Stocklaw Johnson

 By Steve A. Maze
     Arab, Alabama
    It’s not unusual for business owners to have portraits of prominent people displayed in their stores. A few exhibit images of well known entertainers or politicians, while doctors often hang photos of professional athletes that they have treated for a medical problem on their walls.
    Stocklaw Johnson was a born showman, a self-appointed preacher and the most well known man in Marshall County. No one else provided entertainment for as many people, or was the subject of as much interest and conversation, as the small-statured man clad in patched trousers and over-sized shoes that were much too large for his tiny feet.
  He and his wife, Dora, were familiar figures on the streets of Guntersville from the mid-1930s until the mid-50s. Picturesque in speech and action, the couple was always the center of attention on their trips to Guntersville and other towns in Marshall County.  Arthur P. Johnson got his nickname as a 12-year-old boy in Etowah County during a heated debate over a pending stock law that required rural citizens to fence up their livestock. The youngster was against the law and wrote a song ridiculing the people who wanted to pass it.
  The first verse went like this:
   “Way down yonder where they got no fence – stock law!
  “Way down yonder where they got no fence – stock law!
  “Way down yonder where they got no fence,
  “Stock law man ain’t got no sense – stock law”

    Another verse went:
   “Rope your cow around the horn
  “Stock law man ought never been born.”

    The song was a smash hit with the people who were against the law being passed, and “Stocklaw” was asked to sing the tune on several occasions during the campaign. In fact, he was asked to sing it so many times that he started charging a fee to perform the ditty. Even so, the requests continued to pour in.
  He later changed his position and supported the stock law, but his new nickname stuck.

 Pine kindling & preaching
  It was during the Great Depression era that Stocklaw Johnson became a household name in Marshall County. While many people were going on relief (welfare), he decided he would try to make it on his own. Word spread, and people in the community were soon pointing him out as the man who wouldn’t accept relief. He did accept some help later on, but mainly got by on shrewdness and wit.
  Folks admired him for that and became regular customers when he started his own peddling business. Stocklaw financed his enterprise by going around the county and borrowing 25-cents from his friends. The loans were repaid with the 25-cent bundles of pine kindling he peddled.
  Even though Stocklaw’s farm at Polecat Holler didn’t have enough timber to amount to anything, he always found ways to make money from it. He would cut pine kindling and haul it four miles to Guntersville in a two-wheel cart pulled by a bull, or by wheelbarrow. Some say that Stocklaw pushed the wheelbarrow, with Dora perched atop the pile of kindling, down the mountain from their home in the morning, and she pushed him back up the mountain in the evening.
  Above the hum of the traffic one could often hear Stocklaw barking his wares as he and Dora entered town for their weekly visit each Saturday. “P-i-n-e k-i-n-d-l-i-n-g. Pi-ne kind-ling,” he would yell.
  Stocklaw timed his entrance into the city to coincide when people were most likely to purchase the kindling – before daylight. The entrepreneur announced his arrival by sounding his trademark “train whistle”, which he could imitate by puckering his mouth and blowing.
  He added to his income by selling sassafras roots to be used in tea, as well as selling poke salad in the spring and leaf mold for gardens during the summer months.
  But the new businessman also found other ways to supplement his meager earnings. He and other ministers would preach to the crowd that always congregated around the courthouse square in Guntersville on Saturdays. The appreciative audience would toss change from their pockets to the preachers during sermons. Not surprisingly, that sparked more than one lively argument between Stocklaw and the other preachers as they vied for time on the square.
  Dora, often attired in a feed-sack dress and a do-rag wrapped around her head, would sing a gospel hymn from atop one of the stone blocks in the courtyard to attract on-lookers to their location so A.P. (the name she always referred to him by) could begin his sermon. Dora would then move off to her husband’s side and continue to sing when he began to preach in his trademark fire and brimstone fashion. In addition, she gathered up the coins that folks tossed in their direction.  “Just silver,” Stocklaw would holler as he encouraged the crowd to throw nickels and dimes rather than pennies and tokens.
  In at least one instance after Stocklaw had been preaching for about an hour, Dora yelled, “You can stop now, A.P., if you’re a mind to. We done got enough for dinner.”  Stocklaw abruptly stopped his sermon in mid-sentence, and the couple sauntered off toward a nearby store for a sandwich and RC Cola.
  Dora, however, wasn’t the only singer in the Johnson family. Stocklaw was in special demand by people who hired him (as a joke) to sing for one of their unsuspecting friends. Stocklaw would often collect two fees in these singing endeavors – one from the person who hired him and another from the one he was performing for to get him to stop.
  Someone actually recorded some of the tunes that the couple sang, and Stocklaw was especially glad when people asked him to sing those numbers. He also had a few of his favorite songs printed and sold copies of them as well. One was the songs was “Stock Law” from which he got his nickname. Two others were “The Plow Song” and “Pretty Fair Maiden All in the Garden”
  Stocklaw soon discovered that people were eager to have a picture of him and Dora, and used that venture as another way of supplementing his income. Every so often he would pose, alone or with Dora, and the pair would go around town selling the photos. Those photos are the ones most often seen on the walls of business establishments in Guntersville.

 Kind people
  Stocklaw and Dora Johnson were kind and compassionate people who didn’t always charge a fee to sing. Whenever local young men were drafted into military service the couple would meet the new soldiers at the Guntersville Bus Station as they were being shipped out. The patriotic pair would sing a few gospel hymns before visiting with the young men to “wish them luck.”
  Clodessa Kitchens of Guntersville also remembers how hospitable the couple was when people visited their home.
  “On a hot summer day in the late 1940s several young people, including myself, went on a visit to their home.
  “We walked the railroad from Rayburn Switch to a spot near their home, and then through the woods from there. When we arrived they seemed very happy to see all of us and asked us into their small home. We went as far as the door, but didn’t enter. They had poured a concrete floor in the house and it was very uneven since they hadn’t leveled the ground before pouring it. The floor was bumpy with many high and low places. They had walked on the concrete in their bare feet before it dried and their footprints were all over the floor.
  “They were very hospitable. Stocklaw got a dipper and rolled his pants legs up to his knees. Then he waded out to the middle of a stream that ran in front of their house to get us a drink of good cool water. We were all very impressed with their hospitality and how nicely they treated a group of young people.”

Stocklaw’s goats
  Stocklaw was well known for his wit, and one of the best examples of this concerned the many goats he owned throughout his life.  A railroad company used a herbicide spray to kill honeysuckle vines along the track that ran near Stocklaw’s home. Some of Stocklaw’s goats ate the poisoned vines and died as a result. He promptly approached the railroad company about paying him for the dead goats.
  “We put up signs warning about the poison,” a railroad representative stated in explaining why they were not liable for the loss.
  “Yes,” Stocklaw replied, “but my goats couldn’t read.”
  On another occasion Stocklaw was walking across the courthouse square with one of his goats trailing along behind him. A prisoner in the upper floor jail peeked through the cell bars and sarcastically yelled, “Stocklaw, I believe that’s the ugliest goat I have ever seen.”
  “Yeah, he’s ugly,” Stocklaw replied while looking up toward the cell, “but he ain’t in jail.”

 The passing of Stocklaw
  Marshall County lost it’s most colorful character in January of 1955 when Stocklaw Johnson died at his home at the age of 65. The exact day of his death is not known. Dora, who was caring for him, said that he had been sick with the flu for several days. The Guntersville Police Dept. heard he was sick and went to check on him at his isolated home in Polecat Holler. They found him in bed, cold and rigid. He had most likely passed away a few days earlier. Dora was not aware that he was dead and had been trying to feed him.
  The men drove a pickup truck as far as they could to the couple’s home in order to retrieve his body. Then they had to carry him another three-quarters of a mile on a stretcher before they could get to a road.
  Among many others, Alabama Governor “Big Jim” Folsom was moved by the death of Stocklaw Johnson. Governor Folsom had been relief director of Marshall County during part of the time he had lived in Guntersville, and was acquainted with Stocklaw. Upon reading of his death in the “Advertiser-Gleam”, the governor wrote to the newspaper’s editor, Porter Harvey.

  “Dear Porter:
  I noted with interest the detailed coverage you recently gave to the death of Stocklaw Johnson. Though not rich and powerful, he was certainly prominent, and was definitely a part of my memories of Marshall County. I thought your comprehensive article a fitting obituary.
  To point this out was not my purpose in writing you, but Stocklaw did accept one relief order when I was administrating the relief program in Marshall County. Sometimes afterwards he insisted on repaying it.
  I remember that it created quite a hassle because there was no fixed routine for repaying relief orders. All efforts to talk Stocklaw out of it failed and we finally bundled the money up and sent it to Washington.
  Whether or not it ever got into the United States Treasury, I do not know.
  With personal regards, I am
    Sincerely,
  Jim Folsom”

    Arthur P. (Stocklaw) Johnson’s funeral was held at Whitesburg Baptist Church in Etowah County with burial in the Whitesburg Cemetery. He was survived by his wife Dora (Romines) Johnson and a son, Jasper Johnson, from his first marriage to Bessie Childress. Three brothers and four sisters also survived him at the time of his death.
  Even though Stocklaw Johnson has been dead for almost 50 years, he still lives on in the memories of many Marshall County residents. They remember him as a smart business man, as well as someone who brought a smile to their faces. He is also remembered for his kindness, sincerity and compassion for his fellow man. But most of all, they remember him as their friend.
  Perhaps Clodessa Kitchens put it best when she said, “It was an honor to know him.”