Since 1995, Long Haul Productions has chronicled everyday stories of ordinary Americans for National Public Radio and other broadcast outlets. Here's our track listing:

Heartland Chronicles:
Oh, Coqui!
Buffalo Commons
The Sad Decline of the Passenger Pigeon
Walking With My Father
Canary Song Trials
Waterman
Hospice Chronicles
Birdathon!
Poet Laureate: Three Oaks
LaPorte, Indiana
The Swap Shop
Merry Christmas Mr. Slickenmeyer
Friday Night Bites
Mom's Good Move II
The Lord God Bird
Dear Birth Mother
Our Lady of the Underpass
The Enchanted Highway
Sweetheart's Ball
The Roxy

Homeplace series:
Babyquest
Shamika's Story
Blind Cubs Reporter: Eye of the Beholder
Another Lousy Day
Meet Me At Unity Playlot
Maxey's Mansion
Naloxone: Back From the Dead
Movin' Out the Bricks
Public Housing Relocator
The House of Pain
Aunt Mary's Storybook Project

Waiting It Out series:
Learning to Live: James' Story
A Danger to Self or Others
Life on the Outside
Scenes from a Transplant
Huntsville Prison Blues
Execution Day: Huntsville, TX
Mom's Good Move
When All Else Fails
Fear on the Inside

Place Portraits:
Braddock: City of Magic
D.C. Riots: Then and Now
Keysville, GA: Old Dreams
    in the New South
Catfish Culture
Jarbidge, Nevada
Branson Postcards
Lincoln Avenue Motels
Hazardous Coal Mines

American Worker series:
Port Chicago 50: Oral History
Bible Salesman
"Diamond" Jimmy Roy
Bail Bondsman/Bounty Hunter
Sandhogs
Life After Steel
Long Haul Woman Trucker
Omaha Racers
Barbara's Story
Hog Butchers for the World
Soldiers of Production
Nuclear Weapon
    Disassemblers
Catfish Taster
Catfish Handgrabbers
Wes Bobo: Junk Artist
Coal Miners
Death Row Guards
Red's Barber Shop
Professional Poker Player
Chili Pepper Picker/Grower
Telemarketer
Repo Men
Lincoln Memorial Cleaner
Children's Portrait Photographer
Union Strippers
Curtis' Famous Weiners

Baseball Stories
The Potato Ball Caper
Boys of Summer
Baseball Scout

On the Bus:
A Mother's Story
In the Army
Going Home
Oldest Driver
Homesick Blues
Front of the Bus
Going Home II
The Last Leg
Music Highway

Film/Video Productions:
Branson: Musicland U.S.A.
Scenes from a Transplant
Bus Stories

Long Haul's adventures in the animal kingdom:

Oh, Coqui!
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The coqui is the national symbol of Puerto Rico: a tiny, but vociferous tree frog that's a beloved part of the Puerto Rican soundscape, lulling residents to sleep every night with the male's lusty “croak.” But it’s a different story on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Coquis showed up on the island as stowaways a few years back, and because the frog has no natural predator there, they’re proliferating like a "plague of locusts" – competing with native birds and animals for food, and leaving many angry Hawaiians sleepless in paradise. In the face of sharply declining frog populations worldwide, Long Haul talked with residents in the only place in the world that's organizing to kill as many frogs as it possibly can.

(Special thanks to Hilo band Dr. Jerky and Mr. Huge for Bad Vacation, their coqui-inspired song.) This story originally appeared as part of Stories from the Heart of the Land.

Buffalo Commons
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Twenty years ago, academics Frank and Deborah Popper wrote what they thought would be a little-noticed, four page article subtitled A Daring Proposal for Dealing with an Inevitable Disaster, which argued that current agricultural use of much of the Great Plains is simply not sustainable. They advocated for a "Buffalo Commons," a return of large tracts of land back to native species, including buffalo, and a revisioned economy that encouraged ecotourism. To the Poppers’ surprise, their conclusions ignited a firestorm among residents, who labelled the Poppers as East Coast heretics.  But over the past two decades, the couple's predictions have seemed more and more prophetic. Plains states have suffered dramatic population loss, and families have sold or even abandoned farms and cattle ranches through the region.  The situation is particularly difficult in northeastern Montana, where Long Haul spoke with lifelong residents about a current plan very similar in spirit to the one the Poppers proposed in 1987.  There, outsiders are purchasing large tracts of land with plans to reintroduce thousands of bison and other native species, restoring a pre-settlement landscape.  Most residents don’t welcome the change – and those that embrace it, like South Dakotan Sam Hurst, are being forced to sell before their buffalo dreams can become reality. This story originally appeared as part of Stories from the Heart of the Land.

More birds!
The Sad Decline of the Passenger Pigeon

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At one time, it was believed there were as many as five billion passenger pigeons in eastern North America. By the mid nineteenth century, their numbers began to decline sharply – killed by sportsman, commercial hunters and by farmers angry as the birds began raiding farm fields as forests disappeared to logging.  Jon Wuepper, a naturalist and historian, documented the decline of the pigeon in southwest Michigan by scouring sixty-plus years of newspaper articles, beginning in the late 1830’s.  He traced the decline through 1894, when the last bird was killed in the area.  Wuepper (pictured) tells the story.

A short story:
Walking With My Father

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Charlie Rizzo’s dad died about twenty years ago, but he remains a constant presence in Charlie’s life. As a very young boy, Charlie’s mother and father split up, and Charlie’s mom took him to Los Angeles, leaving his father, Matt Rizzo, who was blind, back in Chicago. For awhile, Charlie wasn’t even sure he had a father. But one day, Matt and his driver showed up in California and took Charlie for a ride ... all the way back to Chicago. Matt's "kidnapping" of Charlie sparked a custody battle, and ultimately the judge allowed Matt to visit his son regularly as long as they stayed in the state of California. This was the beginning of Charlie's lifelong friendship with his father – and of a dream that started with Matt, and is now carried on by Charlie.

Read Matt Rizzo's essay Now Is the Time, written in 1986 as the Cold War was winding down.