Marching With Atticus Finch

Three generations in Harper Lee’s image

My father just left to drive from St. Louis to Alabama to spend six weeks volunteering in the Black community of Montgomery, tutoring students and registering voters. While he’s there, I’ll send him postcards that he’ll save his entire life. A year later he will travel to Washington D.C. to participate in Dr. King’s March.

When he first gives me To Kill a Mockingbird, I feel as though the book has always been a part of me. Wild, unruly Scout is a girl I wish I knew. Wish I was. I am jealous of her independence. She and Jem and Dill live a life that is intoxicating in its freedom from the adult world. The slow, languid southern life — with its dusty streets, tire swings, and even its rabid dogs — is one of those places I want to step into. I can imagine every wraparound porch, every path through the loblolly pines, and the earthy smell of simmering collard greens.

But I’m not with them in Alabama, I’m in Missouri. Our street in St. Louis is your typical 1950s neighborhood, with many large families. A two-block radius is home to at least 50 children. Together, we create our own fantasies and stories. There are weddings that take place in basements with gowns snuck out of older sisters’ closets. Forts built in garages from old wood and collected junk. Our summer nights are spent playing flashlight hide-and-seek until at long last we are called home by our mothers. We have our own secret society and perhaps that is what has drawn me to this story of children in small town Alabama.

During grade school, our group decides that three elderly brothers who live together on our street are highly suspicious. They look alike, with gray hair and long beards, and each stands barely five feet tall. Their house is overgrown with ivy and prickly bushes, and is always dark. Such nefarious creatures. The one we see the most we name Crookie because of his stooped posture.

One Halloween out trick-or-treating, my friends dare me to knock on their door. As I creep up the path I understand the terror Jem felt when he took the dare and approached Boo Radley’s house. I knock. The door opens immediately, and Crookie lurches…

Related posts:

Ripples on the surface Of my mind splash and resurface Once again reminded Cut loose then badly blinded. Is it just a crazy race? Or one more memory of Another time another space Interfaced or…

Fast forward to a month ago, I see one of my favorite travel vloggers, aka Nas Daily, setting up his first boot camp to go in Ecuador, travel with him, learn from him, work with him. I sent a video…

Want a nice environment to run your local Laravel dev server but can’t afford a Mac or switch to Linux? Raspberry Pi can save you.