Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: Mockingbird in Monroeville

We drove deep into the heart of Alabama country to find where Harper Lee and Truman Capote spent much of their time growing up, in Monroeville. It is a faded, sleepy little place, even now. Not much going for it, though there are pockets with elegant Alabama wooden homes where some of the more well-to-do townsfolk live, that would have cheered the place up a little when Harper and Truman were alive.

Harper’s dad was a lawyer. So law was important in her world. She knew other judges and lawyers around this tiny square box of a downtown that encircles the pretty white Court House occupying the very heart of its square. We have noticed often on our travels, now, in the south, that Attorneys-at-law seem to occupy the buildings closest to where the action in the courthouse goes on. The same then. So, not much has changed.

Truman sometimes lived in Monroeville, and sometimes not. After his parents split he tended to be with his mother’s family, who were near neighbours to the Lees. The children were a busy pair. Writing. They didn’t spend their free time at cinemas as most children their age might have done, using that as their fantasy world. Instead, they followed Harper’s dad and his friends into the Courthouse. They took bits of their real world, then combined them to make their tales, which have many references to their small town lives.

An actual rape case that occurred when Harper was only ten makes up the core of her masterpiece: To Kill a Mockingbird, which became one the classics of modern literature and among my top favourite reads of all time. Dill, Scout’s sidekick in the book, was modelled on Truman. At the heart of this tale was something Scout’s father, Atticus, once told her: that it was a sin to kill a Mockingbird. Throughout the tale the weak, the vulnerable, the damaged, whether it be a character or an animal, are portrayed as the mockingbirds, the vulnerable ones. Needing care. Needing protection. Especial help.

Today, Harper’s home is gone, as is Truman’s. A Mel's Dairy Dream, some remnant foundations and a dusty car park occupy most of the space where these two spent so many magical hours learning together.

The town remembers them with an open air play, once a year in May, which draws crowds. The first act is played out in the grounds of the Courthouse. The second act upstairs in the courtroom. Small wooden props of their faded houses, including Boo Radley’s at the left, sit on the Courthouse grounds today, waiting for that action. Boo’s house, damaged, is a little like the character, a mockingbird, too.