Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird- Notes

 Last time around for this venerable classic.  I'm guessing from a faulty memory that this is my fourth time reading it.

The book comes to mind naturally after reading Wayne Flynt's book on Harper Lee.

I decide to note the humor in the book this time around,

The author mentions on page one the events leading to Jem breaking his leg.  Where to start?  Nelle cleverly mentions General Lee cleaning Alabama of the Creek Indians.  Though tragic and genocidal, I see the humor.

Life in Maycomb is like life in the small northwest town of  Winfield in the 50's and 60's where I grew up.

"People moved slowly then.  They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about eveeything.  A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer.  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 time of vague optimism for some of the people:<aycomb County had recently been told that it nothing to fear but fear itself."

"I'm Charles Baker Harris," he said.  "I can read."

"I guess I thought you'd like to know I can read  You got anything needs readin' I can do it."

"See what you've done!" he said.  "Hasn't snowed in Maycomb since Appomattox.  It's bad children like you makes the seasons change."  P. 74

"I'll make him a Lane cake."  P. 83

Dill informs Scout by mail that he will not be returning to Maycomb.

"With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.  I stayed miserable for two days."  P. 132

Scout reminded Cal that she need not worry about them going to church with her: they had not done anything in church in years.

But Calpurnia evidently remembered a rainy Sunday when we were both fatherless and teacherless. Left to its own devices, the class tied Eunice Ann Simpson to a chair and placed her in the furnace room. We forgot her, trooped upstairs to church, and were listening quietly to the sermon when a dreadful banging issued from the radiator pipes, persisting until someone investigated and brought forth Eunice Ann saying she didn't want to play Shadrach anymore---Jem Finch said she wouldn't get burnt if she had enough faith, but it was hot down there. "  p. 133

Calpurnia's church was First Purchase African M.E. Church.  Negroes worshipped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays.  P. 134