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“Then I come and stayed with Dellie up here. I was proud somebody got me. I’d have been dead. I was about dead anyway when Dellie got me, and I stayed with her and stayed with her. Her husband died, and I helped her around up there. Raise backer and corn and stuff. Garden, get the cow for her. Do them jobs for her, and I’ll still be with her. When she drops off, I don’t know what’ll happen then.”
– Simon Peter Norton, Jr.

I arrived in Madison County, North Carolina, in 1973 with stereotypes about mountain people. And I am certain that my new neighbors had equally banal notions about the people moving into their community. It’s what humans do.

Published in 2002, Sodom Laurel Album is a book about family, community and cultural change. It tells the story of Dellie Norton, an elderly ballad singer and tobacco farmer; her adopted son Junior; and their rural community in western North Carolina. Sodom Laurel Album also tells the story of my own growing involvement with the community as both observer and participant and, as such, is a coming of age story. Photographing Junior was initially part of this larger process of documenting community and lifestyle. But over time, I began to see my numerous images of Junior in a new light, as part of a process of self-discovery that has taken me far beyond the confines of my suburban upbringing and academic understanding of life.

My initial impressions and understanding of Junior were informed by Dellie and other members of her family and community. He had been living with Dellie for about twenty-five years at that point. She had informally adopted him when his father died and his mother gave Junior and his siblings to different families within the community. Junior was developmentally disabled and suffering from malnutrition. His life up to that point had been spent in a one-room cabin with a dirt floor, meals of crackers served on paint tin lids, with baths, when taken, in the neighboring creek. According to Dellie, “Most people were poor in them days, but they were poorer than most.” Dellie sent Junior to school, which he hated and eventually quit; taught him to work; and generally introduced him to a world that must have seemed bountiful compared to his early life. Junior clearly believes she saved his life.

Dellie moved far beyond her culture in many ways - with her music, her lifestyle, her attitude toward change. But she was also a product of time and place and her attitude toward children and people with developmental disabilities was representative of an old world-view. She sheltered Junior, kept him close, and generally discouraged any thoughts he might have toward leaving and living elsewhere. Dellie was raised in a world where a person learned to work and make do, or they died. She had little patience for Junior’s slowness and lack of interest in learning. She regularly dismissed his ideas as products of a person who didn’t have much sense. But Junior had a presence that could not be denied or ignored which led to more friction between them as he got older.