- Please like, and subscribe to our channel
and click the bell icon to get new video updates.
- Welcome to "The Moth Podcast"
I'm your host, Suzanne Rust.
All throughout 2022, for the 25th anniversary of The Moth,
we've been taking a look back at every year
we've been around, we're up to 2011.
In 2011, we were expanding our slams
and we were on a tour with the USA network called,
Characters Unite, that included Mainstages
and Moth workshops in high school throughout the country.
Megan Markle, future princess was even a special guest
at an event where she talked about the power of story
to build bridges and to celebrate our commonality.
These workshops focused on sparking dialogue
for change in the world.
For this special Juneteenth episode, I'm going to share
a story
about a person whose worldview was changed.
It's one of my absolute favorite stories
from the Moth history.
It's called, "Beyond My View Master Dreams"
and it was told by Alvin Hall.
Stay tuned after the story, then we'll hear a little more
from Alvin, Alvin Hall told this
at a Moth Mainstage in New York city.
Here he is live with the Moth.
(audience clapping)
- We only went to town once a month,
when I was a little boy.
We had a farm, we grew, raised
or hunted everything that we had.
When we went to town, my mother and grandmother
would give us a nickel or a dime to buy whatever
we wanted as a treat.
I so looked forward to that while my brothers
and sisters would go off and buy toys and candy,
I would go to the back of the five and dime store
to this one area where they had these little bitty discs
with bits of film in them
and I would buy a View-Master slide.
I would go through the road and look for places
like Rome, London, Paris, and a town called, Constantinople.
I would then come back home in the truck,
go into the backyard, pull out my View-Master slide
and point it at the sky and I would sit there
in reverie for hours.
I would cross the Bosporus,
I would go up the Eiffel tower.
I would create these travel logs,
a word I didn't know at that time, in my mind
until my mother called me to do a chore in the house.
I was raised in a very waspy Black family.
We did not talk, my parents spoke in syllables.
If they really liked what you did,
they would go, mm, mm.
(audience laughing)
If they thought what you did was adequate, but expected, mm.
(audience laughing)
If they thought what you did was horrible,
it was Hmm.
And the lower the register of that, hmm,
the more judgment was imparted by that.
When I was nine years old,
I recall my mother making this statement all the time.
She kept saying, I raise you to leave my house.
When you get to be 18 years old all of you,
I raised you to leave my house.
My brothers and sisters and I
would look at each other and wonder.
At age nine I decided to tell her,
I'm going to leave this place.
My mother looked at me, she said, "What did you say?"
I said, "One of these days, I'm going leave this place."
She went, Hmm.
(audience laughing)
Integration occurred in 1968,
and I went from an all Black school named Shadeville,
very Faulknerian to the county school.
And there I had probably my second fight
of my entire high school career.
This guy called me something and we got into a fight
and I fought to win.
At the school people became aware of me
and so they recommended me to a program,
a Lyndon Barnes Johnson program called, Project Upward Bound
at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University,
what a destiny I had.
(audience laughing)
Nonetheless, I got into the program
and there was a lady who ran the program,
the most glamorous Black woman I had ever met,
a lady named Ms. Fredy Grooms.
She had a medium size Afro
that was perfectly coifed every day.
She wore clothes that were in blocks of colors,
I can see them to this day.
And at this program, she really took an interest in me.
In my classes however, I was the eager kid.
I was constantly putting up my hand, every answer.
I knew the answer to everything
and I was really, really on.
And the teacher said to me, "How do you know so much?"
And I said, I read the World Book Encyclopedia.
When we had no money at night, my mother who subscribed
to the World Book Encyclopedia, would say to us,
"Don", my middle name, "Pick out the letter Q, boy
and read something to us.
Pick out the letter B, boy, and read something to us."
Well, little did we know that I was learning all that stuff?
So in class I was really eager.
This does not make me popular with the other people.
(audience laughing)
Eventually I got into a little scuffle,
I was put on parole, but Mrs. Grooms took interest in me
and recommended me to her friend,
Dr. Joel Fleischman, who had started a program
at Yale university called, Yale Summer High School.
And I applied to that program.
The day I got that letter, I sat in the kitchen of the house
and I knew with everything in me that I was going.
I was going to go if it took everything to make it happen,
and I think my parents suspected that.
So on the day I got ready to go,
I wasn't afraid of anything, not a single thing,
because in my mind I'd already traveled to Paris
and London and Constantinople.
So going up to New Haven, Connecticut, cinch.
I got on that plane, got to New Haven, Connecticut
and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was home.
There was John Wall, John Lumley, Alba Clyde,
all the tutors and counselors made me feel
so at home, I loved it.
At the end of the summer, I had to come back home.
I got off the plane, came home and my grandmother
walked up to me, put her hands on my face on both sides,
looked into my eyes and then held me close to her and said,
"You are never coming home again,
you are never coming home again."
I then applied to college,
went off to school in Maine, had a wonderful time.
Did well in school, life was good, it was pretty good.
I got a good job, I traveled a lot.
I would write my parents postcards
in tiny little writing,
I'd write these entire narratives.
And I would say to my parents,
"Did you ever receive my postcards?"
My parents would go, "Mm mm mm."
Nothing more was said about the postcards,
curious, I said to myself.
Well, eventually I got a job in New York City,
a job that I really loved on Wall Street
and things were going really well for me
and I started to travel, I still wrote my parents' cards.
When I told my parents that I was moving to New York City,
my grandmother said,
"Mm, you know, that Richard Pryor man lived in New York."
(audience laughing)
Wall Street was really good to me
and I had, I found a place where I could work,
I enjoyed the creativity of being in training
on Wall Street, but in one of the recessions,
I got laid off and I knew that the layoff was coming.
And I got so mad about the layoff in anticipation of it
that I decided I was going to fight.
I was going to fight when they laid me off.
So on the day they laid me off, I said, basically to myself
you're going to have to pay me to get rid of me.
You're going to have to pay me and I fought that day
one of the hardest fights I've ever fought in my life
to get a great severance package.
When I walked out of that office,
I had a severance package that was beyond my dreams.
I walked out of the office,
got into a taxi and said, "take me to Tiffany's."
(audience laughing)
I took the taxi from downtown to Tiffany's,
I told the taxi to wait.
(audience applauds)
I had wanted these green Celadon bowls
for three and a half years.
I would go to Tiffany's
and I would just lust after them
and today I was going to give them to myself as a present
for that package I negotiated.
I had them wrap them in the blue and white box,
put them in a bag and I came down in that side elevator
at Tiffany's, got into the taxi and take me,
I said, "Take me to the D'Agostinos."
I went to the D'Agostinos, bought a half gallon of milk
and a box of Cheerios and then said, "Take me home."
(audience laughing)
I went home, opened the box, washed the bowls
and poured the Cheerios and the milk in the bowls.
And I thought, if I have to be unemployed,
every day I eat from these bowls I will be happy.
And I sat there and I ate my Cheerios blissfully.
And as I was eating those Cheerios, I said to myself,
"It's time to go to Paris."
I had avoided going to Paris.
I don't know why, but it was time to go to Paris.
So I called and booked a ticket,
called a friend of mine and said,
"I'm going to come to Paris, can I stay with you?"
He said, "Sure."
I got on that plane to Paris, it was so exciting.
Got off at Charles de Gaulle, took the air in
and uncharacteristically, I missed my stop.
I travel a lot, I never missed a stop,
I missed my stop.
So I got off of the next stop, came out of the Metro
walking down the street and turned a corner.
And it was like, everything went out of me.
I was in exactly the same spot where that picture was taken
that I used to sit and look at through
that View-Master slide, I was in my own dream.
I had made it real.
I sat there for a moment and then I burst into tears
and I just thought, I can't believe I'm here,
I can't believe I'm here.
And for the next five days, I went all over Paris
and I saw every place that was in those View-Master slides,
I did not miss a single one.
That first night in Paris, my friend who lived
in the first (French language) Mall had a rooftop terrace
and so when I arrived late, he said,
"Oh, I have some champagne and caviar upstairs."
So we went up to the rooftop and as the sun was setting
over Paris, I watched as all of the lights came up
on the monuments one by one and as I stood there,
I heard my mother and my grandmother say, "Mm."
This year is a significant birthday for me
and I've decided that it's time for me to see
that city once called, Constantinople.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
- That was Alvin Hall.
Alvin Hall created and hosted
the award-winning podcast series,
"Driving The Green Book"
His many radio programs include,
"Guarding The Art", "Alvin Hall Goes Back to School",
and "Jay-Z From Brooklyn to the Boardroom".
In his landmark BBC Television Series,
"Your Money or Your Life",
he offered people guidance about fixing
their financial problems.
Alvin continues to produce training videos
about the investment markets
for financial services organizations
as well as write books including,
"The Stock Market Explained",
"Your Money or Your Life"
and "Show Me The Money".
His next book inspired by his podcast series,
will be published in early 2023.
I love the story's themes of perseverance,
pushing past obstacles and knowing your worth.
And ever since it was shared more than a decade ago,
so many listeners have written to tell us
that it's resonated deeply with them too.
Now I wanted to talk to Alvin himself.
On the occasion of Juneteenth,
a day that celebrates liberation,
I wanted to know when he feels the most free
and here's what he had to say.
- I feel most free when on a cool crisp day
I take a walk beside a lake, a river, or by the ocean.
At these moments, I can listen to my own heart,
listen to my steps, feel the wind on my body.
Look at the broad open landscape or the sky.
I feel unburdened
and I feel as if all things are possible.
- When I asked him more specifically
what freedom means to him, here's what Alvin shared.
- For me, freedom is a day when I don't have to think
about the color of my skin and what it means to others.
A day when I don't have to deal
with the aggressions and my microaggressions
of other people.
Freedom is when I can be in the moment
without anyone's else's judgment
intruding on the life that I live
and the things I do that make me happy.
- That's all for this week.
We hope you enjoyed our celebration of Juneteenth.
From all of us here at The Moth,
have a story worthy week.
- Suzanne Rust is the most senior curatorial producer
and one of the hosts of the "Moth Radio Hour".
In addition to finding new voices and fresh stories
for The Moth Stage, Suzanne creates playlists
and helps curate special storytelling events.
This episode of "The Moth Podcast"
was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson
and me, Marc Solinger.
The rest of the Moth leadership team includes,
Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson,
Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham,
Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust,
Inga Glodowski and Aldi Kaza.
All Moth stories are true as remembered by storytellers.
For more about our podcast information
on picking 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.