Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Does your morning toast taste more like cardboard than bread? Then you haven't tried America's number one organic bread, Dave's Killer Bread. Killer taste, killer texture, killer nutrition. Now try our new Rock and Rolls, a dinner roll done the Dave's way. Soft and slightly sweet and packed with the seeds and grains you love. Find them in the bread aisle. Visit daveskillerbread.com to learn more and look for Dave's Killer Bread in the bread aisle of your local grocery store. Dave's Killer Bread. Bread Amplified.
Support comes from Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm. Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations, and at trial, when the lawyer you choose matters most. Online at Zuckerman.com.
This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our mainstages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows. From New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more, The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection.
To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon.
From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show, and we're bringing you stories from a Moth main stage event at the Victoria Theater in Dayton, Ohio. It was produced in partnership with public radio station WYSO, and the theme of the evening was Carpe Diem. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Moth in Dayton, Ohio. The host for the evening was poet and storyteller Dame Wilburn.
Let's jump right into the first story. Fair warning, it does deal with sexual relations within a marriage. Here's Sarah Sweet Rabidoux Kelsey. On a boring Tuesday night in the beginning of the summer, I sit down at the kitchen table with my husband Jeff in our brand new condo and I say, listen, I don't know how to tell you this, but I don't want to have sex with you anymore.
And this is sort of a sad and hard thing to say, but he hears it and mulls it over, and he says, "You know, I don't want to have sex with you anymore either." And I am so relieved, but not surprised, because Jeff and I have had this uncanny connection ever since the day we met ten years ago when he dared me to guess his favorite movie. "You've probably never even heard of it," he said. "Is it Withnal and I?"
I guess correctly? And how this obscure British film I had never seen popped into my head, we may never know. But we take it as a sign we should be together forever and we are engaged six months later. But now at the kitchen table faced with this uncomfortable truth, we know there's some things we should try.
like therapy or marriage counseling. And after a little bit of googling, we learned there are certain crazy things that couples try in the bedroom to spice up their sex lives. To be fair, we need more than spice. But we try it all. We go to the therapist, we see the marriage counselor, and we try some of the crazy stuff from the Internet.
Let me just tell you none of that crazy stuff works because none of that crazy stuff works. And we find ourselves at this sexual impasse and decide that we should just break up while we're still kind of young and have a chance of meeting other people. But we have just spent all of our money on this condo in Boston. We cannot afford to break up.
Plus, we are best friends. So, we do what any financially challenged couple in our situation would do, and we decide to become roommates. No, really. We just move into different rooms, but stay married and keep our health insurance. And Jeff says he'll take the guest room, which leaves me the big room that has the much better closet. We only tell our very closest friends about the nature of our separation.
We do not tell our families. Curiously, at the condo, life is business as usual. Paying the bills, laundry, feeding the cat. Jeff and I still even make dinner together. Bow tie, pasta, and salad. And we sit on the couch and eat it while we watch The Sopranos. Everything is exactly the same. Except we have more room to hang our clothes.
But a few weeks into our arrangement, I broached the subject of dating other people. Like, how exactly would this work now that we were roommates? I try to imagine myself going on a date or two with someone and then saying, "Oh, I can't wait for you to meet my roommate. He's so cool. He's my husband, and we're not divorced yet, but you'll love him." Like, that's ridiculous. I mean, pretending to be happily married for our families is one thing.
But lying to strangers we're trying to hook up with is creepy. I mean, we don't even want to lie. But the truth is kind of weird. We end up just sort of laughing it off. Like, what are the odds that we're going to meet people that would be willing to go along with this anyway? The odds are high. I start dating this young Texan that I work with, and Jeff also connects with a co-worker of his.
Theirs is a more sophisticated courtship as they work in publishing and I bartend at a place called The Good Life. And before you know it, we are each having these full-blown relationships, including sex. Things seem great. Until I notice the neighbors giving us dirty looks. Like anytime we go in and out of the condo, they must think something way freakier is going on in here.
But we're just consensually breaking our marriage vows and dating other people so we can keep our health insurance. But still, those looks make me feel kind of bad. They definitely make my boyfriend feel bad because one day he asks me, "Hey, when are you getting divorced?" And I'm like, "Listen, we're doing this ourselves, without lawyers or anything. These things take a long time." But honestly, I hadn't even looked into it yet.
So I go to divorce.net, as one does, and I click the button that says "Print Forms." Easy, right? Like, I figure we'll fill out a couple forms, get the ball rolling maybe. But page after page keeps shooting out of the printer, and there's like 45 pages. This is like TurboTax, but for divorce. Suddenly, this seems like a huge hassle, so I just take all the papers and stuff them away in a drawer where they stay for months and months and months.
12 months, in fact. And all this whole year, my husband is dating his girlfriend, I'm dating my boyfriend. Things are fine. We go out to dinner, we go on trips. I mean, not all together. We actually do our best to avoid each other. And we even make a schedule so that all four of us are not at the condo at the same time. So when I run into my husband's girlfriend at the front door one morning, I'm surprised.
It's awkward, but mainly it's because I'm trying to be so nice and welcoming, sort of like an over-anxious mother-in-law. I mean, we don't need to be best friends, but friendly, you know, like teammates or people that went to the same college. Thankfully, she interrupts my babbling and asks me if I would do her a favor, if I would read an essay she'd written. She could really use the feedback, she says.
I'm so flattered. She's a writer. I wish I was a writer. Of course I do what I'll say. I think maybe she does want to be friend-ish. After all, later that night, I read the essay. And it starts off describing how all four of us keep a toothbrush in the same cup in the bathroom at the condo. And I'm like, yeah, that's funny. That's a good place to start. But then she talks about how she doesn't want her bristles to touch mine.
She talks about how she's grown jealous of mine and Jeff's phone conversations, which are always about cat food or toilet paper.
And then she mentions the kimono that I had left hanging in a doorway while I was gone for the weekend. And how terrible it made her feel because it served as this reminder of a trip that Jeff and I had taken to Japan in marital bliss, and he had bought me this kimono as a gift. Okay, this isn't even true. I got this kimono at a thrift store in Houston.
I am shocked. I thought she was cool with the situation. She is not cool with the situation. I don't know what feedback I can give her really, so I just sort of note in the margin, "I got the kimono in Texas, FYI," and I leave it for her on the kitchen table. So about a month later, it's a Sunday, my day off, and I grab the New York Times, sit down on my porch, and open it up to the style section.
And then I see it. Her essay. In the modern love column of the New York Times. She is a pretty good writer, but this is not the same version I had read. This version is sadder. This version is darker. This version talks about how I mark my territory in the condo like an animal.
This version talks about how the kimono hangs in effigy, my cruel reminder to her of whose turf this really is. This version talks about how she sometimes hides my earrings and knocks over my stuff as her little way of letting me know she's there. Now, I fucking know that she's there.
And I am glad that she's there because she has taken over the part of my life I wanted nothing more to do with. She's having sex with my husband. And for this, I am thankful because I love him. He is my best friend. And more than anything, I just want him to be happy. I just wanted us all to be happy. And I wonder why she can't see this.
After the publication of the essay, everything falls apart. My boyfriend moves to China. Jeff and his girlfriend also break up and she leaves town. And it is once again just me and Jeff, alone in our marriage, in our condo. And really, it should be enough. Except it isn't. And I know I have to go. If I stay, nothing will ever change.
We are too comfortable and we really run the risk of eating bowtie pasta forever on the couch in our plutonic marriage. And so I move out. Even though it is so scary to leave this world that we had made, I know that we need to get divorced instead of just acting divorced. I am relieved but not surprised that Jeff agrees.
Standing in front of the judge, Jeff and I are smiling ear to ear. We're pretty proud that we did actually fill out all these forms ourselves without any lawyers. We have the same giddy excitement we had at the altar. The judge looks at us like we are crazy and even double checks. Are you sure you're in the right place? I am sure.
At long last, after trying everything and failing, I am no longer afraid that leaving Jeff will erase us. That divorce would somehow devour that uncanny connection that brought us together for some special destiny. A destiny I thought was marriage, but really it was to be friends.
lifelong friends till death do us part. Thank you.
That was Sarah Sweet Rabidoux Kelsey. Sarah began her creative life as a modern dancer. She's currently working on her first book. She lives in Winthrop, Massachusetts with her husband, Steph, and their dog, Pretzel. Sarah told us, Jeff and I remain connected forever because we are cosmically linked, but also because I adore his wife. And Jeff loves my husband.
To see photos of Sarah and Jeff at their wedding or a photo of Sarah and her husband, Steph, and their dog, Pretzel, visit themoth.org. Coming up, more stories from this live event in Dayton, Ohio. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. We're bringing you a live hour recorded in Dayton, Ohio, where we partnered with public radio station WYSO. Here's our host, Dame Wilburn.
I was born in Macon, Georgia and raised in Detroit. So I have this weird combination of Southern and Midwestern. I'm Midwestern to the point that I drove here from Detroit because it seems senseless to take a plane for under a four hour drive. They're like, we're going to get you a plane ticket. I'm like, nah, it's under 12 hours. It's drivable. Um,
And I have a tendency also to be, which I think is Midwestern, to be very punctual. I have a tendency to show up an hour ahead of things. Even when I fly, I show up to the airport two hours before boarding. Basically what I do is get popcorn and watch other people run to their flights.
Now, I want to say I get this because of living in Detroit and being Midwest, and that's not true. I get it from my father. My dad had a tendency to be late for some things, but the biggest thing he was late for was always movies. He always felt that you didn't need to see things like the previews or movies.
The opening credits. Like he figured, you know, if we get real late, we'll just stay at the movie and wait till it starts over and catch the beginning again. So my mother wasn't a fan of going to the movies with him because of these issues. And this brand new movie came out when I was a little kid. And my mother said, I'm not going because I don't want to go to the movies with you. And my dad said, well, I'll go by myself. And she said, you'll take the baby with you.
Because that's what wives do. You know, you're not going to go to the movies by yourself while we have children. Are you insane? So I pack off with my dad and we go see Star Wars. Now, my father was late for the movie when we left the house. So by the time we bought our tickets, we walked into the movie where the fight scenes are already happening.
And I, as a little kid, decided that this wasn't a movie, it was a documentary. I didn't really have that thing yet that told me this is real, this isn't real. So I figured this is real. And so above our heads in the sky at this moment, danger was imminent. So I come home and I try to explain to my mother because my father's not getting it.
that we're in a galactic battle for good and we are fighting the number one villain of all time, Dark Vader. Now, I didn't hear Darth. I couldn't and he was dark so I figured Dark Vader was what they meant. So my mother's laughing at me because I'm calling him Dark Vader and not Darth and she's going back and forth. She's like, "This isn't real."
This is just a movie. Movies aren't real. This guy isn't real." And I said, "Okay, I don't believe you. He is real and I need to defend us." So my request for my birthday was a lightsaber. Now, there are those of you who think that I'm trying to get a toy. I need you to understand that in my brain, I was getting the only weapon that could protect us from evil. And I needed it because this was real.
Now, my birthday happens to be the first of November, which falls directly after Halloween. So we are in Northland Mall, walking down the hall, and around the corner, in movie quality costume, coming in at 6'4", and approximately 230, 240 pounds, is some dude 100% dressed as Darth Vader.
My mother has spent months explaining to me that this guy isn't real, but there he be. Now, when you're little, all the synapses aren't firing, right? Your brain doesn't really know how to brain yet. So I couldn't pick up, I didn't have Darth to begin with. I somehow couldn't pull Dark at that moment. So I just screamed. The only thing I could get out was just, ah, it's Black Vader!
My mother does what you did. She busts out laughing. I'm like, the fate of the world is not funny. I am a member of the Rebel Alliance. I must protect us. So I dive into the toy store, go all the way to the back wall, grab a lightsaber. To my disappointment, it turned out to be a flashlight with a plastic tube. But I figured this dude is still far down the hall. He won't know.
He's gonna be so terrified that an eight-year-old's got a lightsaber, he's just gonna go away. That's my theory. So I run out of the store with at least two cashiers behind me. I get to the door of the store and my mother is standing there, bold as brass, chatting with Black Veda. And they're yucking it up. And they're having a good old time. And I'm standing in the door of the toy store.
with two cashiers removing my unpurchased lightsaber from my hands and I let it go because I knew two things. One, my mother was a member of the empire, which quite frankly didn't shock me that much. And two, I was gonna need a lot more than a flashlight with a tube on it. Thank you. So the way we at The Moth introduce people is by way of asking a question.
So when I asked our next storyteller, "Tell us about a time you threw caution to the wind," she said, "When I decided to run away with the carnival." I refuse to ask a follow-up question. Please welcome to the stage, Jackie Andrews. In 1979, I was standing in the dining room of our Western Nebraska farmhouse, and I was crying. I was telling my mom and dad that I was pregnant.
And I wanted to keep this baby, but I didn't want to bring shame to my family. It was my father who said, "If you want to keep this baby, then you pick up your chin and you look him in the eyes and you move forward. You can't undo the past and there's never any shame in a newborn baby." And I know that he believed what he said was true because you could tell it in the way that he cradled his granddaughter on the day she was born. It was my father who brought my daughter to my bedside and he placed her in my arm and he said, "Jackie, here's your daughter.
and you do the very best you can with her. But no matter how hard you try, you're gonna mess her up. Yeah. He said, "We all do. But if you love her and you let her know how much you love her, she'll forgive you." And that was the easy part, was loving this baby. From the minute I held her, I loved her more than I loved life itself. And I knew that her and I were gonna fight our way through this world, and the very first fight we had was just to get out of that hospital. It had been a very difficult birth, and my daughter was 11 days in intensive care.
And I was eight days in the hospital with a couple trips to the OR. And I made it out before her and I started the ritual of our life. You know, I'd get up in the morning and I would do chores and then I would go off to band practice and to school. And I would race home after school to see her before I went off to work at Wendy's. At night I would come home and I would do the chores for the night and start my homework. And I would learn to sleep with that little baby right here in the crook of my arm.
You know, it wasn't easy, but I felt like I was keeping my head above water until that wave of hospital bills hit. And they were enormous. And I didn't see any way that I was going to get these bills paid off working at Wendy's. So I went to my dad and I told him that I thought I was going to need some kind of public assistance. And he said, no. He reminded me that my grandmother and my grandfather had nine children in the Depression and they had never taken a penny from anyone. And he said, you know, you got one kid and I think you'll find your way through this.
And I really had some doubts about that because these bills needed to be paid and that hospital was going to expect money and we didn't have money. And I don't just mean that we were poor, I mean that we had decided to live without money. My dad was the kind of man who loved democracy and he loved children and he respected people who made an honest living with their hands. But he hated capitalism and he distrusted institutions and he was scornful of a wasteful society.
So he had said that we would live on this farm and everything we needed would come from the farm. And if we couldn't get it from that farm, then we would barter for it. We might fill a freezer with meat or build you something. And if we couldn't barter for it and we couldn't grow it, then we would scavenge it.
We would see like a barn that was falling down and we would reclaim that wood and pound those nails straight for the next project. I can still see my father standing there with a piece of rotten fruit that we had gotten from a dumpster behind the Jack and Jill grocery store. And he'd say, Jackie, look at this. 75% of this pear is good and someone's thrown it away. Then he'd cut off the bad part and we'd eat it. He just had this way of looking at the world. And right now he was trying to
look at the world to see a way that we could get those bills paid off before I graduated high school. You see, we had a little more than a year and then I was gonna be out on my own because my family had this thing where it said, you know, when a kid graduates high school, they need to leave home. Because if you don't push a kid out of a nest, they're never gonna learn to fly. And I may have a baby, but there weren't gonna be any exceptions made for me. I had a little more than a year and my life was gonna be hard, but it's gonna be a whole lot harder if I didn't get rid of these hospital bills.
And that's when my dad spotted a place that was a problem out there at the feedlot. And that problem might be our solution. You see, out in western Nebraska, they take all these beef cattle and they'll bring them in and they feed them in this feedlot, you know, and they'll finish them off to market weight. And feedlots specifically for beef cattle, and there's no place for a calf in there. So if you get a young heifer in that feedlot and she drops a calf, well, that's a problem for that feedlot.
And they'll separate that calf off right away, you know, because there's no place to raise it. But it's also a problem for that calf. Because if you separate a calf, well, it won't get that first milk from that mother cow. You know, it's called cholesterol. It's a real thick milk, and it helps that calf survive. And that calf needs that about half an hour, and maybe three, four hours. But outside of that, that calf's going to die if it doesn't get it. But my dad figured if we could get to these calves quickly enough, we might be able to take them, raise them, make some money, pay off those bills.
So him and I went to every single feedlot in western Nebraska, and we would talk to these feedlot managers, and we said, hey, next time a heifer drops a calf, you give us a call, we'll come out and get that calf. And we left, and I wasn't sure if they would do this, because the thing about farmers is they like to do the same thing the same way every time. And we got a call about a week later, and we got this bottle of cholesterol and mixed it up and wrapped it in a towel to keep it warm, and I raced out to this feedlot, and we got there, and there's this
sickly little calf there, you know, we picked it up and I was afraid to put it in the back of the truck. So I held it in the front of the cab and I remember looking at this little thing and just praying that it was going to make it. Because if this little calf died, all my hopes were going to die with it. We got it home and I set it up in the kitchen. I put down this little heat lamp and I was taking care of this and we got a call for another calf. Went and got that calf and by the time we got a call for the third calf, my mom said, you better get these cattle out of the kitchen. You know,
So we moved cattle out to the shed and then we just kept getting calls. They just kept calling and calling. We got about 20 calves. And let me tell you, that's a lot of work. Now luckily it's summer and we've got some times we're feeding these calves. But it gets to be around August and it's time to start weaning these calves and put them on feed and that's a whole new problem. Because I've got no money to feed these things. So we went down to the farmer's co-op in the feed store there in Mitchell, Nebraska. And we said, look, I've got this herd of feeder cattle.
You front me some feed till I can get them to market in the spring. You know, pay you off then and they agreed. And I remember bringing that feed home and I didn't have the physical strength to unload that but I had two younger brothers. And they, you know, they weren't very big but they were farm boys and they were strong as grown men and they could throw those hundred pound sacks around and they helped me with those cattle. By the time that school started again in the fall, these calves were looking good. You know, they were healthy.
They're putting on weight, and with every pound that those cattle put on, I could feel that weight just coming off my shoulders. But then, that calendar turned from 1979 to 1980, and it was the beginning of the farm crisis. First thing that happened was the price of cattle just plummeted. And I'd listen to those farm reports over the radio and just hope that they'd come back up, and they weren't coming up. Every day, they'd go down lower. And every day, we fed those cattle. It cost us more. Pretty soon, we just had to bring them in.
The day that we loaded those cattle up for market, it was like a cloud of doom had settled over that farm. And we loaded them up, we took them into the sale barn. And you run them down these chutes and they weigh them in and you put them in these pens, you know. And...
All the other farmers are getting there early and they're checking their cattle in and they're getting registered for this sale and after you get registered you kind of stand around and there's like this big sea of bib overalls and ball caps and everybody drinking coffee. And the farmers are talking and most of them are talking about the crisis because this end of Nebraska that I live in, it's not a rich part of Nebraska. And before this farm crisis was over, some of these farmers were going to lose their farms. Some of the farmers that lost their farms were going to take their lives.
My dad was talking to the farmers and he was telling them how we'd gotten these feedlot calves and how we were going to sell them and pay off these hospital bills. And these farmers are listening, you know, but they're not saying a lot. Because if you've ever been around a Nebraska farmer, they're not really a talkative bunch, okay? And that sale starts and herd after herd is just coming through this sale ring. And the price is so low that they're practically giving these cattle away.
And I get that feeling in my stomach that's just tightening, you know, because my fate is kind of marching towards me and my herd comes into that ring. Those farmers started bidding. And then they kept on bidding. And they started bidding on those cattle like they were some kind of prize breeding stock, you know. And that price, it went so far beyond what those cattle were worth. Because those farmers were voicing their approval of my ability to try and pull myself up my bootstraps and pay off these bills.
And they voiced that approval with wallets that had been emptied in this farm crisis. They didn't give to me from their surplus, they gave to me from their hearts. And I walked away with enough money. Paid that hospital bill off in full. And I paid my dad back for that milk supplement. And I paid back the farmer's co-op for the feed that they fronted me. And I had enough money left over to buy these two baby blue leisure suits with wide lapels for my brothers. A couple weeks later, I graduated high school.
And my daughter and I took off out of Western Nebraska. And I went on to earn a college degree. I joined the Army and I was awarded a Bronze Star for my actions in Desert Storm. I have been able to travel the world and I have seen magnificent things. But a part of my heart has never left Western Nebraska. It will always remain with the farmers who gave me a chance in life. Thank you. Put your hands together for Jackie Andrews.
Jackie Andrews' career as an army officer led her to Ohio, where she currently tutors Arab students and works as a glass artist. She and her husband have three adult children, four grandchildren, and a cat. Jackie's father passed away in 2010. To see photos of Jackie's father on the farm during the time of the story, visit themoth.org.
Coming up, our final story from this live event in Dayton, Ohio. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX. You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show, and this will be our final story from our live event at the Victoria Theatre in Dayton, Ohio.
Here's our host, Dame Wilburn. When I asked our last storyteller, tell us about a time you threw caution to the wind. He said, when I walked up to Teresa Anderson, the finest girl in school, and shot my shot. And I said, what happened? He said, she looked at me and said, I like your boldness, but I'm dating the quarterback. Please put your hands together for Anthony Brinkley. I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
embraced in a loving environment that fortunately for me was all black. See, back then we still had the mindset that created what became known as the Black Wall Street before it was destroyed by the angry white mob and the schools, the local stores, the movie theaters all were run and patronized by black people. My neighborhood then was sort of like an extended family unit because if you did something wrong around the corner
Mrs. Johnson would make sure the news reached home before you did. And if Mr. Holmes down the street told you to do something, you just said, yes, sir, and did it. Now, my parents divorced when I was young, and I rarely saw my father afterwards. But I was fortunate to have my grandfather, Robert Ross, a tall, lean-muscled man with a strong sense of right and wrong and a strict yet gentle guiding hand.
My granddaddy liked to drop little nuggets of wisdom that didn't really hit home until I got older, like, you can pick your friends, but your family, you just stuck with them. And though whippings weren't off the table for him, he tended more to lecture when you did something wrong. He'd set me down in front of him and push that old ball cap he liked to wear back and then begin in that slow, sonorous tone, killing me softly. Son, why you want to do your mother like this?
when you know you're wrong, eventually bringing tears to my eyes. I never thought of myself as disadvantaged, though I was well aware of black and white differences because our teachers would constantly exhort us that we had to be twice as good as the white guy to get the job and that education was the key to opening doors. When I was about 12 years old, my grandfather and I were coming from the white side of town where he worked as a night janitor.
We'd made it to our side of town when the cops pulled us over, and I became anxious when they made him get out of the truck because he wasn't speeding or anything. Now, I couldn't hear what was said at first, but when things got louder, I opened the door and got out to hear them screaming at my grandfather that he better answer them with sir, and when he didn't, and I guess because of the defiance in his stance, they started hitting him with their sticks and didn't stop when he went down.
I can still hear the sound of those clubs striking his flesh. His muffled as he refused to cry out. I stood there watching helplessly as they kept hitting him and hitting him and hitting him with tears in my eyes praying, please God, please make them stop. They finally did, leaving him bloody, battered, but alive. I prayed as I ran to him, please God, don't let him kill my granddaddy.
I touched his steel body, relieved to hear him moan. Then watched angrily as the cops sauntered back to their cars like it was no big deal. And one of them, before getting in, turned and blew me a kiss. I will never forget that smirk on his face.
It was the mid-1960s, and that day my ambivalence toward white people morphed into a near hatred. And later, when I began reading Malcolm X, he became sort of my compass, and my motto was, I ain't gonna start nothing, but I will end it if you put your hands on me. After high school, I joined the Air Force to see the world, and also because the GI Bill would help pay for my education.
My first assignment after training was working on fighter aircraft at Osan Air Force Base in South Korea. I loved being in Korea, absorbing bits of a completely foreign way of life, how the people in the countryside were so warm and welcoming to what was probably for them the first black guy they'd ever seen in real life. But I was culture shocked on the black, on the base, where for the first time ever, I was surrounded by white people.
The only other black guy in the electronics worked way at the other end of the building. I didn't know how to approach this situation because my interactions with whites had never been comforting. And here I was, plopped into this fishbowl where everywhere I went, everything I said or did, I stood out was the black guy. And it didn't help that I had to deal with Staff Sergeant Jablonski, stocky, stern,
Blue eyes icy with disdain as he regarded me with folded arms and a stare, leaving no doubt that my race was a no-go for him. And when we had a disagreement about a way to solve a problem with our systems and mine turned out to be the correct one, it did not improve his attitude toward me.
Our shop commander, Tech Sergeant Denny, seemed well aware of Jablonski's biases, for he made sure that he was never paired with me for on-the-job training. Tech Sergeant Denny, he was an older white guy who loved to laugh and crack jokes, but was also a stickler for the rules, and his first one was do your job. And I had no problem doing the job. It was just on the job.
that I felt so other. I mean, they had never heard of Curtis Mayfield and I didn't know who the hell Uriah Heep was. But the thing is, we tried. And I was able to start relaxing and even developed a bit of camaraderie with some of them, especially Grimaldi, with whom I shared a kindred spirit. We both loved to debate without being stubborn about our positions. Plus, dude was one of the nicest guys I've ever met.
One day a group of us decided to take a hike into the countryside to spend the night and we sat on a hilltop smoking weed and let me tell you back then for five dollars you could get a whole gallon bag of killer. We sat on a hilltop smoking weed shooting the breeze discussing the meaning of life when suddenly
This hauntingly lyrical sound that we'd never heard before drifted up to us and we all froze as we saw this procession of candlelights revealing men just like monks with shaved heads and long robes winding towards us and passing us.
It was like this beautiful, surreal movie unfolding before us. As an instrument played, as a sound played on an instrument we couldn't see, repeatedly washed over us. Then the last light disappeared and we all breathed out.
I reflected on the experience the next day. I mean, there we were, two black guys and four white guys on a hilltop in Korea, experiencing a moment akin to Malcolm's revelation when he traveled to Mecca and found himself spiritually joined with black and white and brown people on a religious high. Now, granted, we were experiencing a high of a different sort, but still...
That moment reinforced that we were all black and white Americans sharing the same gift. Later, almost a year into my touring career, it was my turn to be on standby on the base just in case there was a problem with our systems. It wasn't really my turn, but the guy in front of me was sick, so the task fell to me. The problem was, I'd already planned a date for that night.
So after pacing and fretting for a bit, the young and dumb in me decided leaving and going downtown would be no big deal because nothing ever happens at night, right? Early the next morning, I was confronted with the error of my ways. Rafe Pride, the other black guy in electronics, banged on the door while I was staying downtown and told me that a base alert had been sounded when I was supposed to be on standby.
That was my flirting with danger then falling over the cliff moment and I knew that common military expression applied. I was in deep doo-doo. Ray shook his head as he drove me to the base. Man, I don't know what you can tell them, but you better find something. And I can't remember what I was going to say to my shop commander, but when I got there and saw Jablonski,
all people standing there deliberately planning on my path to the office gloating with that smirk. The same smirk I'd seen on that police officer's face that night. All thoughts of humble power burned away and F these white people was the only thought in my head as I marched into Sergeant Denny's office not giving a damn and stood at angry attention. Sergeant Denny sat behind his desk and
with his back to me, facing the wall, then slowly turned, giving me with a wave of his hand an at-ease signal. But when he saw the anger radiating from me, I could see a what-the-f- perplexity on his face, and it seemed like a transition occurred within him, and I like to think that the spirit of my grandfather entered the room, for instead of reaming me out for desertion, he sat back,
They began speaking in a familiar tone. "Brankley, why are you standing in my office giving me an attitude when you know you're wrong?" His words triggered memories that superimposed my grandfather's voice and big hands on his and made me think of how the one man I knew loved me would be so disappointed in my actions. Sergeant Denny said a lot of other things.
But it was his grandfather-like demeanor that completely disarmed me and brought tears to my eyes as he spoke on and on and my shoulders slumped in guilt. He ended up giving me a punishment far below that which my desertion warranted, which, when word got out, really pissed Jablonski off. I mean, you could have probably fried an egg on his bald-ass head.
But I was so shocked that an older white guy would give me that kind of break that I didn't even react to Jablonski. That moment with Sergeant Denny added glue to my budding resolve to just let people's actions show me who they are and to try not to make ready judgments based on race. I left Korea far different from the guy about whom my sister would always say, "My brother won't even wear white T-shirts."
I have since experienced racial slice and liberal bastards like Massachusetts in California. I've known openness and acceptance in the double syllable highly from a southern bill in Greenville, South Carolina and a big warm bear hug from a gruff looking redheaded biker in Texas who fixed my car and just said this one's on me buddy.
Which reminds me of another of my granddaddy's golden nuggets that shone only after I'd added mileage to my lifeline when he said, Son, some books look a whole lot different when you open them up and turn the pages. Read before you judge. Thank you. Put your hands together for Anthony Brinkley. Thank you.
Anthony Brinkley has been referred to as the godfather of Tulsa poetry. Since retiring in 2013, he's joined the other 100 black men of Tulsa members in mentoring young boys in Tulsa public schools. Anthony says, "I am young and old, seriously silly, and hate nobody. That last part I'm most grateful for because it speaks volumes about my growth."
To see photos of Anthony, visit themoth.org. If you have a story to tell us, you can always pitch us by recording it right on our site, themoth.org, or you can call 877-799-MOTH, 877-799-MOTH, and the best pitches are developed for moth shows all around the world.
That's it for this live show from Dayton, Ohio. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from the moth.
Your host for this hour was Dame Wilburn. Dame is a storyteller and writer who counts Detroit and Macon, Georgia as her biggest influences. Larry Rosen and Jody Powell directed the stories in the show. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Janess, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.
Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Mark Orton and Henry Kaiser and David Lindley.
You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is 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.
