Southern Summers

Well, if anyone read my very first post you’ll see that I got a DVD set of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for my birthday. We watched almost an hour of the documentary last night before Scott and I switched over to watching “Hell’s Kitchen.” How’s that for contrast? We have two fantastic cooks in the family (Jeff and Natalie) and Natalie is editor of Fancy Food Magazine. So you can see our interest. Plus, Scott had just cooked his first meal (an excellent homemade chunky tomato sauce with penne pasta) as a rain check birthday dinner. Boy, he goes all out for birthdays. But, I digress.

My husband and I started talking about how so different our childhoods were from childhood today. And how ours were more like Jem’s and Scout’s although Mockingbird was set in the 1930s. We’d stay outside as long as light allowed and even then we’d run around playing chase and catching lightnin’ bugs until someone made us come in. Then, we’d scrub the dirt necklaces from our necks and hop into bed. He grew up in Birmingham and I in Prattville. Yet, we shared that about growing up in the South with her long summers of heat and sweet tea and watermelons.

This documentary is a wonderful look back in time as is Harper Lee’s book and the movie. No surprise that the book is one of our most beloved works of American fiction. The South with all of her problems just gets into your blood. Maybe it’s the red dirt, the pines, the kudzu that overtakes a rambled down barn and gives it a green blanket of prettiness. Or washing machines and sofas on the front porch. I just don’t know, but I missed it for so long when we moved away after college and didn’t return until about three years ago.