LAURINBURG — April C. Turner and Bill Lepp visited downtown Laurinburg on Thursday to tell stories when the Arts Council of Scotland County hosted its 13th annual Storytelling Gala in the Storytelling & Arts Center of the Southeast.
“The Arts Council wanted to bring cultural opportunities and entertainment opportunities to the community,” said Terry Gallman, treasurer of the Arts Council Board.
She added Lepp brought different stories based off his sense of humor and real-life experiences and Turner brought more African cultural stories.
Turner opened up the event with a song from West Africa that was in honor of her ancestors. Then she described a story that was told to her by a man from the Congo, whom she met in a Starbucks.
“He said, ‘did you know that you could solve a problem with a song?’” Turner said.
The story was based around two best friends who started off close but soon fell out and began arguing.
“They fight so much, so long, so loud that everyone around them began to argue too,” she said.
Both of their families started to argue too. The village elder had to come and find a solution to stop both of the friends from constantly arguing.
According to Turner, the elder told all of the people surrounding the two friends to join at the center of the village and they were going to sing, dance and play music from the songs from the past.
Turner ended by stating that everyone in the village continued with their songs until the best friends stopped fighting and the issue “dissolved away.” The elder, who was satisfied, said, “patience is bitter but it bares sweet fruit.”
Her second story was about a 10-year-old boy who wanted to help his mother, who worked a lot, by baking some cookies and selling them to the people at school. He earned a lot of money and gave it to his mother who greatly appreciated his gift. In return, she gave him $10 to get more sugar and flour so that they could continue their business of selling cookies — until he lost that money.
Lepp told a story of how he became a storyteller from his family, who he claimed doesn’t tell the truth.
“It was always up to the listener to decided what was true, not maliciously, just that’s the way it was,” he said.
He added how his grandfather never told the same story twice. That’s when Lepp learned how to “exaggerate” his stories.
He told stories about his family, like his sister who borrowed his Rice Krispy Treats box costume for the Halloween costume contest at their school when they were younger. She ended up winning but refused to give him the ribbons from the contest, since it was his costume.
One story was centered around his science fair project on the water cycle. He got the supplies for it; the bottom half of a turkey roster that was filled halfway with water, a stand with a hairdryer on it and a terrarium which was placed on top.
“I could plug the hairdryer in and it would blow hot air into the water,” he said. “Some of that water will evaporate, the evaporated water would condense on top of the [terrarium] then I could
bump the table and that condensed water could fall back down into the turkey roaster like it was raining.”
The night of the science fair, Lepp said he was prepared for the judges until it was time to bump the table because the hairdryer fell into the water and the lights went out in about half of the county.
The next story was about him being the “last of five children (and) how your parents just don’t care that much anymore.”
Lepp’s next story for the event was based on his childhood of experience a Baptist church, even though he was Methodist.
Lepp ended his performance with a story from his book, “The Princess and the Pickup Truck,” which is about a mountain prince who wanted to find and marry a mountain princess.
Both of the performers thanked everyone for their time, and Lepp announced that his books were for sale for those who were interested after the show.
Octavia Johnson is a fall semester intern from The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
