The Carolinas Writers Conference kicked off Friday with Back Porch Stories at the Ansonia Theatre. Storytellers Jadie Fuson, Linda Goodman and Mitch Capel entertained audiences with a variety of stories.
Fuson told three stories. He began one by telling how he and his good friend were lost when they stumbled into a clearing and found a stump and a flier advertising an arm-wrestling tournament taking place that evening.
The story became stranger as Fuson described the crowd that showed up to participate, ranging from neighbors to critters such as Tommy the Turtle and Papa Buck. Fuson worked his way up to the finals, facing opponents like Sally the Snake, who won “by confusing her opponents” until they quit. Then he reached Bear.
Desperately trying to recall everything he knew about bears, Fuson said he remembered a stuffed bear that had decorated his bedroom. He reached around Bear’s neck and unzipped it, pulling out its stuffing and forcing it to surrender.
Linda Goodman was up next, and talked about her childhood in the mountains in Virgina. Although Goodman’s family had to move due to her father’s job, Goodman and her family visited her aunt and uncle each year, attending Stone Mountain Primitive Baptist Church all summer.
In one sermon, the pastor told the congregation that if the members had faith the size of a tiny mustard seed, they could move mountains. Inspired, a young Goodman decided to move Stone Mountain. Her brother teased her until he went to swim. When he showed up hours later, he laughed at her since the mountain was still in its normal place.
“That’s what you think,” Goodman replied. “While you were gone, I moved it all the way over yonder, but it didn’t look right, so I moved it back.”
When the church needed a new roof and the pastor asked for fundraising ideas, Goodman suggested he move the mountain since “people would pay to see that.”
Although she embarrassed her mother, she inspired a rich off-and-on visitor of the church with her simple faith: upon their return home, Goodman’s family received a letter from the pastor saying a woman had paid for the entire roof replacement.
“Linda, you moved Alma Alps to give that money, so I guess, with the Alps being a big mountain range, in a roundabout way you did move a mountain,” her father told her.
Mitch “Gran’daddy Junebug” Capel finished the evening with his “sto’etry,” telling stories poetically.
He performed “The Spellin’ Bee,” a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, an early African-American poet.
Capel also performed excerpts from his two-man play, “The Color of Courage,” which tells the stories of African-American soldiers fighting for the Union Army during the Civil War. He told of a soldier named Bill, who fought bravely and was thought dead, but found to be barely alive, as the bullet had “killed his mind and kept his body living.”
Capel told of Bill’s parents waiting anxiously for his arrival after he was released from the hospital, and a welcome home party set to greet him. No one was expecting Bill to show up acting like he was on a battlefield and loading and shooting his gun, whispering part of his mother’s farewell to him: “God will take care of you, Bill, God will take care of you.”
The storyteller also told lighter stories and jokes, including one where he said he saw a boy and his grandfather in a park and the boy asked his grandfather if he could make a sound like a frog.
“Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit,” the grandfather complied, before asking why.
“Because Grandma said when you croak, she’ll take me to Disney World,” the boy replied.
Reach reporter Imari Scarbrough at 704-994-5471 and follow her on Twitter @ImariScarbrough.