“Momma could do magic with nothing. There never seemed to be enough of anything. Some of us seem to forget so easily that we were out there somewhere or nowhere.” (Albert Lee Wagner)

The museum utilizes each of the six rooms to depict a theme representing Shorty Lawson’s life and his values:

 When Shorty and Annie married, she was already a good cook. She ordered this room and the family diet. Often the family was doing lots of different things besides cooking, all at the same time: talking, telling stories, playing, doing homework, eating, cleaning, and washing up. The kitchen felt like it would explode from the energy of so many activities. Once Annie sent Fernell to get water; he came back smelling like a skunk. He had run into one on the way to the well. Nobody wanted to sit near him or drink the water he brought back, but the water didn’t really taste like skunk. The others teased him until he got real mad.

When Annie was cooking something special like greens and cornbread, or just-caught fish, there were always kids hanging around waiting for it. When she made preserves or did canning in summer, she would get the children into a production line, sort of like a factory, but not so organized. In fact, there was a lot of disorganized fooling around. “She wasn’t hard on us, but we did what she told us.” (Carolyn Lawson) Like most women around Hesters Store, Black and White, Annie used a lot of lard that made her cooking delicious and dangerous.

“The kitchen was also where we took baths and washed our hair most of the time. In winter it was the only warm place. Since we didn’t have plumbing, some of us, usually the older ones, would run over to the well at the big house and get enough buckets to make a bath. The little ones would race after us, make it a game even though it was work. Mama would heat the water and store it on the stove. Then we took turns taking a bath in a big foot tub. I would wash my hair in a bucket or tub, too. That was just how life was. Even without running water it was the best time of my life.” (Carolyn Lawson) In summer the children would bathe in the kitchen or out in the room off the kitchen. It had a cement floor so it was no problem to clean up water that got splashed out. The older brothers and sisters helped bathe the younger ones and the baby.

Join us for a while at the kitchen table. We’ll cook up something for you to think about. “We look back that we may learn wisdom from experience.” (Anna Julia Cooper) Look around to see what is going on. This is Annie’s place, and it extends from here to the pantry and all the way to the garden, clothes line, and chicken coop. She was not bossy, but everyone minded her as she went about kitchen work. She might send a child to get in firewood or feed the chickens and she expected that person to be back directly with wood or feed the chickens without the rooster complaining about supper.

In summer she made pies after the children picked berries. Everybody loved Annie’s pies. She was sort of the Pie Lady of Tom Bowes Road. “We competed to find the best blackberry bushes and get the most, the real black fat ones, and those in the tallest bushes. The little kids mostly ate the berries as fast as they picked them.” (Carolyn Lawson) 

Imagine that Annie is at the wood stove on a Saturday, scrambling up some eggs, fixing enough to feed breakfast to each and every hungry mouth. All the children are running in and out or, in winter, huddled around the fireplace, waiting for some eggs and sausage or bacon. “When I was a baby, Mama did all the cooking, but later we got an electric stove, had two stoves, she cooked on the wood stove and I cooked too, on the electric stove. It sat right there where the plug is, one cooking on one side of the room, one cooking on the other side. In summer we cooked mostly on the electric stove, winter the wood stove because it heated the room.” (Caroline Lawson)

“All I claim is that there is a feminine as well as a masculine side to truth; that these are related not as inferior and superior, not as better or worse, not as weaker or stronger, but as complements- complements in one necessary and symmetric whole.” (Anna Julia Cooper)

“I had to milk the cow, wash up, get dressed in school clothes, eat breakfast, find my books and lunch, and run up the road to catch the bus. Some years the bus came down our road, but other years the route was just on the Gordonton Road so we’d have to run over a half mile to meet the school bus.” (Carolyn Lawson) Everyone wore hand-me-downs. “Other families in the community gave us hand-me-downs. That’s what I mostly wore, but you could look real nice in hand-me-downs. We always had what clothes we needed.” (Carolyn Lawson) Second hands and patched hand-me-downs was what most people, Black and White, wore out here, even families that had more money.

Although the kitchen was the women’s place, they relied on Shorty and the boys to make repairs to leaks in the roof and to build cabinets, shelves, and things like that. Shorty was creative in making things from scraps and stuff he found. Every once in a while something Annie needed didn’t get done; she would get short and raise her voice if the boys didn’t fix a broken drawer or bring in the stove wood. The feeling of slighted womanhood is unlike every other emotion of the soul.” (Anna Julia Cooper) You might hear Annie call out, “I can’t cook until you get in the firewood.” 

“A lot of this stuff my people want to forget.” (Richard Roebuck) The Lawsons were farmers, gardeners, hunters, and gatherers. Everyone did their part, but the children knew that Shorty and Annie would always try to find a way to take care of them no matter what. There was certainty in that. They grew plenty meat and vegetables, and, if need be, they could catch things from the woods or pond. Rabbits, bullfrogs, big fish and small fish provided many a meal when food was scarce. There were wild grapes and berries in season and the great pecan tree. It usually provided a gracious abundance of nuts waiting to be picked up. “That was just the way our life was.”  (Carolyn Lawson) 

Renowned artist Charlie Lucas made a Lawson family portrait from reused materials. It was a loving gift to the museum. He pointed out particularly the tiles that he had salvaged from the demolition of a fine old antebellum home in Selma, Alabama. A Black family could make a living from scrap metal and stuff thrown away. Sam McMillan painted a different portrait on the valance, cheerfully integrating Black and White children playing together. Truth is, as the White saying about Black relations says, “They were almost like family,” emphasis always on the “almost.” Kids might play together on the farm in Shorty’s youth, but they seldom mixed except when a White man forced himself on a Black woman. There was much to weep about in the Lawson family. But they knew that when one was crying about troubles, their family and Randolph would be there to help. Paternalism cut two ways. “Kenny took care of Mr. Randolph, too, take him home when he was drunk”. Miss Virginia say, ‘There he goes again.’” (Carolyn Lawson) If the children brought on the trouble themselves, there would be serious scolding, seldom anything more. 

Shorty taught by doing, “Actions speak louder than words.” A youngster could safely learn most every lesson of life by looking up to and following Shorty’s actions. The children were nurtured by their parents and the idyllic world of rural childhood where wild and domesticated animals and the larger natural world filled each playful spirit. They were relatively isolated from society’s prejudices, free to explore with siblings the creeks and woods that mystified, challenged, excited, and delighted them. But they had to grow up fast. They often heard a parent say, “This is the last piggy-back ride because you are a big girl or boy now.” And then their Daddy died. Their Mother struggled to provide for her family. Each child had to help out.

 The children learned matters of life and death. Watch out for snakes, especially a copperhead camouflaged in the woods. There’s a snake hidden in the mottled paint. “Parents don’t teach kids that stuff nowadays, just keep them inside, don’t let them play in the woods. That’s a shame.” (Carolyn Lawson) There were lessons in the weather, too. Good weather the Lawsons worked, but kept an ear out for the rain crow. “Daddy told us if we heard a rain crow, it was going to rain, and it almost always did.” (Carolyn Lawson) If it came up a purple cloud, a bad storm was coming. Everyone had to get in a safe place. Jasper and Irene saw a man get killed by lightning over at Turbeville, and lightning rightly scared the Lawsons. If it was just a shower, still someone had to run to the house to get the clothes in. Worst that happened to most folks was getting caught in a Sunday downpour and ruining their best clothes over at the Church of God in the Wilderness. By knowing clouds, the children could tell when it was safe to play in the rain or wait for a happy rainbow. They believed there was gold at the end of the rainbow, chased after many a one, never found gold, but learned a lot from the adventure. Maybe the gold was just for people what owned the land.

If the weather turned hot and dry for several weeks, crops suffered. Vegetable gardens burned up. Livelihood and food supply were threatened. If the drought continued, the community got desperate; it was time to kill a snake and hang it in a tree; if you repented from sin and prayed to God, that snake was supposed to bring rain. There is one hanging in a tree in a painting close by. A few days after a rain was a good time to fish, not right after, let the mud settle out, but the water still high. The children would head for Crooked Creek to catch Knot Heads.

The Lawsons’ pleasures sound too good to be true. Shorty went to the State Fair. It was after tobacco was sold so Shorty had extra cash. He won all the tests of strength, but lost money to a carnival barker. Most pleasures were free. Throw small rocks up in the air at dusk to see bats chase them. Chimney Swifts didn’t chase rocks. On summer nights they caught lightning bugs, kept in jars in their bedrooms. The magical flashing lights evoked dreams of other creatures to befriend or catch.

An unusual pleasure was swimming. Most Black people were afraid of water; didn’t know how to swim. Shorty was a powerful swimmer, saving several people from drowning. He loved to swim and taught all the children. But he had rules. “If we went swimming, one of us had to stay on the bank and watch out for the others. Daddy would hide in the bushes to be sure we were following his rules.” (Carolyn Lawson) But there was nothing like fishing; Carolyn became an accomplished bank fisher, caught more fish than people with fancy equipment. The wild creatures often told her what to do. These days Carolyn only gets off work July 4th. That’s fishing time. She may teach her grandson to fish if he pays attention like in school. 

Fish stories make you laugh, catfish in the old pond over four feet long. Shorty and Randolph gigged bullfrogs, made Randy get in the water to scare the frogs up on shore. Randolph took to shooting them with a 22, laughing all the while because Randy was afraid of getting shot or bit by a snake or something nobody knew what it was. Some events are only funny years later. Once Randolph told Shorty to break a pair of young mules, but he wasn’t clear that he meant to rotate the mules so they didn’t get over worked. “Shorty and the boys took turns plowing, kept both mules at work without a break for a solid week. Those mules were never much good after that.” (Donald Hester) 

Ask people to describe him, they say right off Shorty was tireless, steady and swift. He was a hard worker. Count on him to do more than his part. Strongest man ever seen, could dead lift a 200-pound bag of fertilizer with his teeth. Shorty and one mule could do the work of a dozen men. Whether it was tobacco, hay, hauling, or plowing, Shorty was faster and better than anyone else. When he broke these hilly fields under a boiling sun, he and his mule were one with the earth. There was no “quit” in him. He often plowed well into the night under moonlight. When he worked the woods, some folks thought he must have had a magic ax he downed trees so fast. But if you worked with him, you saw that the only magic was his skill, ingenuity, and determination. And he could make mules do things others couldn’t; he could snake logs, never getting hung up. He wasn’t exactly a mule whisperer, but he knew every mule inside and out, which direction one swished his tail to chase flies or what the mule really meant when he snorted and nodded his head. Shorty knew the mule’s pace reflected the man, so mules plowed faster and straighter for him than for other people.

Shorty loved hard work. He thrived on it. He knew it distinguished him. He got pleasure from outdoing all others, especially lazy and uppity White boys. “For a few years there was a White tenant farmer, Harry Clark, who oversaw Shorty and me. He always assigned himself the easiest job or no job at all, and he just loved to order us around. Shorty and I bonded with dislike for him. And I adopted Shorty’s value of hard work.” (Randy Hester) He worked every job available and made enough money to provide things for his family, from an electric stove to a television. There were plenty of families in the county so poor that Beggar’s Lice wouldn’t even stick to their pants; but Shorty’s was an exception. Getting his family ahead was important, but he resisted dollar-worship as “the Negro stood in danger of being dazzled by the shimmer and tinsel of superficials.” (Anna Julia Cooper) For Shorty hard work was its own reward. 

Shorty Lawson challenged and/or inspired most everyone who knew him. “He was the hardest working man I have ever known. One day I told him that. He smiled. Later that day he said, ‘Mr. Randolph is the hardest working White man I know.’ I asked if that meant my daddy worked hard, or just that most white men didn’t. He smiled again.” (Randy Hester) Annie matched Shorty’s skill and capacity. She was acknowledged for stringing tobacco. Nasty, tiring work, it required rhythmic quickness and aggressive gentleness, a dexterity less considered in field work. “Everywhere I work, people, if they knew Mama and Daddy, they expect me to do more and do it better than anybody else.” (Carolyn Lawson) 

The tractor changed Shorty’s world. It replaced mules for most work, hauling more, plowing faster. A John Deere symbolized progress, but mules were still essential for work in close quarters. Shorty taught Randy and his boys to care for them even as they became less valued. He saw things come and go. As a boy he planted tobacco with a peg. As a man he dug a hole, planted, and watered the tobacco slip with one pull of a metal trigger. Inventors were creating machines with unimaginable power and speed. But machines brought new dangers; a crop duster plane hit a power line and crashed at Hesters Store, killed the pilot. Within their community the Lawsons embodied all the power, speed, and grace that anyone could envision. They did what others in the community did: make wood and do household chores, tend their garden and each other. But they kept right on working when a local politician offered up his stump speech; he was not there to solicit their votes.  

The summer of 1964 was different. Randy came home from college full of Freshman ideas. In Raleigh he began to conceptualize inequality. He was exposed to roles White people played in the Civil Rights Movement. For him abstracted racial injustice in the media was personal, peopled with ones who loved and mentored him, and he wanted to discuss these matters with Shorty. Shorty tolerated Randy’s talk, but it didn’t make much sense even when the Civil Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson just before July 4th. It was miserably hot, and tobacco needed suckering, worming, and pulling. Randy persisted. In 1965 he volunteered to lead an After-School Program for the local Office of Economic Opportunity in Chavis Heights, the Black Ghetto in Raleigh. Shorty was mystified. At the end of the 1965 tobacco season Congress passed the Voting Rights Act after confrontations at the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama dramatized barriers preventing Negroes from voting. Change was slow. Shorty voted only after Curtis Bradsher started picking him and Annie up and driving them to the polls. 

Likely Shorty never was confronted with a “Whites Only” sign, an indication of the isolation of Hesters Store where the front door served everyone, and segregated territories were understood by all. White men conversed in a circle inside the store. Negroes gathered under the big oak tree outside. Open to all men, women seldom entered the store. In Roxboro there were many places that served only White people. “Toufie’s Hot Dog Place behind the taxi stand only serve us from the back side.” (Carolyn Lawson) To avoid swimming with Blacks the White community built a private swimming pool in Roxboro. That didn’t affect mixed-race swimming in the ponds at Hesters Store. “The inability of one race to exterminate another gives rise to mutual understanding, reciprocity, and liberty.” (Anna Julia Cooper)

Shorty saw Chain Gangs of Black prisoners, guarded by white men with shot guns, but he knew his place, commanded his place, and stayed out of trouble. Locally Jim Crow laws outmaneuvered the Federal laws that sought to guarantee equal rights for all people. 

Although there were dangers everywhere, the Lawson family was most afraid of snakes. A moccasin’s bite could kill you, and it was within striking distance before you ever saw him. Snakes occupy this room. Not a single one will bite. There were ways to mediate other fears, but nothing could protect you from snakes. To keep ghosts from entering your house, paint walls “haint blue” like this room; electric blue is even more effective. Haint blue keeps bad spirits and witches at bay. A rabbit’s foot in your pocket helps avoid ill fortune and brings good luck. If you are kind to wild animals, they rescue you from danger. And you know that Jesus died to wash away your sins. Read selectively, the Bible offers remedies to all sorts of fears. You also have some measure against the fear of servitude and death: look over Jordan for angels or haints coming to take you home, either returning you to Africa or delivering you to heaven. You can forestall death by returning the owl’s hoot.

The Preacher over at the Church of God in the Wilderness said that if you avoid the ungodly, the sinners and the scornful, whatever you do will prosper. He had Psalm 1:1 inscribed on an obelisk where the Lord saved him a few miles from here. To be sure everyone contributed generously to the church Preach Wiley Bradsher played to the primal fear, a black snake named Sambo kept in the church to encourage the congregation. Preach was the moral authority because God had stricken him for his sinfulness and saved him for his faithfulness. He feared that the automobile would be the ruination of the Black man so he hanged a car from an oak tree at the church. Lynching the car touched nerves, past and present. 

The Church of God in the Wilderness shaped the Lawsons’ faith. It provided an amazing grace for Annie’s family and hundreds of congregants, comforting the Lawsons during their most desperate times. But snakes remained a fear without a remedy.

Drawings of people and cars were left for years on the west wall of the boys’ bedroom. Carolyn Lawson identified the artist. Shorty’s half-brother, Larry Dixon, was a big Carolina fan. Carolyn had no idea why he drew Moses or the White boy with glasses; but the cars were easy to explain. All the boys wanted cars in spite of Preach Bradsher’s warning. Larry reconciled the conflict by drawing a license plate proclaiming “I love God” on his Ford convertible. His Bible was left here, the 23rd Psalm marked by a red “X”.

Why did Preach worry about car damnation? He must have observed how quickly it had invited all manner of missteps. It made Black men indebted consumers; Bradsher preached buying land instead. He saw land ownership as power. A car loan distracted you from long-term security; car envy invited the Devil. Annie’s family attended Bradsher’s church and believed in him. Shorty abandoned his car soon after he married Annie and never owned another one.

 R. A. Miller depicted the Devil as eager to tempt you with something you had no business wanting so bad. And the Devil’s friends had so much fun. Just consider the expression on Devil Rooster’s face. Annie’s family believed evil could be washed away. Baptism cleansed mistakes, but temptations were ever-present. Each person had to choose between Sin City and Salvation-Ready-Mix where Grace, Mercy, and Love poured a solid foundation to combat Greed, Envy, and Pride. Most temptations were things just out of your grasp, and the Devil had the power to help you acquire short-term pleasures. The result: a soul tortured by injury, a maimed body, nightmares, and monsters. Preach knew this first-hand.