Pod Insights The Moth Lost and Found: The Moth Radio Hour About this episode This episode originally aired on February 1, 2022. In this hour, stories of disappearance and reappearance. Losing and finding home, family, and sacred objects -- or making space for something new. This episode is hosted by Moth Executive Producer, Sarah Austin Jenness. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.
Storytellers:
Ross Jessop searches Montana's Lolo National Forest for a missing baby.
Christine Gentry hides a secret from significant others.
Gregory Pereira finds family in an unexpected place.
New Yorker Aaron Wolfe's wife gets a job in Boston.
Joseph Gallo receives a gift from a dying friend.
Podcast # 750
If you've been moved by a story this year, text 'GIVE25' to 78679 to make a donation to The Moth today.
Transcript 0:13 Speaker 00 This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. In this episode, lost and found stories. Heirlooms lost, old ways of life gone, and what is found in their stead. Our curatorial producer Suzanne Rust found out about our first storyteller, Ross Jessop, threw an article in a local Missoula, Montana newspaper, and she reached out. Ross later told us, "I thought it was a scam, and so did my lieutenant. I told my wife about it, and she said, 'The Moth? It's not a scam. Call them. I listen all the time.'" So we begin this episode lost in the woods of Lolo National Forest in Missoula, Montana,
0:55 Speaker 00 with Ross Jessop, a cop, 10 years into the police force. He came to New York to tell his story outside in Greenwood Cemetery, so you may hear the occasional airplane. We partner with the Greenwood Historic Fund. And just to note, this story involves a crime, and there is some intensity. Here's Ross Jessop, live at The Moth.
1:22 Speaker 01 It's July 7th, scorching hot, 95 degrees. I'm in a Dodge Durango, driving on a dusty road.
1:34 Speaker 01 I'm a cop. I responded to a call where there was a man acting disorderly, who was last seen running through a forest. This man had possibly crashed a blue car, and he was caring for a baby.
2:02 Speaker 01 I'm at the end of the road.
2:08 Speaker 01 I'm depressed.
2:11 Speaker 01 I'm struggling. My marriage is falling apart.
2:20 Speaker 01 And in front of me, there's nothing but large bushes and pine trees that had overgrown the road that I was on. Another dead end. I turned my patrol car around to continue the search. The area that I'm searching is Low, Low National Forest. It's 2.1 million square miles. That's a little bit larger than Delaware, folks. I continue searching for hours.
2:59 Speaker 01 At approximately 10:30, my patrol radio breaks silence since my partner. He says to me, "Ross, we know who the suspect is. He's a man, felon, wanted out of Oregon. He's a known drug user, and he's violent, he has guns, and he's made threats towards law enforcement." I'm 20 miles away, so I go. I meet other officers, knowing that we have about a half a mile walk into the campsite that where he's staying at.
3:44 Speaker 01 I put on my night vision. I take out my long rifle, strap it over my chest. My heart's pounding, I'm nervous, I'm focused and I'm full of adrenaline. I'm ready for combat. Silently walking in to the pitch-black forest, it's about 40 degrees now. And I see his tent, but it's empty. My partner finds a stash of guns that had been set out to ambush the cops when we got there. There's no people in the campsite.
4:34 Speaker 01 I open up the tent and I look around.
4:39 Speaker 01 And I see diapers and dirty clothes and dirty dishes and baby toys. My heart sinks and I'm crushed.
4:56 Speaker 01 It wasn't until that time, we were just speculating, but now I knew
5:02 Speaker 01 that we're looking for a five-month-old baby boy named Chris. Nobody knows where he's at.
5:12 Speaker 01 As I'm scrambling my brain, I to try to figure out what I'm gonna do next.
5:19 Speaker 01 My portable radio breaks squelch.
5:23 Speaker 01 And it's my dispatch center. And it's a broken transmission.
5:30 Speaker 01 The suspect has been arrested.
5:34 Speaker 01 So I run back to my patrol car.
5:38 Speaker 01 And I drive as fast as I can to where he's at.
5:44 Speaker 01 I see a man that
5:50 Speaker 01 is dirty, his hair is a mess. He doesn't have any pants on. He's screaming wildly at everybody and just making no sense.
6:03 Speaker 01 He's more concerned about his telephone than anything else.
6:11 Speaker 01 All that pent-up adrenaline that I just had kinda went to the wayside and I just became pissed.
6:20 Speaker 01 I tried interrogating him to know of L. I wanted to just strangle the truth out of this guy.
6:31 Speaker 01 But I didn't.
6:34 Speaker 01 I yelled at him, begging and pleading him to tell us where we could find Chris. And he says to me, "Chris is dead. I buried him alive. I crashed off of a cliff. You won't find him. I don't know where he's at."
6:55 Speaker 01 Enraged.
6:58 Speaker 01 I'm asking him for more information. And he tells me about, he tells me about a bush that he had drove over.
7:09 Speaker 01 And started to ramble on and on and on. And the bush
7:15 Speaker 01 in my head just kept echoing and echoing. I knew where I had to go.
7:25 Speaker 01 I got the help from the Forest Service with their four wheeler. And I went up with a Forest Service officer. Back up the same road that I'd already been up earlier that night.
7:41 Speaker 01 And when we get to the bush, we drive around it and we continue driving for less than a quarter mile before.
7:49 Speaker 01 What was left of that road completely disappears.
7:54 Speaker 01 Now we're just on a a mountain slope, about thirty degree slopes. No trails. Overgrown with bushes and trees.
8:04 Speaker 01 I'm devastated because there was supposed to be a car up here, but there wasn't.
8:13 Speaker 01 I want to scream. And I'm walking down slope and I see an overturned boulder the size of a basketball.
8:22 Speaker 01 And I look where that boulder was and there was tread marks in the dirt.
8:29 Speaker 01 I continue to look and soon find a dome light.
8:35 Speaker 01 Very dim dome light of a car that had been crashed into a grove of pine trees.
8:42 Speaker 01 I rushed to the car and I find
8:47 Speaker 01 debris scattered all around it.
8:51 Speaker 01 A chainsaw that had been stuck in the middle of the tree because our suspect had tried to cut himself out of this being stuck.
9:01 Speaker 01 And I frantically get into the car. But there's no baby.
9:11 Speaker 01 I start to look around the crash site and I start following a trail of debris, playing cards. Some diapers here and there. And slowly and slowly, we walk down, down slope of the crash. And about a hundred yards here and a hundred yards there.
9:31 Speaker 01 I'm still picking up traces of, of, of human. Till I come to the bottom of the ravine where it's just completely muddy. All signs stop.
9:43 Speaker 01 My partner had to go back to the crash site to meet the search and rescue people that had, were on their way up.
9:51 Speaker 01 And here I was alone in the forest and somewhere in Montana.
9:58 Speaker 01 Not knowing
10:01 Speaker 01 what differences I make. Not knowing why.
10:07 Speaker 01 But I do know one thing. I'm looking for the body of a baby. And it's, it breaks my heart. I'm a father of three. I have three beautiful little girls.
10:19 Speaker 01 I kneel down. And I just pray to God. God, please help me find this baby tonight.
10:32 Speaker 01 Help me find this baby so that nobody else has to.
10:39 Speaker 01 So that nobody else has to deal with the things that I'm about to see.
10:48 Speaker 01 I continue my search.
10:52 Speaker 01 A short time later, I find the suspect's pants.
10:56 Speaker 01 In an easterly, down slope direction from the crash. And then I find a car seat and the car seat's empty.
11:13 Speaker 01 My portable radio had died. I didn't have any way to communicate with my dispatch center. I'm now in charge of all of the volunteers who are looking for this baby. And everything's pointing, "Keep searching downslope." That makes the most sense. I tell my partner, "Can I borrow your radio? I'm gonna take a walk straight up this mountain." He says, "No, but I'll go with you." So together, we start walking straight up this mountain. Thirty-degree slopes. We're hot, we're sweaty, we're tired, and we're upset.
11:58 Speaker 01 I'm upset, maybe more upset than I've ever been in my life. And I'm exhausted. And I'm breathing hard. About twenty minutes straight uphill, I'm panting, trying to catch my breath. And in between pants, there's a moment of silence in a black forest. And in that moment, I hear this small, precious little baby whimper. At first, I couldn't believe it. And I heard it again.
12:43 Speaker 01 And if I was to describe this sound, it would be the sound of a baby that has cried, and cried, and cried, and cried, and cried, until he couldn't cry anymore. I've never heard anything like it, and I hope I never have to hear anything again like it. I rush towards the sound.
13:09 Speaker 01 And it's pitch black, and my headlights on, and my flashlights are on, and I can barely see anything.
13:16 Speaker 01 I'm about to step over this pile of debris.
13:21 Speaker 01 And, uh...
13:23 Speaker 01 There's Grayson buried underneath sticks and twigs, face down.
13:30 Speaker 01 He's wearing a onesie, he's soiled and he's wet.
13:35 Speaker 01 I remove all the sticks.
13:38 Speaker 01 And I wrap Grayson up in a down coat.
13:45 Speaker 01 And I kiss his forehead, and I cry.
13:51 Speaker 01 And I hold Grayson. And I walk him down the mountain. And the whole time, he's coughing up sticks and twigs out of his mouth.
14:04 Speaker 01 I get to the ambulance.
14:07 Speaker 01 And turn Grayson over to their care. In less than a minute and a half, Grayson drinks two bottles of Enfamil, he was that dehydrated.
14:19 Speaker 01 However, Grayson's a strong kid, and he's alive today. And healthy.
14:29 Speaker 01 I go back to my patrol car.
14:34 Speaker 01 I think I'd forgot to mention this at the beginning of the story.
14:39 Speaker 01 But July 7th is my anniversary.
14:44 Speaker 01 And when I left that house that night, I left my wife angry because I chose not to take the time off. Even though I could've.
14:55 Speaker 01 So when I got home at 7:30 in the morning, way into overtime. I walk into my kitchen where my beautiful wife was drinking coffee. And she asked me, "How was your night?"
15:13 Speaker 01 I smiled at her.
15:16 Speaker 01 I said, "I made a difference last night."
15:30 Speaker 00 That was Ross Jessop. Ross is still a cop in Missoula, Montana, and a canine handler for Missoula County. And he's recently received the Department of Justice Attorney General's Award and the Charles Bud Meeks Award for Deputy Sheriff of the Year. Ross and the baby were both lost and found. And I asked Ross if all these years later, he's still questioning everything, or if this memory pulls him through the tough days. He said, "Some days are hard, and I still have PTSD. This particular experience has changed me. Sometimes it haunts me, revealing the evil we face from time to time, and other times
16:13 Speaker 00 it shows me that we can all make a difference by acting together." To see a photo of Ross with his family and his medals, visit our website, themoth.org. After our break, a woman comes out of hiding and a Beatles fan falls in love, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
16:47 Speaker 02 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
16:58 Speaker 00 This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Genes. This is an hour all about what you may find after loss. Our next story is from Christine Gentry. She told us at a Moth Grand Slam in Boston, where we partner with WBUR and PRX. Here's Christine, live at The Moth.
17:23 Speaker 03 So it's one of those first dates where you catch yourself getting way too excited because things are going way too well. Supposed to be just drinks that turn into dinner, more drinks. And then we were back at his place in Inwood in New York City, and we're just talking, talking, talking. And as it often does on first dates, the conversation sneaked around to our previous experiences on the app that we had met on. And he starts laughing and says, "Oh, man, the last girl that I met on there, she seemed great." But then when we went back to her house, and get this, she was bald. Like, something about her immune system, I don't know, she had a wig, and she took it off in front of me. Like, how crazy is that? I was so weirded out. And what this man did not know is that he was sitting across from someone who had the
18:08 Speaker 03 exact same condition. The odds of which I cannot even begin to imagine. My immune system attacked every hair follicle on my body when I was three years old, and then again when I was eight, and then again when I was 14. And I'd been wearing wigs since high school, but it was something very few people knew because I kept it locked, quarantined, you know, behind this thick door inside of me. And at that moment, it felt like I was floating above us, looking down at this conversation. And I thought about telling him. I thought about the bravery of the woman before me, and I thought about how fucking stupid he was gonna feel if I did it.
18:53 Speaker 03 But I'm embarrassed to tell you, I chickened out. I said, "You know what? It's late, I have to work tomorrow." Grabbed my stuff and left. And I just sobbed that whole subway ride home. Because not six months before, I had finally escaped this horribly abusive relationship, and I had gone into therapy to figure out, how did I get into this relationship? How is it that I stayed for so long? And we'd figured out that it was because I had let that man in that space, right? And I had let him see me at my most exposed, my most vulnerable, and what I thought was my most ugly, and he had loved me anyway. And he had turned that love against me. He would do things like snatch my hair off during fights, because he knew that it would
19:38 Speaker 03 just break me. And I left that relationship with these two very deep fears, right? The first was that if anyone ever got into that space again, they would hurt me. And the second was that no one would ever love me for who I really am, anyway. And that night on the train, I was like, "This is proof. What just happened to me is proof that I'm right." And I resolved to make this my deepest, darkest secret. And when he emailed me the next day and asked to see me again, I said no. And I went on to date several people. I would date people for months and they would never know. Because I got really good at redirecting hands. And I got really good at sneaking out of beds to fix my eyebrows and my eyelashes while they were asleep.
20:23 Speaker 03 And I would ruin $3,000 wigs by sleeping in them night after night after night because I felt so ugly without them. And if anyone ever found out, I would just bounce before they got a chance to leave me. And then last month, you guys. Last month, Ayanna Pressley.
20:51 Speaker 03 The congresswoman whose district we're in right now, she did something so incredible. She posted a video where she revealed that she'd been wearing wigs because of the same condition. And it was so brave. And it was so beautiful. And the next night, I sat across from this man I had been dating less than a month. And the street lamp was coming through the blinds and the room glowed this beautiful bluish-purple. And I took everything off. And I asked him to see me. Like, all of me, the real me. And I knew that it was for me.
21:34 Speaker 03 And that it was something I needed to do, no matter how he responded. And he kissed my head. And he told me I was beautiful. And this time, I believed it. Thank you.
21:56 Speaker 00 That was Christine Gentry. Christine taught English, creative writing, and storytelling in the public schools of Boston and New York City for 13 years. And she's now a professor at New York University, preparing secondary public school teachers. Christine and Henry, the man at the end of her story, decided to split when she moved back to New York from California a few years ago. She says, "We knew better than to try a long-distance relationship, so we made the heartbreaking, but right decision to break up when I left." But we stayed in touch, and he's happy that this story is airing.
22:46 Speaker 00 Sometimes you have to clear out or lose your old way of life in order to find the next chapter. We met Gregory Pereira, our next storyteller, in a Moth workshop with the College and Community Fellowship here in New York. He told this story with us in a Moth showcase that explored the justice system. Here's Gregory Pereira, live at the Moth.
23:12 Speaker 04 My mother was a big Beatles fan. She loved the Beatles. And I ended up loving the Beatles because my mother loved the Beatles. And she would buy all these different beautiful records, and we would have posters on the wall, "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "All You Need Is Love", and I felt that kind of sensation of happiness. And I remember my mother and I just dancing and dancing to these Beatles songs, and I felt filled with love. And for me, that was a great sense of family.
23:46 Speaker 04 Within a few years, shortly thereafter, it seemed like my community in the South Bronx was hit with a tidal wave of heroin. And in that devastation, people were caught up, and my mother was one of the ones caught up in this typhoon tidal wave of heroin. And she lost her ability to parent. My father there had moved to the west coast. And in my search for family, because I was kind of left to my own devices, ten years old, eleven years old, kind of pain attracts pain. And I gravitated to that street life.
24:29 Speaker 04 And at that time, they were indoctrinating young kids into the gangs. And I remember my father talking about being in a gang when he was younger. My mother started dating somebody who was into Hell's Angels. So that life was kind of there for me to embrace. And I remember wearing cutoff sleeves, jeans, MC boots, chains, patches, colors, and people would die for these colors. I found a brotherhood. I looked for older men to kind of mentor me, to be my brothers. And I found guys like Apache, Wild Child, Crazy Mike, Crazy Phil.
25:13 Speaker 04 These guys became my protectors and my brothers, and they showed me the ropes. I remember us just hanging out, wearing bandanas, putting them on, standing in the park. You had to look like a warrior. You had to look like the Terminator. No feeling, till we got drunk. And that lasted for quite a number of years. Well, my mother and my grandfather, they didn't want me in this lifestyle any longer, and they sent me to live in the west coast with my father.
26:00 Speaker 04 In California, I went to East Los Angeles. It was like the frying pan to the fire.
26:07 Speaker 04 Cause gangs were generational over there. There was great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, cousins. And I had to be accepted and I had to do what they did.
26:22 Speaker 04 They used to wear these shiny shoes called imperials. Iron your khakis. Iron your tee-shirt. Or put your tee-shirt over your arm and another bandana.
26:34 Speaker 04 And you always kept it low. And you kept your eyes sharp. You were both predator and prey. And you looked fierce. You had to. Otherwise, you were a victim. My father says, "No. Back to New York, you go."
26:52 Speaker 04 So, back to New York, I went. My mother and my stepfather both intoxicated, forgot which airport I was gonna land at. And I had to find my way back into the city and back into pain. Cause pain attracts pain. The gang life one more time. Back with the cutoff sleeves, the long tee-shirt, and the headband. And I did that for some time. I felt the brotherhood. But then I felt a betrayal, like I've never known before. They left me for dead.
27:30 Speaker 04 You know, there was a Beatles song when I was growing up that reminded me of family. It was a line inside that Beatles song, "That magic feeling." And I had that with my mother. And I had that with the gang life, the culture. I had that for a little while. But that magic feeling was no longer there and nowhere to go.
27:51 Speaker 04 Alcohol and drugs became my new friends. And that lasted for quite some time, but what happened was, I ended up finally, I guess through the big guy upstairs, changed my life. I hit bottom and he turned some stuff around for me and I ended up... I ended up even going back to school. I ended up with two different degrees. And with that, I taught, gang awareness and prevention, substance abuse prevention, HIV prevention.
28:27 Speaker 04 And I was transformed, but didn't have that sense of family. I had some stuff, but not family. But in my office one day, there was this girl who came in and she was smiling, she was beaming, she lit up a room. Right? When she came, that smile was there. When she was leaving, my head bobbed left and right with her.
28:53 Speaker 04 She used to come into my office to borrow stapler and tape and folders. And I would see her walk out and I could look at her desk and she had a stapler, tape and folders.
29:07 Speaker 04 So from our talking, we got to walk and she was very athletic. And she used to love to walk. So I used to walk her home, or close to home. So we started walking for about two, three weeks we were walking and she would always tell me after about two miles,
29:27 Speaker 04 "Okay, I'm gonna leave you here." And I was like, maybe she's doing me the favor. You know, she has a lot more to go. But after two more times like this, I got very curious, you know, like, why isn't she allowing me to walk her home? Well, the following day, we must have had this psychic connection. It was, the heart of February was freezing out and there was sun glaring on the snow that was still on the floor. And I was breathing smoke out of my nose and I had these sunglasses on. And she stops and she says, "Listen, I gotta tell you something. I gotta show you something." And she whips out these two pictures. And these two pictures, and I'm cold, I'm trembling.
30:14 Speaker 04 And I'm counting heads. Two, four, five, seven. Seven heads, and she says, "These are my children." I said, "Man, she couldn't put 'em on one picture?"
30:31 Speaker 04 And she said, "Are you okay with that?" Now, I had a son of my own, and like, I wasn't a good parent. I don't know, do this, you know? I had a, I'm still finding my way.
30:44 Speaker 04 Anyway, we, um, we left, and I figured out why she didn't allow me to walk home. She was really trying to protect her children from whom they meet.
30:55 Speaker 04 Well, we talked the next day at work, and I was contemplating. And I asked my friend Ronald, "What do you think?" And he says, "Well, she's very pretty." And, um, "And do you think you could handle it? Check yourself." And I said, "Okay." And I get this phone call from her, and I'm home ironing clothes. You know, I got used to ironing my stuff. And, um, and I'm thinking about, "I can't do this." You know, it was nice knowing her, and, but when we talked, in the background, there was such laughter. Laughter I've never heard before. I remember dancing with my mother, and that was the last time we ever danced, 1967.
31:38 Speaker 04 We never danced again, and that magic feeling was dead.
31:43 Speaker 04 I heard all that beautiful laughter in the background. I said, "Wow, maybe there's something there for me too." And she says, "You, you know, are we still going out on a date?" And I was very, I was very thrilled because of the laughter in the background. Anyway, she says, "On the date, we go on a date." And she says, "Um, I'm gonna set up a time for you to meet my children."
32:06 Speaker 04 "Okay, well, we'll work that out, okay."
32:10 Speaker 04 So the kids had another way of meeting me. Because at my job, one of my coworkers came, ghost-faced and scared, and said, "Listen, there's some thugs outside waiting for you."
32:26 Speaker 04 And I said, "Who?" And I confront stuff. So I went outside and there was these two young men across the street in the park. One with his hat cocked to the side. He was about 18 years old. The other one had a headband down low with a pit bull stare. And the older one called me over. And when he called me over, so I said, you know, like, "What's up?" And he says, "What's your intention for our mother?" I said, "Your mother? Who's your mother?" I didn't recognize him from the picture.
33:09 Speaker 04 And they said that, um, they, you know, wanted to check me out. After a small conversation, the older one, he was a seasoned veteran for being 17. He was a seasoned, and I knew that life. And he called the younger one over. And the younger one did that bob towards him, but eyeballing me. And the older one told the younger one something. And the younger one, as they were walking away, the younger one glared back at me and he smiled. He winked his eye like everything's all right. And that magic feeling started to emerge because they became my angels with dirty faces.
33:54 Speaker 04 That's how I felt growing up. And that was my modern family. So we've been together now 19 years.
34:10 Speaker 00 Gregory Ferreira is now an entrepreneur and community educator. He says this once lonely man found a new start and now has 18 grandchildren. He says he wants his life's journey to help listeners understand that hope is possible for all. To see photos of Greg and his large, modern family, go to themoth.org.
34:42 Speaker 00 After our break, a man gives his favorite book away and then tries desperately to find it again, and a lifelong New Yorker has to pick up and move when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
35:01 Speaker 02 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
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36:11 Speaker 00 You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. In this hour, all stories of the lost and found. I've always wanted to start a website where people can post single, lost gloves they've found, like a national lost and found, but just to reunite gloves, a glove give-back. I just have to get around to it. Joseph Gallo told this next story at Housing Works Bookstore in New York, where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here's Joseph.
36:49 Speaker 06 When I was in college, I had a friend, his name was AJ. And the first time that we ever hung out, we went to see the movie Field of Dreams. And at the conclusion of the movie, we ended up on the roof deck of this parking garage in a mall in South Jersey, and the two of us are crying our eyes out. We barely knew each other, and we were doing circles around my car, refusing to look at each other, we're going, "Are you okay?" "I'm okay." "Can you drive?" "I can drive." And that's how the two of us became friends. We bonded over baseball. And after we graduated from college, we moved to Hoboken, and we became neighbors. And I had a TV, and AJ didn't have a TV. And he used to like to come over to my house and watch games. He liked the Yankees, I liked the Mets. But the one thing, the one thing that we both loved together was the Yankee announcer, Phil Rizzuto.
37:32 Speaker 06 Now, Phil Rizzuto had a Hall of Fame career as a shortstop, and when he retired, he became the voice of the Yankees, or the Yankee broadcaster, for 40 years. And he was known for his catchphrases. "Holy cow, did you see that? Unbelievable." And he became immortalized in the Meatloaf song, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights. He calls the game that takes place in the backseat of the car. And the thing, though, that AJ and I loved the most about Phil Rizzuto was his stream of consciousness storytelling. Stories used to spring from him out of seemingly nowhere. You never knew where they were gonna go, you never knew where they were gonna end. In fact, they were so epic that Rizzuto himself, in his own scorecard over a particular inning,
38:15 Speaker 06 would write the initials WW, which stood for "Wasn't Watching."
38:23 Speaker 06 Anyway, one day, AJ invites me over to his house, and he presents me with a gift. It's a book. And the book is called Oh, Holy Cow. And what these two writers have done, they've taken Rizzuto's broadcasts, and they've transcribed them, and they culled and edited them down to the stories that we both loved. And he said, he got the book because he saw it, he thought of me, he wanted me to have it, and he knew I collected books and loved books, and I'd appreciate it. And then he sat me down, and he said, "I have something to tell you. I've been to the doctors, and I have been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor."
39:00 Speaker 06 And a month later, A.J. dies. So now, fast forward 25 years. And my mother, who is a widow, who lives alone in the house that I grew up in, she suffers a massive stroke. And she survives, but she ends up in a nursing home. And I am taxed with the job of breaking down my childhood home. Now, anyone who's ever had to do this, it's a sad, emotionally exhausting, horrible experience. And one of the jobs that I have to do is I have to do something with boxes and boxes of books that I have accumulated over 25 years. I live in an apartment, I have no room for books, and I stored them in my mother's basement. And now I have to do something with them.
39:44 Speaker 06 And so, one day, I'm driving out to my mother's nursing home, and I pass this used bookstore. And I think, "I'm gonna donate them there." And so, I drive back to my mother's house, I pack up the car, and I take the books to the store. And the woman who owns the store looks exactly like Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. And she is completely, 100% delighted. And she's going through the boxes, she's opening them all up. And I look down, and I see the copy of Oh, Holy Cow. And I am so emotionally exhausted that I do nothing. And I let the book go. And the book, I watch the boxes go to the back of the store, and they disappear. And a ritual begins.
40:28 Speaker 06 I go to visit my mother in the nursing home, I pass the bookstore, and I think, "A.J.'s book's in there." I go to the nursing home, I pass the bookstore, I think, "A.J.'s book's in there." And I realize that the book is starting to take on this amazing power, certainly far more than it ever had when it was in a box in my mother's basement, and I thought of it only once in a great while. And I realize that the power stems from the fact that my mother is still alive. And as long as my mother's alive, the book is alive. And if the book is alive, then in some abstract way, A.J. is alive.
41:07 Speaker 06 And I want them to be alive.
41:11 Speaker 06 I want them alive. And so, one day, I'm driving to the bookstore, excuse me, to the nursing home. I see the bookstore, and I can't take it anymore. I pull into the bookstore. Angela Merkel recognizes me right away. And I say, "Listen, you know, I gave you a book, and I need it back." And she says, "Well, if we still have it." And so, we searched the bookstore, and we can't find it. And so, she brings me into the basement. And the basement looks like a mini-version of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's just aisles and aisles and aisles of books stacked from floor to ceiling. And Angela Merkel is checking the shelves for the book. And I tell her everything that I've just told you here tonight. And finally, she finds the book.
41:56 Speaker 06 And she takes it off the shelf, and she looks down at the cover, Oh, Holy Cow, and she smiles. And she opens it up, and she reads the inscription inside aloud.
42:07 Speaker 06 "To Joseph. Instant stories from the Field of Dreams. I thought you would enjoy this. Love, A.J." And she closes the book, and she hands it to me. And she says, "You should tell that story." And so, I just did. Thank you for listening.
42:33 Speaker 00 Joseph Gallo has written and performed several solo plays, including "My Italy Story" and "Long Gone Daddy", which was nominated by Broadway World as Best New Play.
42:53 Speaker 00 Our final story in this hour is also from our Boston Story Slam series. Here's Erin Wolf, live at The Moth.
43:02 Speaker 07 So my wife Naomi calls and she says, "Aaron, I got the job. Can you believe it? I got the job, my dream job. I got it. They offered it to me right in the middle of the interview. I got it. And we just have to move to Boston. Isn't that amazing?" And on the inside, I'm like, "No." But on the outside, I'm like, "No." Because this isn't a job offer. This is an existential crisis. I have been a New Yorker for 38 years. Like even when I lived in New Jersey, I totally told people I was a New Yorker. My parents are New Yorkers. My grandparents are New Yorkers. My great-grandparents, Max and Minnie Goldfinger, they were New Yorkers. And my kids are gonna be New Yorkers too. Also, we had a great apartment.
43:45 Speaker 07 And you just don't give up a great apartment in New York at all. And then Naomi says, "We have to let them know tomorrow afternoon. I love you. Bye." And she hangs up.
43:55 Speaker 07 In the next 24 hours, we go through the first four stages of grief in like every conversation. Just like, "I'm not going. I'm not going. I'm absolutely not going. How could you make me move? Maybe we should like try long distance? What am I gonna do in Boston?" Like over and over again. And then finally, at like 7:30 the next morning, I reach acceptance. I call her up at work and I say, "Look, we've been treading water for so long in this city. My job's not going anywhere. I'm not happy at work. You've worked so hard at your PhD. This is finally, this finally could be the moment where we become adults. Let's do this." And it's not just acceptance. It's relief. It feels good. It feels good to say it.
44:39 Speaker 07 And then two days before we're leaving, I'm sitting, packing up our kitchen. I'm holding in the silverware and I'm sobbing. Because it's my grandpa Bernie's silverware. And I look around the kitchen and everything in my apartment is my grandpa Bernie's. The art on the walls from his house in Bayside, the furniture, his record collection, my dishes, my love of food, my love of music, my first cup of coffee, my first hot dog, my anger, my affection, my New York sensibility. It's his. And now I have to leave it. And I don't know how to say goodbye to it or to him.
45:19 Speaker 07 And then I see this clock on the wall in my living room. It's his clock from his store in the Lower East Side. It says Forsyth Monuments, established 1911. And now I know what I want to do for my last day in New York. The next day, Naomi and I pack our two-year-old son in the stroller, and we head out for a really long walk. And it's August in New York. Like, everyone in their right mind is inside in air conditioning. But we're walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, through Chinatown, up East Broadway, then Delancey Orchard, and then we stop at Stanton Street. In front of Silver Monuments, the last Jewish monument store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My cousin Murray's shop.
46:04 Speaker 07 And when my grandpa Bernie retired, he sold the business to Murray. So there, in the window of Silver Monuments, is this little sign. It says Forsyth Monuments, established 1911. It's the last shred of my grandpa Bernie on the Lower East Side. And I don't want to go in, but I have to go in. Because Naomi's like, "You have to go in." "We walked all the way here, you're going in." "This is ridiculous." And I'm like, you know, I also have to go in. I have to. And Murray's not there, but his assistant is there. And I can't remember his name, but he knows me. Because the last time he saw me, he was selling me and my mom a gravestone from my grandpa Bernie. And he kind of squinches up his face, and he's like,
46:48 Speaker 07 "Yeah, yeah, Beth David Cemetery, right be-" "Yeah, yeah, buried near the Arbiter Ring." "Yeah, yeah, how is your mother, anyway?" And I look at this guy. He could be 50 or like 250, like... He's never touched an iPad, you know, like... And he looks like he's from, he's of this place. Like, he's stepped out of the fabric of this store, which is dusty and claustrophobic, and there's yellowing paper everywhere. And I reach out, I touch, I like sort of stabilize myself on a gravestone. And the granite is cold and smooth, and it feels exactly like it felt when I was eight years old in my grandpa Bernie's shop. And I think, I can't, I can't do it. I can't leave this place. Who am I gonna be if I leave this place?
47:34 Speaker 07 This is my New York. This guy is my New York. And then he says, "Yeah, it's funny you should come in today of all days. It's really funny, because Murray just sold the building. We're moving to Long Island tomorrow. It's funny, of all days, you're coming in today."
47:50 Speaker 07 And I sort of like rock back on my heels in stunned silence. And all I could see is him and the gravestones and a clock that looks just like the one that's in a box in my house waiting to come up to Boston. And I look at him and I just say, "Well, I guess this is goodbye." And he says, "Yeah, I guess." And I leave. That clock, my Grandpa Bernie's clock, it never worked. One night after like hours of Googling, I found these like rare clock fuses and I replaced the fuses in the clock. And I plugged it in and the fluorescent light turned on and then it ran backwards. Like a frickin' time machine.
48:33 Speaker 07 But also like a time machine. My New York, my Grandpa Bernie's New York, it's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. But I still see it here of all places. I see it in the Lebanese market in Watertown. I see it in me when I'm walking across Cambridge Common and I'm amazed by the history. I see it in my son's love of Chinese food and smoked fish and in my daughter's laugh and her scream. But most of all, I see it in the stories we tell each other around the dinner table at home, my home, underneath the clock that says Forsyth Monuments, established 1911. Thanks.
49:15 Speaker 00 That was Aaron Wolf. Aaron is a screenwriter and the chief creative director at a storytelling agency called Faculty New York. To see a photo of Cousin Murray's monument store and Grandpa Bernie's clock, which is now proudly displayed in Aaron's Boston home, go to themoth.org. If you've lost something, take a breath. It may come back, or the loss may just make space for a new chapter and you can tell a story about it. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
50:10 Speaker 02 This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Sarah Austin Jenness, who also hosted and directed the stories in the hour along with Janelle Pfeiffer. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. Additional Grand Slam coaching by Chloe Salmon. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Kluch, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Moth Stories Are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Stellwagen Symphonette, The Beatles,
50:52 Speaker 02 Julianne Laje, and Annette Cohen. We received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.
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