Snowed In: The Moth Podcast

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Welcome to the Moth. I'm Emily Couch.
It's bleak outside this time of year. Okay, maybe if you're in Sydney or Miami, the weather's lovely and sunny.

But if you're in the northern hemisphere, well, it's chilly and snowy and gray.

As the weather outside gets colder and colder and it seems like spring will never return, the moth is sharing stories all about the magic and the misery of winter, from traveling down icy roads to finding warmth with your loved ones.

So instead of going outside, Why don't you bundle up, pour a mug of hot cocoa, and listen to some stories?

First up, we have Cola Rum, who told this at an Atlanta Story Slam where the theme was Elbow Grease. Here's Cola live at the Moth.

I was an escort driver for two years, delivering brand new vehicles all around the country.

Being a Floridian, I was initially enthused with the prospect of seeing a real winter until I drove through a real winter.

In a month's time, I had went through so many life-threatening situations involving snow that that I had begun to perceive that cold, white, icy stuff collectively as one large anthrax smoothie.

From behind the wheel, I watched 35 vehicles crash all around me outside of Dallas when I-20 froze over.

It taught me how to cruise my vehicle without smashing on the brakes or make rash movements with the steering wheel.

I flipped my vehicle over in the snow in the countryside of Wisconsin at 2 in the morning when I pulled over to check my map. It taught me the importance of knowing where to park during a snowfall.

I learned the value of calling ahead to truck stops to make sure they were still in service when I pulled into this truck stop in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at 1 in the morning during a snowstorm to find out that it had been abandoned.

In a month's time, through trial, error, and a heavy dose of elbow grease, I had become an expert driver in the snow.

But even when you learn how to dot your I's and cross your T's, you can still forget the curve there, Jay.

Jay as in continually checking the weather station for abrupt weather changes. A valuable lesson taught to me by a sudden whiteout.

I had left Buffalo one morning on I-90 to deliver this brand new Prius in Chicago. Now, the weatherman had said that there will be light snow in Indiana in the evening.

So I had planned to drive through as much as Indiana as I could before the first sign of snow. That's what I planned.

But I learned plans tend to alter themselves when human nature and mother nature has to occupy the same space.

That light snow in the evening in Indiana came four hours early in Ohio. Now common sense dictated that I should have turned to the weather station to check the weather.

But I was listening to the jazz of great Miles Davis on the sound system.

and talking to a lovely woman on the phone. And as most men can attest, a beautiful woman and some good music can sometimes override your common sense.

So I figured that that snow coming four hours earlier, that it was going to break until that sudden whiteout suddenly happened.

To anyone who's never experienced a sudden whiteout, the best description that I can give is, you know, the show Star Trike, when the Enterprise shifts from warp speed back down to normal speed and the crew find themselves in another part of the galaxy.

That's what it was like. It felt as if that car had been picked up in Ohio and dropped smack dead in Alaska.

The contrast was so extreme that for the first five minutes, I was driving in shock, just staring at the whiteness around me.

When I finally regained my bearings, I turned to the weather station and my worst fear was confirmed.

There was a massive sudden whiteout over northern Ohio and northern Indiana that had already taken five lives. I immediately looked at the gas tank.
I only had an aphor tank of gas.

So now I'm in a dilemma. I could pull over and probably freeze to death.
I could try to find an off-ramp. I might flip over in the snow and freeze to death.

Or I could keep driving until I run out of gas and freeze to death.

I chose to keep driving. As I drove, I did what any spiritually based human would do when they find that self in this similar predicament.
I started talking to God.

But I wasn't praying. I was cussing his ass out.

Hey, I went on a 20-minute tirade, selfish themed. Why are you always doing this type of shit to me?

After yelling at him for about 20 minutes about always trying to live my life like a righteous man, I ended my rant with the proverbial, fuck it then. If we gonna die, let's die.

Then I went silent, resigned to my fate. So as I'm cruising through this whiteness just waiting to die, This 18-wheeler slowly just pulled up on the left of me.

All I seen was the headlights and the contour of the trailer. Then it slowly just rode in front of me and the driver hit a switch in the cabin.

The back of his trailer lit up with light and I followed him for 20 minutes to a truck stop. When we got to the truck stop, it was hundreds of trucks out in the snow.

So he stuck his hand out the window. It was a white male's hand.
He gave me the power fist.

I stuck my hand out the window and gave him the power fist back. Then he went to find himself somewhere to park.
I never got to thank this guy for what he did face to face.

But there is a silver lining. When I went into the truck stop, I was still tense from the ordeal of almost dying.
Time walked into the front, though.

This fat redneck sitting at the bar looked at me and said, Brother, you look like you just went through a real one. Hell, you need this more than me.
He gave me his free ticket for a hot shower.

And that's how I finished the night, washing the road off with a hot shower. Thank you.

That was Cola Rum. Dylan Killian, popularly known by his pen name Cola Rum, is a spoken word artist, poet, storyteller, and novelist residing in Atlanta, Georgia.

He has published two darkly comedic novels and is in the midst of finishing an Afro-futuristic novel, Fifth's Lantern. One of my first memories took place during a snowstorm.

I was three or four years old and living in Brooklyn on 7th Avenue, which is one of the main drags there. It snowed so hard that the whole city shut down.

It was impossible to drive and the streets were empty. So my mother bundled me in my coat and pulled me up and down our usually busy road on my sled.
It was pure magic and I've loved snow ever since.

After the break, another story that will put a chill down your spine. Because of the cold, it's not scary, don't worry.
Be back in a moment.

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Welcome back. We've got another story of Winter Wonderland for you.
Up next is Melissa Early, who told us at a Chicago Story Slam where the theme was wisdom. Here's Melissa, live at the moth.

So I'm a pastor. And when I was a young pastor, I tried to avoid at all costs anyone in my church knowing anything about my dating life.

I would get comments on Sundays as people would leave and you know do the handshake about my hair and my shoes and where I was going on vacation and some hymn I choose.

And so the last thing I wanted to do was open my dating life to their scrutiny. I didn't want speculation about my personal life getting in the way of my professional life.

And church people can be really weird about, you know,

sex.

So I didn't talk about boyfriends. If I went on dates, I would insist they were at restaurants 10 miles out of town.
If a guy stayed

at my house for any length of time, I insisted he park around the corner or in my garage.

So many churches and many, many years ago, when I started dating Corey, another pastor, I didn't tell anyone.

And I really didn't tell them when six months in, Corey suggested we go away for a few days before Christmas.

He said, well, we'll just go during the week. We won't miss a Sunday.
No one has to know. We'll go skiing in Colorado.
No one has to know.

So we made our plans and I told the couple people that I had to tell that I'd be out of town, you know, just in case of disaster.

And I told them I was going skiing with friends.

And we had a fabulous time. The weather was gorgeous, that bright blue Colorado sunny sky.
The skiing was gorgeous, lovely evenings by the fire at night. It was amazing.

Until

the last run of the last day.

We were going in a section that had been closed for the four days that we'd been there. And so, and they had just opened it.
And we were the first ones to put down tracks in the fresh powder.

It was like a dream. You know, I'm swishing down the mountain, like skiing as well as I could and feeling just really good and then I heard

and I stopped and I looked across the run and I didn't see Corey but I heard him yelling again

I skied over there and at first I was sort of I was I was sort of slow to pick up on what was happening and I kind of was chuckling to myself because first where his was his hat and then over there his goggle and then a glove and a pole and a ski and as I picked up his belongings and got closer and saw him with his head thrown back, grabbing his leg and trying to stop yelling, I realized this was more than just a yard cell on the mountain.

This was serious.

We waited for what seemed just like hours, and finally ski patrol came, bundled Corey up, and put him in the sled, and someone skied with me down to the clinic.

When the doctor showed us the x-ray,

He said it was a spectacular fracture.

The doctor said it looked like he had broken it jumping off a roof. He was going to need surgery.
So after the medication took effect, the painkillers and they put him in an immobilizing splint.

We slid him into the back of our SUV and I drove us to St. Anthony's in downtown Denver, where all the ski injuries go.

In the yard, I made the calls I had to make. I called his senior pastor, his mother, my sister, asked her to call my mother, because you know, mothers.

I called, I made a hotel reservation for myself, called the car rental company, the airlines. Finally, I was in the waiting room of the surgical area.
It was after midnight. It was dark outside.

I was still in my scratchy, sweaty ski clothes, so cold and tired.

And I remembered the call I had to make.

The call I'd have to make the next morning.

My church.

When I called Jerry, the chair of the church personnel committee, she was all chipper. Hey, Melissa, how was your trip? Did you have a good time? Are you back?

No, Jerry, I'm not back. I

was great until the last day.

One of my friends fell and broke,

has a broken leg.

Oh.

Oh,

I'm sorry to hear that.

And then in my head, I'm having this whole conversation with myself. Like, here is the man that I'm in love with.
The man I expected to marry was in the ICU.

I was in Denver alone, and I didn't want to go through this by myself.

So I took a deep breath and I said, Jerry,

I'm not here with friends. I'm here with one friend, a man I've been seeing.
His name is Corey.

God bless Jerry. She said, we'll take care of everything.
Don't worry about a thing. We've got it.

Over the next few days

and weeks, I ended up staying almost until Christmas Eve. I missed a Sunday Sunday and a couple special services and when I got back

there were no snarky comments.

There were no veiled judgments. There were no embarrassing speculations.
They were just glad I was back and they were glad that Corey was going to be okay. They cared about him because I did.

The trip that no one had to know about became the trip that everyone knew about and everyone talked about.

And the thing I dreaded happened.

And I got the best gift I could have asked for. Thank you.

That was Melissa Early. Melissa is a United Methodist pastor.
In 2023, she moved from the Chicago area to Leadville, Colorado. to create opportunities for writing, hiking, and creativity.

She is a pastor of St. George Episcopal Mission and co-founder of Sage Mountain Institute for Writing and Spirituality.

We asked Melissa what happened after everything went down with a broken leg and the unleashed secrets, and here's what she said. Corey and I did get married, but now we're divorced.

Our divorce made it possible for me to move to Leadville, where I have rediscovered the joy of skiing. I also don't try to keep secrets from my church.

I'm a better pastor when I let my whole self show up. That brings us to the end of our episode.
Thank you to our storytellers for sharing with us and to you for listening.

From all of us here at the Moth, we hope that whatever the weather is outside, you stay warm with a good story.

Emily Couch is a producer on the Moth's artistic team. She loves to work behind the scenes to spread the beauty of true personal stories to listeners around the world.

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

The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Marina Cluche, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardenale, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Uregna.

The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Rhys-Dennis.
All moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers.

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