I'm reading To Kill A Mockingbird - for the first time. I've seen the movie several times and most recently a week ago after getting it from our local library. After that I realized I had never read the book, so went back to the library and checked it out.
It is the one of the dearest books I've ever read along with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and maybe a couple of others that I can't recall at the moment. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 and is the only published book by female author, Harper Lee. It is apparently loosely based on her experiences growing up in Alabama. The main characters are Scout (a little tomboy), her older brother Jem, their attorney father, Atticus, and lots of other extremely colorful characters. The story is told in first person by Scout. So many of the references in it reminded me of things in my life while growing up in Texas, all things southern being somewhat similar.
One particular section reminded me of the hand fans we used in church back then. They were paper affairs with elaborate religious scenes (The Garden of Gethsemane in the book) glued to a thin wooden handle. Since there was no air conditioning and in the southern states, the church could get very stuffy during a typical lengthy service, these fans were made available next to the hymnals on the backs of the church pews. This one depicts the Last Supper and I do remember using a Last Supper fan myself. This website, Jewel Antique has several others.
Anyway, I'm about halfway through the book and it's safe to say that there is something delightfully uplifting on almost every page. Included is much humor as in this passage describing the wild imagination of their friend, Dill, who ran away from his home of some distance to their home.
"I finally found my voice. "How'd you get here?"
By an involved route. Refreshed by food, Dill recited this narrative: having been bound in chains and left to die in the basement (there were basements in Meridian) by his new father, who disliked him, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmer who heard his cries for help (the good man poked a bushel pod by pod through the ventilator), Dill worked himself free by pulling the chains from the wall.
Still in wrist manacles, he wandered two miles out of Meridian where he discovered a small animal show and was immediately engaged to wash the camel. He traveled with the show all over Mississippi until his infallible sense of direction told him he was in Abbott County, Alabama, just across the river from Maycomb. He walked the rest of the way."
The Dill character is based upon her lifelong friend, Truman Capote.
Almost every page has some wonderful story on it. Many are the life's lessons found on it's pages.
My Mother and "I'll Swan".....
Growing up in Texas, I remember that when my mother was on the telephone, she would repeat the phrase, "I'll swan", in response to some revelation being conveyed by someone on the other end of the line. "Well, I'll swan," she'd say. (Her inflection when speaking this would be similar to saying the phrase, "Well, I'll be darned".) Through the years I've always wondered what it meant, but my interpretation is "I'll swoon". Women were prone to swooning in times past, as was expected from the "frail and more delicate sensibilites" of the "fairer" sex. According to Dictionary. com swoon means: 1. To faint; to lose consciousness 2. To enter into a state of hysterical rapture or ectasy From one southern belle to another, it was a dramatic statement conveying their astonishment and or consternation over certain events of import.
Well, I'll swan...............
