Don “Moses” Lerman
“Everybody’s got something in their life they’re good at. This is what I do good. I eat.”
In what begins as a lighthearted story, Don Lerman talks about how he won a Matzo Ball eating competition in New York. He says that it was the first trophy ever in his life. The story then takes a sadder tone when Lerman talks about how he always wanted to be famous, but he felt the parade had passed him by until he found eating. He says his father never lived to see him be famous, and always thought he was a loser. He ends the story by wishing his father was alive to see that he was somebody. The clip itself is relatively short, coming in at 1:04. It seems minimally edited, with no background music or effects, just clipped to have constant dialogue. Being from 2005, this is one of the earlier StoryCorps stories, and that is reflected in the thumbnail picture quality. The audio quality of the clip is good and Lerman’s voice is clearly heard.
Jason Von Stein and Jim Von Stein
“When you were writing those songs, those were number one hits.”
This story is about a father and son who share a bond through music. The father, Jim Von Stein, wrote many songs but never performed them, and now the son, Jason Von Stein, performs the songs his father writes. Jim is sick with emphysema, and talks about how you only have so much time in the world, it’s about how you use it. This story was much more heavily edited than the Lerman story, now featuring two storytellers instead of one. The clip is also a good bit longer, coming in at 3:53. There is a soft guitar intro at the beginning of the clip, followed by a spoken introduction by a host that we did not have in the Lerman story. This could be pointed to the fact this story was released in 2023, 18 years after the Lerman story. Throughout the Von Stein story, there are bits of the songs being talked about by the Von Steins being played intermittently. The audio of the clip is well done and the speakers are heard clearly. One of the song clips is much worse quality, sounding more like it was recorded live on a phone rather in a studio. The photo thumbnail is much higher quality in this newer story.