Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
The Moth is brought to you by Progressive, home of the Name Your Price tool. You say how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. It's easy to start a quote. Visit Progressive.com to get started. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.
Hey there. We here at The Moth have an exciting opportunity for high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors who love to tell stories. Join The Moth Story Lab this fall. Whether for an aspiring writer, a budding filmmaker, or simply someone who loves to spin a good yarn, this workshop is a chance to refine the craft of storytelling. From brainstorming to that final mic drop moment, we've got students covered.
Plus, they'll make new friends, build skills that shine in school and beyond, and have a blast along the way. These workshops are free and held in person in New York City or virtually anywhere in the U.S. Space is limited. Apply now through September 22nd at themoth.org slash students. That's themoth.org slash students.
From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, John Good. 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. And 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 three in the morning on Bourbon Street and asked 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 Story Slam in Boston, where we partnered with PRX and public radio station WBUR. Here's Dan, live at the mall. Thank you. So when I graduated college, I didn't want to work. I just didn't want a job. So I did what I thought at the time was the smartest thing possible. 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. I just thought I was a really good applicant. So I arrived there and
When I was in the car from the airport to the village, the people, like the coordinator, 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 the village and I was like, oh, that's cool. Like, you know, I'd love to meet a lot of different people You know who else is gonna be there? She's like, oh, I know. I'm sorry I miss was like you're the only foreigner who's going to be in the village Just gonna be you and 1500 Hungarians And so I was like great, you know immersion. That's That's a hot thing. I don't speak Hungarian. So probably learn a lot and so
So we get there and I set onto my apartment, which turns out to be a small little room attached to the schoolhouse where I'll be teaching. And I share a wall with the teacher's lounge. And in the teacher's lounge are 40 middle-aged women who arrive about 5.30 in the morning and have really, really loud conversations about, I guess, what happened the night before. Yeah.
or dreams they had. I can't imagine what happened. So much happened since when they left the day before. So I wasn't getting a lot of sleep, and every time I left my apartment, I was just stared at. Hungary is not a homogenous society 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 kind of separated. So for my first couple of weeks, you know, 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 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 block 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 Kautsa, the coordinator, quickly informs me that I'm the guest of honor for the night.
And so what that means, I mean 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. And so it's a little bit like college. And so, you know, 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 and we're all dancing a little bit. And then Kata turns to me and she says, "They want you to sing." 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."
So I get up, I get up into the stage area and they hand me a mic and 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. I was just busy with other stuff. So...
I definitely knew the tune in my head, but the words were very few and far between. But I just started into it because, you know, I had had a lot to drink at this point. So I said the colors of the rainbow, pretty and bright. They're not my favorite colors, but that's all right.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. Everyone in the place stands up in a round of applause that I have never seen before in my life. 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. And two,
No one here speaks English. At all. So then I just go for it. I see ninja turtles fight with nunchucks and bows. They'll kill the foot, as I already know. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. Much like this. Much like this. I feel like I'm back there right now.
And I don't stop there. I hear my sister fart. We're in church. She gets in big trouble. But I still get dessert. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. 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 Czára.
He liked 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. People going by, I see friends shaking hands Saying how do you do They're really saying
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 story slams 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 story slams. 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.
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. And I hadn't had a relationship that lasted longer than a few months.
And 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."
Do you misunderstand the word? But I knew I was on to something and it was going to happen.
So fast forward a little while, I started dating someone and we were together, I don't know, six months, nine months. And 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? And I don't know about moving with you to New York, you know, that kind of thing. And so I was sort of getting stuck in inertia and I had to spend many years in inertia and I was hoping not to spend more time there.
And I went out for drinks with one of my very practical friends. And I was having one of those kind of evenings you can have in your 20s where you sort of dissect your life in excruciating detail, you know, every inch of it. And 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. Yeah.
And 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. And 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. 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, and 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. So I said, "I'm going to propose to Matt." And 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 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. And then on Wednesday, I developed sort of 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 for posing. 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, dot, dot, dot." And that would be my cue to propose. And 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. And so I kind of wrote out an 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.
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, and also sort of an unprecedented move 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, you know, 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 and everybody
The whole restaurant's singing happy birthday and...
Matt's just saying, "It's not my birthday." I'm making eye contact with nobody. 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 and my instinct has screwed me my whole life. And so I said, are you sure? 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.
Jen Rubin recently published We Are Staying, 80 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 low-key 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 learned to be more spontaneous and she said mostly no.
After our break, a young girl going headfirst down a slide and a lady sliding up the piano scales when the Moth Radio Hour continues. 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 John Good. 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 Strusky. He told this at a Moth Story Slam in Los Angeles, where we partnered with public radio station KCRW. Here's Matty. 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 and she's already toppled over more times than I can count and for her it can be incredibly frustrating and as a parent it can be downright heartbreaking to see. And in most ways she's just like every other kid out there, you know, she loves space and animals and the movie Frozen and dinosaurs and playgrounds and there's this one playground we go to all the time that it'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 her back and a slide for her face. It's as amazing as it sounds. She loves the thing. Other kids can run and jump all over this thing really easily. 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 sort of 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. And she doesn't see anything weird about that. You know, 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. And she was just over a pound when she first came into the world. And she was stone cold silent.
And it was the most terrifying night of my life. And the doctors didn't want to talk about the odds of her survival at first. They said, you know, every kid's, 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 in intensive care, she did. And amazingly enough, she started preschool in September.
And so naturally my wife and I started thinking about where should we be going to college. And we decided it would be Harvard. And 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 Rainer future stomping grounds. And one evening we said, we're going to go for a walk. And so we put Rainer into our gate trainer.
And a gait trainer is this assisted walking device where it's got wheels and a bar that she holds on to and you strap her into it for additional support and it basically allows her to practice walking upright without falling over. And when she's in this thing she stands out from the crowd in it but you know she doesn't care that she stands out and 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. And when they see it, they see her cerebral palsy, and they see her disability, and they see her as different. And they often have this look of pity in their eyes, and as a parent, it drives me nuts that 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. And it's got these really charming, narrow streets, and it's got this beautiful cobblestone wall,
But the cobblestone presents this real challenge for Rain. You know, her gay train is getting caught up on it and it's taking us forever to get anywhere and she's getting really frustrated. And 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 and 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. And 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? You know, she spent the first two months of her life on a ventilator and 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, you know, truthfully, it hurts to see people looking at your kid like this. And 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, you know, 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 sort of 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. And I can tell by the looks on other parents' faces that it has not been a graceful descent. So I go...
I go running over there and she's at the foot of the slide and she's just, 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 and she looks up at me and she says, "Dad, I toppled over. I'll get back up." And I just start, I'm beaming with pride at this moment and I think back to what the doctor said when she was first born and I'm thinking, "Man, she is resilient and her journey is her own journey and 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. And at this moment, it feels wide open to me. And, you know, that path may or may not lead her to Harvard, but if it doesn't, it's not going to be because some damn cobblestone stops her. Thank you. That was Maddie Strusky 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 Maddie 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 Maddie and his daughter Rain, go to themoth.org. Dion 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. Dion told this story at a Sydney Story Slam where we partnered with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABCRN. Here's Dion live at the Moth.
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 sort of weird things can happen like, you know, 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 take, 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'd practiced or not. He was really relaxed and just warmly encouraging and I felt that Tim kind of got me. We sort of 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 kind of 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, "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? But I thought, well, what can go wrong? You know, I've got the music in front of me. I'll practice. It'll be fine. You know, sometimes you've 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 sort of sub-optimal 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 and it's this beautiful room in Melbourne University. It's this old building like built in 1888 and there's sunshine streaming in and there's kind of these stained glass windows and I'm sitting there and I've got my son Dylan who was 11 at the time and he's sitting next to me as my wingman and we kind of watch as everyone comes in and you know Tim had said that they were going to be younger students but I sort of figured that they were going to be high school students
Most of them were five or six and I was kind of wedged in between three blind mice and Mary had a little lamb but that was sort of okay because I figured this would really make me shine. Anyhow, so you know we get up, the kids get up and they start doing their pieces and look, I don't want to be mean but they're a bit ordinary.
But the audience was full of love. Like, they were clapping like nobody's business. And it was just-- 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. And I'm still feeling really good. And I get about five or six bars in. And I make this, like, massive error. And 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 and 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 gene. LAUGHTER
And I start playing and the whole time my head's just going, you know, 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 and I cannot wait till it's finally over and I get to the end of the piece and I'm like, thank God, until I realised that there was a second one and I had to go through it all again. LAUGHTER
And I finish it and I'm like, oh, God, you know, I just want to get back to my seat. And 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. 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. LAUGHTER
until I recognised 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.
And 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. And it makes me happy and I'm pretty sure the dog enjoys it. And that's it. Thank you. That was writer and corporate communications expert Dion Harari.
Dionne lives in Melbourne, Australia with her sons Liam and Dylan and their family dog Nala, who remains steadfastly indifferent to Dionne's piano playing. I loved hearing the lesson of Dionne'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, and 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. 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 John Good. 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 Cotland, live at the Moth Main Stage in New Orleans. I had a wonderful childhood growing up here in New Orleans, in the Lower Knight Ward, maybe about 15 minutes from where we're standing. I know everybody thinks 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 Treme area, not too far from here. It was a community hub. Everybody hung out at my dad's barber shop. He supported everybody.
One day, my dad was cutting this drug dealer's head, and another drug dealer came into the shop, a rival drug dealer, and 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 the other 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. And he stepped out the front of his house. 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 and I did the whole time in Germany of all places. Sprechliche Zeit, ge-deutsch. 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 a baby. So that was fun. It was fun. But something inside of me was still missing.
And I didn't do the whole time. I ended up coming back home. And I went straight back to the Lord Knight 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 Nightwood. This was in about 2001. I thought I was going to live happily ever after. I had 48 wonderful neighbors. Like I said, it was about 2001 and 2005. Everybody knew 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. And I actually went home and 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 and my mom's, I've never heard my mom's sounded like this. Um, 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. Um,
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 to grab my mom's. It 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.
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. It's 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 Knight Ward.
But I was able to go back in there and he snuck me in there. And I went where my house used to be. My house was here on his foundation and Katrina took it completely off its foundation and set it in the middle of the streets. I remember going back to where my bed was. I remember where I 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.
It was just, the smells, it was horrible. To be honest with you, I cried. I cried 'cause 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 Knight Ward about 15 minutes from here.
After I got my personal house together, I drove up and down the Lower Knight Ward. I noticed we didn't have anything. The closest grocery store that we have in the Lower Knight 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 Rouse's, and I begged them to come to bring a supermarket to the Lower Knight Ward. And 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 Knight Ward is a food desert. I didn't know what the hell a food desert was. So I called up the U.S. 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 Knight Ward, and I came across this building on Caffin in Galveston. And it was a horrible building. It didn't have no roof up there. It 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 raggedy 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 her 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 and grabbed my mom's. I brought my mom's over and I told her the exact same thing I just told my wife. My mama said, "Hell no."
I brought a couple of my friends over, they all told me no. But to me, when someone tells me no, that's not a limitation on me, that's a limitation on them. I decide to do it anyway. So Keisha and I, we work every day. We're scrubbing the walls, we got rid of all the Katrina debris, all the mold, the mildew, we're putting up windows, we're 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 and it was a code enforcement fine from the city of New Orleans saying they were 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. Bourbon Street, I mean, everybody's good to go. But not us in the Lower Night 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. If 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 to stay in 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...
I was angry. I got a real problem. So by the time I got up to the microphone, because I didn't know what the mayor was going to tell me. I didn't know if 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 Bernal Cotland. I want to open up the first and only grocery store in the Lower Nightwood. The whole crowd went wild. They cheered me on. Everybody was happy. But I said, but wait, there's more. I
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.
I felt bad for him. So the mayor called me up to him and he said, "Bernal, 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. And when I opened up that letter and it read, all the fines was forgiven, it was like, my birthday and Christmas all at the same time. I was so happy.
So we fast forward, I'd say about three, maybe another four years before we finally was able to open up. I had invited them 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. It was an elderly lady, Ms. Williamson. She came in, and she had a chair. She sat down right by my front counter.
And she was there for like about three hours. So I went over to her and said, "Ma'am, why are you here? Are you okay?" And she had tears in her eyes. She said, "I've been here, young man, since right after Katrina." And she said she never thought that we'd have a grocery store in the Lower Night Board. And she asked me, like, on the kick-out, I said, "No, no, you're fine." So she stayed there. And 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 barber shop. So I'm hoping. Thank you.
I have a grocery store, a snowball stand, the barber shop, and a laundromat all in this one building. So now people don't have to catch three-- I'm going to say that again-- three city buses. They can walk to my building just to get some fresh fruit 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 and that's still today. Like I said, you don't believe me? Come to the Lord Nightboard because it's a totally different world and that's like about 15 minutes from here. You know, so this 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.
And 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. And 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. And I want to tell everybody, thank you all for giving me a chance to tell my story, and thank you for listening. applause
Burnell Cotland is a U.S. veteran, a lifelong New Orleanian, and the owner of Burnell's Lower Ninth Ward Market on the corner of Caffin and Galvez in New Orleans. Visit the market for a pole 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?
That immediately brought me back. And of course, everybody went back to the same mindset of Katrina. So how did you and your family and your friends, your community and your store, how did you how did you weather the storm?
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 going knocking down, trash and debris was going everywhere. That was horrible. That was horrible. I don't wish that on anybody.
So through Katrina and Ida, what have you learned about community, your community? People at the Lower Knight Ward are resilient. They 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. Is your grocery store slash barbershop slash laundromat, is that still the only one in the Lower Ninth?
Yes, I'm still the only business in the Lower Knight Ward since 2005. What would you like to see happen as far as development in the Lower Knight? And how can people help you? 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. We should not have to catch
Three city buses to get to the closest grocery store. And as far as anybody that would like to to help, whether it's, you know, 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 a shelf, because there's nowhere else for people to go. 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 Cotland. 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.
This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, Sarah Austin-Janess, who also directed the stories, and John Good, who hosted the show. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer, Emily Couch.
The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cloutier, Suzanne Russ, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. 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 Lodge, LaRogge, and Evan Christopher. We
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.
