An Alabama Town That Might Be Calling My Name

      This story has a beginning, but, at this moment, I do not know the ending.

   Let me begin in this way, by describing a time and a situation where a name was recalled in my memory:

   Last year, at Thanksgiving, we decided to drive to Arkansas to be with our daughter and her family for that holiday. Since Tuscaloosa, Alabama is about the halfway point between our home and theirs, we made reservations at a motel there. The motel was located on Harper Lee Drive, and as we drove in, I told Mayre that I knew that name, but could not put it in context with anything else.

   Putting it out of my mind for a time, we registered and then went out to find some supper. On the way it hit me, Harper Lee was the author of To Kill A Mockingbird. I realized that the only way I remembered this fact was that we had worked a jigsaw puzzle some time back, a puzzle showing best selling books, and her book was one of those depicted.

   I was happy to have remembered, but did not think much more about it until one morning when Dr. Albert Mohler mentioned her in his weekday morning podcast, "The Briefing".

   I Googled her name and read some things about this woman, whose one published book had won a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. (It is also true that she had written another book previous to "Mockingbird", but it was not published until 2015 after being discovered by her lawyer in a safe deposit box.)

   Nelle Harper Lee, born in Monroeville, Alabama, died in Monroeville, Alabama at the age of 89. She had not lived all her life in that one place, New York City was her haunt for a lot of her life.

   As I read stories about this lady and her book, I came across this picture at the top of one article:

   It shows a sculpture of a young girl, perhaps Scout, reading "Mockingbird" on a bench with a distinctive building in the background.

   Although I have never been to Monroeville, Alabama, it is easy to determine that this is the county courthouse. I have seen so many of these buildings all over the state of Georgia, and they are not easy to miss. Those clocks on the four sides of the cupola give it away.

   Even in an old one in Washington County GA, where the clock is stopped.

   I also realized that I had never actually read the book. Watching Gregory Peck in the movie of the same name, I'm sure, is not quite the same thing as the reading. I need to do that.

   But, after looking at the picture above, I'm pretty sure that I would like Nelle Harper Lee's hometown.

   That old 1904 courthouse seems to be calling my name, and my shutter finger is itching.

   One Day

   This story is not ended yet, stay tuned...