Karen Kilgariff

speaker

3,962 appearances 39 recordings 3 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 8 Jun

Karen Kilgariff’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark · MFM Minisode 419 · 20 Jan 2025 podcast

Single dads.

Yep. How do I do this?

Shh.

Oh, Mallory. Yeah. Like once they got back, I was like, like safely. I was like, he really like gave them courage. And like that was maybe the point is like you can make it here and back. Fucking do it.

My childhood mantra that my mom always said was fend for yourself. And yeah, we fucking did it. Yeah. Okay. My last one, this is called serendipitous half sister. It says approximately three minute, 45 second read at Georgia speed. Are you fast or slow? I don't know. I've got to be fast, according to my mom. Okay.

No, but I think after nine years, it's got to be pretty accurate. You know what I mean? I know.

Well, I read fast. So here we go. And this is live it right now. Happy New Year, y'all. A little late, but I parted a bit too hard to say it on time. You asked for crazy coincidence stories in your last hometown episode. So this is the story of my father's long lost half sister and how a random drunk guy from Texas got sober and reconnected the two of them.

It seemed like every vacation my family took, even states away, my father would run into someone he knew from long ago, be it a pool, campground, cracker barrel, or many times at AA meetings. Dad was like a magnet for that sort of thing. Maybe it had to do with the fact that AA is often astonishingly full of people you used to know. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. He was a masterful storyteller.

Dad never grew tired of sharing stories about running wild with mischief as a little boy in the streets of New York City during the Great Depression. And then it says, in parentheses, 1930s, as if I also don't fucking know when the Great Depression... I'm like a little, that's what you're talking about. I get it. I hear you. That hurts. That hurts. I know when that is.

I know.

It's already long. So they probably are like, how am I going to get this?

Please write back in. We spent rainy days binge-watching VHS tapes of Oliver and Hardy, The Three Stooges, and Little Rascals, while imagining his childhood as a soot-covered scoundrel playing in black and white. Oliver and Hardy. Is that what's written there?

I know, right?

Or Oliver Hardy?

I'm keeping it. Now that I understand what nostalgia looks like, I can see it in memories of my father's face as he recounted the details of his juvenescence. Juvenile adolescence, like that. Yes, I guess so. There was always a moment dad would recall his half-sister, Dorothy, who had left home as a teenager. I suppose she could not get along with my grandmother, who may have had a heavy hand.

Dad prayed to find her someday. She was the only one who might still remain. Having eventually moved away from New York, my family ended up in South Carolina. I was about 11 years old when, after an AA meeting, my father spoke with a visiting Texan about his long-lost sister, Dorothy. The man's face twisted into amazement.

He himself had met a woman years before who had gone on in the same fashion about her long lost brother. The strange Texan had met her on a separate trip to New York years before becoming sober and apparently shared this very intimate conversation with her and stayed in Christmas card contact. Her name, Dottie, shorthand for Dorothy.

That's crazy. I know. It happened quickly, and the two were soon hollering on the phone. A few weeks later, dad was on a flight to meet her. He came back with new photos of my grandfather and even of himself, many he had never seen before, none of which I had seen. Until then, dad had only one remaining photo of his father.

They all only exist in photos now, and I recount the past by these limited images I have. But this little serendipitous moment remains the story that connects them to me in ways that is still so inexplicable. I'm Irish blooded and long winded. So I'm afraid of sending too long of an email. There you go.

But some other someday I'll tell you about my mother who, after spending 14 years as a nun, fell in love with my same magical trash dad who was under indictment at the time. Yes. What? Yes. This is it. It says S-S-G-G-M and it's signed boop with an exclamation mark and a fucking emoji smiley face. Boop. That's the person's name?

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