Locals tell tales at Burbank Library’s ‘story slam’ event
Glenn Schiffman applied for conscientious-objector status during the Vietnam War, and though he expected problems, his request “sailed right through.”
Only 30 years later would he learn his father’s secret bargain made it happen.
On a hiking trip in Yosemite National Park, Christine Schultz had a close encounter with a bear because of a hired guide’s careless “do as I say, not as I do” attitude about food disposal.
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For Susan Corella, playing softball — poorly — as a young girl in 1962 was a way to honor her father, but it also required her to defend her family honor to earn the respect of her belligerent teammates and beer-swilling coach.
These were three of the true, personal stories Burbank residents shared in five-minute presentations at a “story slam” Monday night at the Burbank Little Theater, home of the Grove Theater. The event, hosted by the Burbank Library, attracted four storytellers of various experience levels and about two-dozen audience members.
“This was our first one, so we didn’t really know what we were going to get,” said Kristin Olivarez, a library assistant who organized the event. “I’m pretty pleased.”
Storytelling has become “the hot thing,” Olivarez said, noting the popularity of open-mic storytelling events like “The Moth,” which also has a public radio program and podcast.
Other libraries have hosted successful storytelling events, she said, and she wanted to try it out in Burbank.
Pasadena Public Library employee Nick Smith, a longtime storyteller, gave the event’s introductory remarks and also shared a memory from the first grade that taught him the properties of adobe mud — slipperiness and glue-like bonding — that contributed to the demise of the 19th century cattle industry in the Southland after monthlong January rains.
It led to an “avalanche of cows ... entire herds washed down the hills ... to the sea” in the Great Flood of 1862, Smith said.
Memorable images like that are what he looks for in crafting the stories he tells, which are usually history lessons when he speaks to adults and folklore for children and teens.
Schultz, on the other hand, had never told a story in front of a live audience and hadn’t prepared one, but she felt “compelled ... in the moment” because there were so few others willing to share stories.
Corella, who said she took drama classes before starting a career as an educator, said it was scary at first to get up on stage to speak.
“Afterward, you feel good,” she told the audience.
Schiffman was one of the night’s experienced storytellers, and the only one whose stories seemed to touch explicitly on the evening’s theme: “Overdue.”
Only when his father was dying three decades after Schiffman was granted conscientious-objector status did he learn the “overdue” truth that the status was granted in return for his father keeping a draft board colonel’s alleged domestic abuse secret. Schiffman’s father, a minister, had been counseling the colonel’s wife about the abuse.
Unbeknownst to the husband, who offered the exemption from combat service in return for silence, the minister wouldn’t have revealed the accusations anyway because of pastoral confidentiality concerns.
However, the Faustian-seeming bargain left Schiffman blacklisted from teaching, which changed his plans for after the war.
After the four tales were told, audience members asked for more such events, Olivarez said, and they might get them. A second storytelling event is being considered.
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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com
Twitter: @chadgarland
