These are a few of my favorite things...
Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it.
Somehow it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps and by nightfall were like soft tea cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy; and no money to buy it with. Although Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
That summer I was six years old.
And so begins one of my all-time favorite movies (and books) - 1962's Academy Award Winning To Kill a Mockingbird, based on the 1960, Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name by Harper Lee.
The story is told from the perspective of six year old tomboy Scout (Jean Louise) Finch, who lives in Maycomb during the Depression with her constant companion, her older brother Jem, and her father Atticus, a lawyer. I'm not going to get into the messages of the story because they're quite varied and complex (the Wikipedia entry actually does quite a good job). Suffice it to say that it just rings several chimes with me.
I was a total tomboy when I was younger, just like Scout. So much so that I ran with my brother and his friends instead of the little girls in the neighborhood and it was nearly impossible for my parents to keep a shirt on me until I was about 6 yrs old. A pair of shorts and some underwear was good enough for my brother (and me) during the summer.
Though there are only 2 years between my brother and myself instead of the 4 between Scout and Jem, our relationship was quite similar. To me, my father was quite a bit like Atticus Finch, too. He wasn't a lawyer, but he was a quiet, competent man who seemed to have infinite patience, a strong personal sense of right and wrong, and often took on the unpleasant duties of life.
I grew up in northern Missouri but my father and most of his family were from the very southern part of the state, nearly in Arkansas. My mother's family was from South Carolina - she grew up in the small town of Fountain Inn and the even tinnier town of Six Mile. I spent many summers with my grandmother - Ettie Mae - in Fountain Inn and usually came home with a pronounced Southern drawl. Although once when I was older and it had been quite a few years since I'd last visited, my cousins listened to me in fascination for a few minutes before one of them drawled "Yew hav tha cutest aksent!" *G*
This little trip down memory lane was prompted by watching the movie last night for the - I really have no idea how many times I've seen this movie - and I swear I see something new in it every time.
This time it was a weird association. In my mind I see Scout and Jem as Sam and Dean Winchester. Although I certainly don't associate Atticus with John Winchester. *G*
If you've never seen the movie or read the book, what are you waiting for?
Somehow it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps and by nightfall were like soft tea cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy; and no money to buy it with. Although Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
That summer I was six years old.
And so begins one of my all-time favorite movies (and books) - 1962's Academy Award Winning To Kill a Mockingbird, based on the 1960, Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name by Harper Lee.
The story is told from the perspective of six year old tomboy Scout (Jean Louise) Finch, who lives in Maycomb during the Depression with her constant companion, her older brother Jem, and her father Atticus, a lawyer. I'm not going to get into the messages of the story because they're quite varied and complex (the Wikipedia entry actually does quite a good job). Suffice it to say that it just rings several chimes with me.
I was a total tomboy when I was younger, just like Scout. So much so that I ran with my brother and his friends instead of the little girls in the neighborhood and it was nearly impossible for my parents to keep a shirt on me until I was about 6 yrs old. A pair of shorts and some underwear was good enough for my brother (and me) during the summer.
Though there are only 2 years between my brother and myself instead of the 4 between Scout and Jem, our relationship was quite similar. To me, my father was quite a bit like Atticus Finch, too. He wasn't a lawyer, but he was a quiet, competent man who seemed to have infinite patience, a strong personal sense of right and wrong, and often took on the unpleasant duties of life.
I grew up in northern Missouri but my father and most of his family were from the very southern part of the state, nearly in Arkansas. My mother's family was from South Carolina - she grew up in the small town of Fountain Inn and the even tinnier town of Six Mile. I spent many summers with my grandmother - Ettie Mae - in Fountain Inn and usually came home with a pronounced Southern drawl. Although once when I was older and it had been quite a few years since I'd last visited, my cousins listened to me in fascination for a few minutes before one of them drawled "Yew hav tha cutest aksent!" *G*
This little trip down memory lane was prompted by watching the movie last night for the - I really have no idea how many times I've seen this movie - and I swear I see something new in it every time.
This time it was a weird association. In my mind I see Scout and Jem as Sam and Dean Winchester. Although I certainly don't associate Atticus with John Winchester. *G*
If you've never seen the movie or read the book, what are you waiting for?