The Moth Podcast: River City

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Welcome to the Moth Podcast.

I'm Alex Roman Peters, associate producer at The Moth and your host for this episode.

There's something special about the moment right before somebody tells a story.

They step on stage, take a breath, and the audience is on the edge of their seat waiting for the tale to begin.

In that moment, the story could be anything.

It's all possibility.

The only thing more magical is when the story actually starts, and it knocks the audience's socks off.

These remarkable moments happen at our live shows all all over the world, from Miami to Melbourne, from London to Louisville.

This episode will be visiting Louisville, host to so many magical moth moments and playing two stories from that city's story slam.

I was lucky enough to visit Louisville a few weeks back.

My fresh off of an early flight, admittedly somewhat grumpy self, immediately fell in love with the people that I met in Louisville.

One storyteller, Alan, goofed around a bit during our sound check.

He had fun at the mic and helped shake off some of that pre-show energy.

Alan later found me before the show to apologize for his biting sense of humor and hoped that I didn't take it personally.

I immediately thought of Alan's playful, benign jokes at the mic and thought, Alan, I think you're the nicest person I know.

And it wasn't just Alan.

I could see and feel this entire group rooting for each other, joyful, truly delighting in one another's success throughout the evening.

And there were successes aplenty.

This group, this audience, was connected through each other's stories.

Our first Louisville story is from Ethan Sweetland May, who told this at an open mic story slam where the theme of the night was happy.

Here's Ethan live at the mall.

Just a little bit, fizzle.

So the only reason why eight-year-old me would be in the cereal aisle at 5 p.m.

on a Friday night and jazzed out of my mind, because I'm about to have a weekend weekend with grandma and grandpa.

Now you understand, being the fourthborn of 11 kids, getting to pick your own cereal and not only your own cereal, but a sugar cereal when your mom is like a granola and natural peanut butter in the five-gallon bucket that you have to mix with like a drill.

Every time I did a sleepover at grandma and grandpa's, I got to pick my own cereal and it could be anything and we didn't have to tell mom.

And so I was in the checkout with grandma and I had my frosted flakes and that would have been enough.

The fact that I was going to wake up in the morning on the couch in their den and I was going to turn on the TV and I could watch, I had TV and I was going to watch cartoons and I could watch cartoons and all that was great.

That was expected.

But that Saturday, my grandfather,

my grandfather, was going to teach me how to shoot.

My grandfather was a golden gloves boxer.

He was a race car driver, a professional race car driver.

His front, in his garage, he had one of the old, like, no roll cage, everyone died, but the guy that won, like, race cars.

Like,

he was a hunter.

He had three deer heads

in his house, like mounted on the walls.

They lived on a lake, and he was a fisherman, and he could do everything.

And he was going to teach me how to shoot.

And I was pumped.

I woke up early.

I ate the whole box of cereal.

I was ready when he came down the stairs and I watched him drink coffee out of the percolator.

And we went to one of his friends house and my grandpa's friends are all people like him.

They're all like 40-year retirees of plumbers and steam fitters.

They drive trucks but not douchey ones.

Like they are like they are like the salt of the earth.

We farmed and worked and we have you know hemorrhoids and we don't brag.

Like

and

and I was the only kid there.

I was like eight years old and I'm jazzed on sugar and I am so nervous as he puts the actual shotgun into my hands.

And I mean I watched Red Dawn.

I've got the basic idea.

You know, I saw Patrick Swayze do it.

And so I think I'm doing it right as I kneel down and I hold it about an inch in front of my shoulder and I'm kind of looking down at the and when I shoot it knocks me all the way over onto my back.

The gun goes across the gravel.

His friends all duck.

And I burst into tears and run to his truck.

And after about 20 minutes, he comes and gets in without saying a word.

And he was like, that's okay.

It's like that sometimes.

And we drove back to his house.

And I was devastated.

I was so let down.

It was like a moment to shine with like grandpa.

And so I did what the only thing left to do in the afternoon, I went down to the lake on the little dock and I was fishing.

And I was okay at fishing for Bluegill.

I've got a cane pole and I'm fishing for Bluegill.

And Grandpa's mowing the grass.

And I'm just like, like, simply sad.

And like, I, I, you know, like, I'm just like, I blew this moment with my grandpa and out of nowhere, I hear the lawnmower stop and he comes down onto the deck and he says, hey, catch me one of those bluegill.

And I'm like, oh.

And here's the

dough ball.

I put it on the hook and like, you know, five seconds flat, I can catch a bluegill.

I'm eight years old.

I'm good at this.

And he pulls out this case and he sets it down and he unzips it and he pulls out a knife.

This big long knife with a heavy black handle.

And I'm standing there holding the bluegill, not totally sure what's about to happen.

And he takes the bluegill from me and he sets it down and I'm like I'm like I catch a bluegill bluegill's back in the water I'll probably catch him later we're like basically playing tag and he puts the bluegill on the deck and he goes wham and there's just blood and it's a dead bluegill and I didn't scream but I almost screamed and he starts cutting it into strips just doesn't sit just cuts it into strips like a crazy person and he cuts it into cubes and he start and he puts a big cube of it on my cane pole and he like makes it way deeper than I ever do and he drops it into the water and he says come get me

And I'm sitting there holding this, and I like, no bluegill are coming for their buddy, and I'm just watching it, not totally sure what's about to happen.

And after about 15 minutes, I see these big dark shadows coming down the inlet.

And like, these blue cats, these blue catfish, know what's up.

They know what's up because they've been doing this with my grandpa for decades, probably.

And they come right up to the dock, and like one eye floats out of the water.

I swear to God, and and looks at me and he's like,

and goes back down.

And I am shaking and the lawnmower is running and I'm like, just keep going, buddy.

I don't even, don't, don't stop for me.

And he goes down the inlet and for a minute I think I'm safe and he doubles back and I just watch him go down into the moss and for like three seconds nothing happens.

And then, whoo, and it goes.

And I am like, I'm tall now.

I was not that big.

And he's like pulling me to the edge of the deck and I am screaming for my grandfather.

I'm like,

and and he doesn't hear me and I am locked into a fight with Moby Dick and like and he's like for revenge and

like my palms are sweating.

This little cane pole is bent in half and sliding out of my hands and I'm just like I can't lose.

If I lose this pole, I will have to like run away.

I will have to get in this boat and like go down to somebody else and find a new like grandparents.

And at last, like I hear the lawnmower stop and I'm like, get up!

Get up!

And he like comes down and he like takes the pole from me and just like old man strength wrenches this like blue cat in and pulls it up out of the water and he's like, here, take this.

And I'm like.

I put my hand where his hand is and I get it on the lip and I'm holding it.

And he's like,

and he steps back and reaches the black bag.

He's got a little Polaroid camera, a little back bag.

He's like, hold that up.

I'm holding it up.

And I smile for him.

And he takes a picture, and I have this picture, this blue cat about as long as my torso.

And you can see just this part of my smile.

And that's the only thing I really have to remember that day by, this little moment of smiling.

My grandpa helped me get a win.

Thank you.

That was Ethan Sweetland May.

Ethan has loved telling stories ever since he was very young, even when they have to be true.

He enjoys cheering for racing and Lou City FC, running campaigns for D ⁇ D, and riding motorcycles.

Whether you're a native of Louisville or someone who says it Louisville, a sincere thank you, by the way, to the person who emailed us to correct our pronunciation.

We have themed open mic story slams in cities all over the world.

And you can find our upcoming shows, themes, and dates by visiting our website at themoth.org slash events.

At the Louisville Grand Slam, I met a storyteller who grew up in Kentucky, but spent 10 years in New York just down the block from where my partner lives today.

We would have shared the same subway stop and gone to the same local pub.

But here we were, meeting some 750 miles away from that pub at a theater in Louisville.

As our next story shows, Louisville is special.

This one's from one of our annual Grand Slams, where winners from the local Open Mic Story Slams compete for the title of storytelling champion in their city.

Here's Trevor Norse live at the mall.

Three of us went into the cave that day.

Yeah,

I get a little fuzzy on details, but I know Jamie was there because he's the one who threw the rock.

And I know my friend Terry was there because he kept going on about his watch.

My friend Terry was a techie before that was really a thing.

And he had just gotten this new watch.

Timex had come out with this Indiglow watch line.

And this watch had this new cool feature.

You hit a button and it lit up this fluorescent bluish-green color.

And a funny thing, I told some kids this story, and they all wanted to know: did the watch have GPS?

Could you play games on the watch?

I said, no, it was the 80s.

The watch lit up.

That's what it did.

They weren't impressed.

but we thought it was cool.

And since I was the only one who had been into the cave before with the older kids, I had the flashlight and I led the way.

Now, the entrance to the cave was a rite of passage all on its own.

It was less than 30 inches in diameter.

It was a 40-foot claustrophobic crawl that not everybody could make.

But for those who did, it was worth it.

Because it then opened up into this massive ballroom-sized cavern, and it had all these connecting tunnels that led to other caverns.

There was a steep drop-off section with a shallow ledge that forced you to kind of hug the wall as you maneuvered across.

There was even an underground river.

And we had made it just about that far when we started to hear noises.

We heard these squeaking, scratching, rustling noises.

So I shined my light

towards the sound and the ceiling.

And there were bats.

There were 50 bats, 100 bats.

There could have been a thousand bats

hanging from the top of that cave.

And that's when Jamie threw the rock.

Now, I don't know if Jamie actually hit a bat, but he might as well have, because those bats got pissed.

And those bats descended into that cavern like a big black bat tornado.

And I don't know where I got the thought.

I don't know if I read it in a book or if I heard it in a movie, but my only thought was that bats attack the hair of the head.

And so I fell to the ground and I threw my hands up to protect my head.

And somewhere in the midst of all of that bat frenzy attack, yelling, screaming, calamity, and commotion,

I dropped the flashlight.

It went out and it was dark.

It was pitch black, jet black.

It was deathly black.

Now, apart from being home to some of the most magnificent cave systems in the world, a lesser-known fact about south central Kentucky is that it's also full of ghosts.

The ghost of a well-to-do southern debutante who, in her vanity and anger, cursed the sky and God above and was struck down by lightning.

The ghost of a freed slave who was killed in a clearing at the end of a dirt road in the old county.

On one of my earlier forays into the cave, the older kids had told me another ghost story.

They told me a story about an awkward, shy boy named Lonnie, who was lured into the cave by some of the older kids of his day.

Kids who played a prank, a prank that went tragically wrong.

And according to the legend,

Lonnie never made it out of that cave.

And it was right then with my head full of ghost stories that something appeared before me there in the darkness.

I seen a face floating there in the darkness and I was frozen stiff.

And I reeled back in shock when the face spoke.

And what the face said was,

you dropped the flashlight in the river.

I had three reactions, the first of which was confusion, followed quickly by realization and relief.

I was relieved when I realized that the face that I saw there floating in the darkness was not the face of the ghostly face of a boy named Lonnie,

but the face of my friend Terry illuminated by the glow of the in-the-glow watch.

It would be eight years before I would become a soldier in the United States Army and get the kind of night navigation training

I could have used that day.

But I'd get a crash course

because the light of the watch only allowed us to see a few feet in front of us.

So we were forced to crawl most of the way, clutching tightly to each other's belt loops.

And we encountered several creepy crawlers, and it took us twice as long to get out as it did to get in.

But we were able to find our way out of the darkness by the light of the End of Glow Watch.

And our adventures didn't end there at the cave.

There would be many more close calls and narrow escapes, but

somehow we managed to survive those restless and reckless southern Kentucky summers.

And I don't know if there ever really was a boy named Lonnie,

but if there was,

I hope he found his guiding light as well.

Thank you.

That was Trevor Norse.

By day, Trevor does work climbing trees.

The highest one was 125 feet.

He still loves exploring out-of-the-way places all over his home state of Kentucky and the world at large.

Remember, you can find Louisville's story slam dates at themoth.org slash events, where there'll also be details about all of our other open mics and shows.

We'll also have a link in our episode description.

That's it for this episode.

From all of us here at the Moth, we hope to see you and hear your story soon.

Alex Ramon Peters is proud to be a lifelong New Yorker.

Yes, Staten Island is part of New York City.

She is a firm believer in the kindness of strangers, the power of live performance, and the restorative properties of diner coffee.

This episode of the Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Janess, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger.

The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Cluche, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant Walker, Leanne Gulley, and Aldi Casa.

The Moth would like to thank its supporters and listeners.

Stories like these are made possible by community giving.

If you're not already a member, please consider becoming one or making a one-time donation today at themoth.org/slash giveback.

All Moth stories are true, as remembered by the storytellers.

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at PRX.org.

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