Day Ten, April 30, 2015

Another milestone day on the journey.  As many of you know my favorite book and movie is To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM).

If you have never read it STOP reading this blog and get it.  Then rent the movie and watch it.  Then come back here.....https://youtu.be/b3XLsV1JgC8

As it happens Harper Lee's home is Monroeville, AL (as is Truman Capote's).  Just a few miles west of I-65 and south of Birmingham is Monroeville, the Literary Capital of Alabama and well worth a stop.

Reading TKAM over Scout's shoulder

The town was the model for the fictitious town of Maycomb in TKAM.  The old courthouse that plays a dominant role in the story is a free museum that captures the history of Maycomb and of it's two most famous authors.  We were the only two visitors at the courthouse today which now functions as a museum for the town with plenty of TKAM and Truman Capote artifacts.  Visitors are allowed to actually sit in the courtroom which was replicated as the set for the movie.  http://www.monroecountymuseum.org/#!functions/cq4e

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop . . . somehow it was hotter then . . . bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.

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 teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum. . . . There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

The outdoor set for the TKAM theatrical production

The courtroom

The gallery where Scout, Jem, and Dill watched the trial

This has proved to be another of those unexpected pleasant surprises on our road trip.

On to Pensacola.