Language was play

Harper Lee

Harper Lee's idea of a good time, as told by Marja Mills in The Mockingbird Next Door, was to read aloud the social news in her hometown newspaper, laughing heartily all the while. It wasn't that she was making light of the people of Monroeville, Ala., whom she loved, or their calls on friends and neighbors, which she did herself, but rather the fact that somewhere in the 21st century this was still considered news and, more importantly, the language used to describe these events. More than anything, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird loved to play with language.

Lee, for example, delighted in talking about Alabama place names, some of them towns too small to appear on any map. The state has places called Burnt Corn, Smut Eye, Reform, Bug Tussle, Needmore, Murder Creek, Massacre Island and Penitentiary Mountain, among many others.

Even more pleasurable to her were certain expressions heard in rural Alabama and perhaps nowhere else. Here are some of them:

"I had a brother under me." This refers to a younger brother.

"Pounding the preacher." When one lacks money to put in the offering plate on Sunday, a pound of chicken or vegetables from the garden for the preacher will do.

"Journey proud." When you are anxious the night before starting on a trip, you are journey proud.

"Mashing buttons." Pushing buttons.

"Shopping buggy." Grocery cart.

She also enjoyed church signs. Her favorite was "HOW DO YOU PLAN TO SPEND ETERNITY? SMOKING OR NON?

Harper Lee spent about half of each year in Monroeville and the other half in New York City. She was comfortable in both environments, yet perhaps at the same time out of place in both. She was too intelligent, too sophisticated for Alabama, yet at the same time too much a simple country girl for New York. Thus it was necessary for her to go back and forth, feeding on the culture of both places. And wherever she might be, she played with language.