Ward and I came across this building on Caffin N. Galvez. It was a horrible building. They have no roof up there, didn't have no walls, it was bad. Katrina debris was up to this high. The smells, it was horrible.
So, I'm walking all through this here. And to everybody else, it was just a ragged building. To me, I saw people shopping, I saw a grocery store. I immediately ran to my house, I grabbed Keisha, my other half, that's my wife, and I brought it back to the store and I said, “Keisha, I want to open up a grocery store. We don't have any. I want to do something about it.” She looked around and she said, “Yes.” I was extremely happy.
So, I ran, grabbed my mom. I brought my mom's over and I told her the exact same thing I just told my wife. My mama said, “Hell no.” [audience laughter] I brought a couple of my friends over. They all told me no. But to me, when someone tell me no, that's not a limitation on me, that's a limitation on them. I decided to do it anyway.
So, Keisha and I, we worked every day. We're scrubbing the walls. We got rid of all the Katrina debris, all the mold, the mildew was putting up windows. We just going at it. We worked for about two years straight. Then one day, we showed up and had this big old orange note on the side of the building, and I grabbed it and I opened up the note. It was a code enforcement fine from the city of New Orleans saying, they're going to give me a $17,000 fine, because the building wasn't in compliance.
Needless to say, I was angry. To be honest, I was totally livid. I was pissed off, because I'm trying my best to open up a grocery store. And everywhere else in the city, everybody's partying. Everybody's partying in Bourbon Street. I mean, everybody's good to go, but not us in the Lower Ninth Ward. So, I decided to fight. I went to court. It took us a whole year, and they constantly told us, “No, if you don't pay the fine, we're going to take your building. You don't pay the fine, we're going to take your building.” And I didn't know what to do.
At that time, Mitch Landrieu was the mayor. He had an open forum for anybody to come and talk to him. So, it was the same, this long, long, long line. I was in the back of the line, and they had people up there complaining about all kinds of stupid things. One lady was complaining they had too many Katrina mosquitoes in the air and all kinds of-- [audience laughter] I was angry. I got a real problem.
So, by time I got up to the microphone, I didn't know what the mayor was going to tell me. I didn't know he was going to tell me to shut up or go home or get out or whatever. But I told the mayor, I said, “Sir, my name is Burnell Cotlon. I want to open up the first and only grocery store in the Lower Ninth Ward.” The whole crowd went wild. They cheered me on. Everybody was happy. But I said, “But wait, there's more.”
I went in my front pocket and I pulled out the fine. I said, “Sir, I can't go any further, because you slapped me with a $17,000 fine. How can I finish living out my dream of opening up the first grocery store and have to pay this fine?” They booed him bad. [audience laughter] I felt bad for him. [audience laughter] So, the mayor called me up to him and he said, “Burnell, look, give me a chance. I promise you, I promise you, I will take care of you.” So, he held his hand out, I held my hand out, I said, “Sir, please don't let this be a political promise. Please mean this here.” He said, “Trust me, I will.”
So, I went back to work. I checked that same spot every day for two weeks. Nothing. But it finally came in the mail. Mayor Mitch Landrieu honored his promise. When I opened up that letter and it read, all the fines was forgiven. It was like Mardi Gras, my birthday and Christmas all at the same time. [audience laughter] I was so happy. [audience cheers and applause]
So, fast forward, say about three, maybe another four years before we finally was able to open up, I had invited him over. We had the ribbon cutting ceremony. It was a beautiful day. We had birds chirping, the sun was out, rainbows. It was a picture-perfect day. Everybody showed up. I was blown away. It just touched my heart.
They had this one particular lady though at my grand opening that really blew my mind. An elderly lady, Ms. Williamson. She came in and she had a chair. She sat down right by my front counter. She was there for about three hours. So, I went over to her, I said, “Ma'am, why are you here? You, okay?” She had tears in her eyes. She said, “I've been here, young man, since right after Katrina.” She said she never thought that we'd have a grocery store in the Lower Ninth Ward. She asked, “Was I going to kick her out?” I said, “No, no, you're fine.” So, she stayed there. She was extremely happy. She was extremely happy.
We used to do this here four days a week. The demand is so high. I'm at my store seven days a week, because there's nothing else back there but what we're doing. We also opened up several other businesses in that same strip. Believe it or not, I now have a barbershop. So, I'm hoping – [audience applause] - Thank you. I have a grocery store, a snowball stand, the barbershop and a laundromat all in this one building. So, now, people don't have to catch three, I'm going say it again, three city buses. They can walk to my building just to get some fresh fruits and vegetables. So, wherever you are from, trust me when I say this. Appreciate and value everything, because to go from 48 neighbors down to three, it's bad, that's still today. Like I said, you don't believe me, come to the Lower Ninth Ward, because it's a totally different world, and that's about 15 minutes from here.
It just taught me a lot of very, very important lessons to don't take nothing for granted. Appreciate and value everything that you have, because having to lose everything, I don't wish that on anybody. I also found out what my purpose is. My purpose is service, and that's why I was able to easily go from serving our country to serving my community. I did it with no problem, because like I said, I'm hoping that you all can find your purpose in life, because I found mine and it's wonderful and I'm enjoying this here. I want to tell everybody, thank you all for giving me a chance to tell my story, and thank you for listening.
[cheers and applause]
Jon: [00:46:09] Burnell Cotlon is a US veteran, a lifelong New Orleanian and the owner of Burnell's Lower Ninth Ward Market on the corner of Caffin N. Galvez in New Orleans. Visit the market for a pool board, a haircut, a game of chess or to just say hello. I had the pleasure of talking to Burnell recently to see how he's doing.
In 2005, Katrina devastated New Orleans. And 16 years later, within days of when Katrina hit, Ida hit. So, what thoughts and emotions were you dealing with knowing another huge storm was coming?
Burnell: [00:46:43] That immediately brought me back. And of course, everybody went back to the same mindset of Katrina.
Jon: [00:46:51] So, how did you and your family and your friends, your community and your store, how did you weather the storm?
Burnell: [00:47:00] It was extremely hard. It was extremely hard, because when the power went out and you could see all the wind and the rain, the trees was knocking down, trash and debris was going everywhere, that was horrible. That was horrible. I don't wish that on anybody.
Jon: [00:47:18] So, through Katrina and Ida, what have you learned about community, your community?
Burnell: [00:47:25] People of the Lower Ninth Ward are resilient. That came back after Hurricane Katrina and said, “Hey, this is my home. I am going to rebuild.” You have to stand strong. You can't let nothing slow you down or stop you. That's my motto. No matter what, I have to be here for my community.
Jon: [00:47:48] Is your grocery store/barbershop/laundromat, is that still the only one in the Lower Ninth?
Burnell: [00:47:55] Yes, I'm still the only business in the Lower Ninth Ward since 2005.
Jon: [00:48:01] What would you like to see happen as far as development in the Lower Ninth, and how can people help you?
Burnell: [00:48:07] First, that's a beautiful question. I'm glad that you asked that question. I would love to see my hometown simply catch up with the rest of the city. You should not have to catch three city buses to get to the closest grocery store. And as far as anybody that would like to help, whether it's one of the big box stores on down to a person with a big heart, I'm easy to work with. If you want to come down and grab a shovel and a hammer and help me put the second floor up, please come on down. If you want to donate, please come on down. If you want to send goods to put on the shelves, because there's nowhere else for people to go.
Jon: [00:48:50] Right. Thank you so much, man, for coming on, for doing this, for just sharing your story, man. It has been an inspiration since the first time I heard it. That was Burnell Cotlon. To see photos of Burnell and his incredible store, go to themoth.org.
Well, we've all learned a few things in this hour. I learned, I must do the things I love, even if only the dog and I appreciate them, that I will fall down, but I must get up and tackle life my own way. And last but not least, I learned that I am indeed the one I've been waiting for. What did you learn today? Tell us a story about it.
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:45] This episode of The Moth podcast was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, Sarah Austin Jenness, who also directed the stories, and Jon Goode, who hosted the show. Coproducer is Viki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch.
The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.
Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Tuba Skinny, Louis Armstrong, Anat Cohen, Julian Lage, Laraaji and Evan Christopher. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.