The Way It Is

 41 Week Forty-one: The Way It Is

Said hey, little boy, you can’t go where the others go

“Cause you don’t look like they do

Said hey, old man, how can you stand to think that way?

Did you really think about it before you made the rules?

He said, Son, that’s just the way it is

Some things will never change

That’s just the way it is

Ah, but don’t you believe them

— Bruce Hornsby, The Way It Is from the album The Way It Is

My friend of some 28 years came with one of her friends to visit us and the Greensboro, NC area where we live. As unlike we two appear (and I mean that literally and figuratively) we are friends. She’s short; I’m not. I’m fluffy; she’s not. She’s a woman, and although I’m not, she refers to me as one of her best girlfriends. She is an ordained Christian minister; I’m about as far from that as is possible. I enjoy an ardent spirit; she rarely if ever does. She’s black. I’m not.

We first met when she was appointed as assistant principal at the high school where I was the principal. As high school administrators, let’s just say she and I saw some stuff, which we happily rehashed over the course of two days. We remembered the knuckleheads who at the time challenged our patience and good judgment, the sweet, smiling kids who made us proud of the job we tried to do well every day, and even the few who insisted on making their journeys through high school a lot more difficult than it had to be. We talked about everything from grandkids to ex-colleagues and anything from southern racism to our shared hope for and our  faith in a Harris/Walz administration.

Finding things to see and do in the Triad (as the Greensboro—High Point—Winston-Salem region is called) is not hard. Our visitors went to the International Civil Rights Museum, the site of the FW Woolworth’s lunch counter where in 1960 four freshmen from North Carolina A&T quietly sat down at the lunch counter and were refused service. They refused to leave and stayed until closing. The next day they returned with twenty-five more students. On the third day sixty-three students joined the sit-in. The following day three white students joined the protest. By the fifth day some three hundred people participated. Although the company agreed to negotiate, only token changes were made. Protests continued and the fire spread to college-aged students nation-wide. Boycotts of segregated lunch counters reduced revenue by over thirty percent. Store owners relented. Six months after the initial sit-in, the same four men were served at the same Woolworth’s lunch counter.

I had accurately predicted her emotional response to what she would see at the civil rights museum, but it opened the door for candid conversation about the state of our union, and what lies ahead, especially if Harris and Walz are not elected.

On what promised to be a very different experience, we all toured Korner’s Folly (https://kornersfolly.org/), a 19th century mansion-of-sorts in Kernersville, NC. Construction began in 1878 and continuously remodeled for over five decades, the house is a must-see in our little adopted hometown. As a designer, painter, and interior decorator, Jule Korner envisioned a house that would be a living catalog that potential clients could visit to see his ideas in person. The result is a one-of-a-kind local landmark. Seeing is believing, but even then you might hear yourself saying out loud, “Look at that!” There are 15 fireplaces, all different from the next. Ceiling heights range from 5.5 feet (my neck ached leaving these two children’s bedrooms) to 25 feet in a magnificently grand reception room. The house features what is believed to be the first private children’s theatre that hosted many productions and performances over the years. The windows, trapdoors, quirky doorways, stairways, and moldings throughout the house will make any visitor wonder if there are any two alike. It’s something to see, to say the least.

The walk from the Visitors Center took us past Aunt Dealy’s cottage, a beautiful white house located directly behind The Folly. That was our introduction to one of the most intriguing players in the story of Korner’s Folly. As we walked by, I wondered out loud if she was an actual aunt or someone called “Auntie” much as southerners were known to do. We would eventually learn that answer, but not until we were about to leave the mansion at the end of our tour. She was mentioned many times throughout the house tour, but never as anyone except a loving family member. As we would learn, Dealy’s name was actually Clara (sometimes spelled “Clary”). Clara’s story is far too complex to be simplified by me, but I can say that with the loving depiction of Aunt Dealy as a family member of Jule Korner, before and after emancipation, we were completely unaware that she had been enslaved along with her mother and two sisters. If not for the circumstance to become the house worker of the Phillip Kerner family she might never have met Jule who was only two when his mother died. Clara all but raised Jule and the other Kerner children as Phillip remained unmarried. (As she often referred to the children affectionately as “Deary”, so the children did in return. Their mispronunciation resulted in changing “deary” to dealy”. It is said that her given name was all but forgotten.)

My friend was truly impressed by the Korner Folly story, but she was genuinely moved by the story within the story. In 1896 when Aunt Dealy/Clara died, the family petitioned the Moravian Church near the house to have Clara buried with other family members. The request was denied. In response Jule Korner purchased land immediately bordering the church graveyard where he built a circular brick enclosure, which can be toured today. It was there along with every other family member that Clara was buried. Jule’s daughter Dore once claimed that her father loved no one as much as he loved Clara.

Two unlikely friends, a black woman and a white man, bonding over the love story of white man and black woman in a southern family that refused to see race as a reason to hate. It’s almost as though they refused to see race at all.

Bruce Hornsby & The Range - The Way It Is (Video Version)

Note: Upon the death of Phillip Kerner (the last “owner” of Clara) she was granted freedom and given land and property in or near Charlotte, NC. Later as a family member and caretaker of Jule’s and Polly’s children, she was given a house on the grounds of the Folly. When Clara died, she bequeathed all of that back to the family. The love was mutual.