A visit to Montgomery, Alabama

Two Alabama authors: Kathryn Tucker Windham of Selma and Nelle Harper Lee of Monroeville.
In background is Mrs. Windham's daughter, Helen Ann (Dilcy) Hilley of Birmingham
and Alabama folk artist Charlie Lucas of Selma. Miss Lee is a past Alabama
Academy of Honor inductee.

By Al Benn

When George Wallace was running for governor and president -- often at the
same time -- he liked to say at rallies that Alabamians were "as refined
and cultured" as anyone in the country.

He also enjoyed calling those of us who covered his campaigns
"pointy-headed" pencil pushers with preconceived, jaundiced views of
Alabama.

Wallace knew he was playing to the crowds that turned out for his campaign
speeches, but he also was aware that his comments contained more than a
kernel of truth.

Monday's induction ceremony at the annual Alabama Academy of Honor
reflected Wallace's belief that his state has produced some of America's
most important citizens.

The newest inductees are:

(1) Gov. Bob Riley: A successful businessman who served three terms in
Congress before being elected to Alabama's most important position last
year.

(2) Don Logan: As chairman of AOL Time Warner's Media and Communications
Group, he oversees one of the world's largest print and electronic
operations.

(3) Malcolm Portera: As chancellor of the University of Alabama System, he
supervises the state's largest higher education enterprise with a $2
billion budget, 42,000 students and 21,900 employees.

(4) Van Richey: President and chief executive officer of American Cast
Iron Pipe Co., he guides a business that has been named by Fortune
magazine as one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

(5) Kathryn Tucker Windham: She has established herself as a nationally
known storyteller, author, radio personality and photographer.

The five joined an illustrious group of Alabamians who preceded them in
induction ceremonies dating back to the academy's inception in 1965.

Many of those honored in the past were on hand to welcome the newest
group. Among them was Nelle Harper Lee, famed author of "To Kill A
Mockingbird." She watched quietly from the balcony.

"This is an academy of achievers, deep thinkers and dreamers" said
Portera, who spoke for the newest group of inductees.

Riley, who flew in from Mobile, was a few minutes late and he hurried into
the big room at the Capitol to rousing applause as he slipped into his
jacket.

The governor spoke for a few minutes about his favorite subject -- moving
Alabama forward. His comments echoed what he's been saying on the tax
reform stump over the past few weeks, but he didn't dwell on that.

"You are the best of Alabama," he told current and past inductees.

My Yankee relatives and friends have, at times, taken a dim view of
Alabama, and I try my best to set them straight. It hasn't been that
difficult, not with the likes of those who are members of the Academy of
Honor.

Lee is one of the world's most celebrated authors. Wernher von Braun and
his team of scientists developed the rocket that put Americans on the
moon. Paul Bryant led the University of Alabama back to gridiron
greatness. Thomas Moorer once was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Condoleezza Rice is one of our president's most trusted advisers.

Add to those achievers dozens of industrialists, businessmen, jurists,
journalists and political leaders and it's quite a lineup of excellence --
one that should make all Alabamians proud.
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Alvin Benn writes a column for the Montgomery Advertiser. If you have a
column idea, write, or call his home, (334) 875-3249.

Nelle Harper Lee signs copy of her book, "To Kill a Mockingbird" for Ben Windham,
Editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News, and son of Kathryn Tucker Windham.

The Tuscaloosa News
Aug. 24, 2003

There was interesting news in the telephone call from Selma. My mother, author-storyteller-photographer Kathryn Tucker Windham, would be inducted in a few days into the Alabama Academy of Honor.

The Legislature created the academy in 1965 to honor the 100 greatest living Alabamians. Needless to say, I was one proud son.

I’d known for some time that my mother had been selected. The news was that Harper Lee, who nominated my mother, might attend the ceremony in the old House chambers in Montgomery.

A public appearance by Harper Lee anywhere is news.

Her 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird" is one of the most widely read books on the planet, selling more than 30 million copies in English and translations in three dozen languages.

It won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a classic movie, starring Gregory Peck in the role of a lifetime.

But for all of the stunning success of her book, Lee, who turned 77 in April, has kept a low profile. Some people call her a recluse; others say she simply enjoys her privacy, sharing her life with a small circle of family and friends.

In the Alabama vernacular, she likes to keep her business down home.

She has not granted an interview since 1964. Except for one event in the 1980s, she has not spoken in public for years.

According to reports, she divides her time between her small south Alabama hometown, Monroeville, and New York City, where she walks the streets happily incognito, dressed down like a native.

Even in Monroeville she seems to begrudge her celebrity. She has never attended a local performance of the play adapted from her novel in which townspeople portray the characters. Years ago she stopped signing her books for Monroeville stores when she learned the prices were being jacked up by merchants and customers alike.

She sticks tightly to a small circle of family and friends. Wary of fans and reporters, she does not enjoy being photographed.

As soon as I heard she might be in Montgomery last Monday for the Academy of Honor induction, I called my younger sister.

“How gauche would it be if I took a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird’ for her to autograph?" I asked.

My sister didn’t answer quickly. It would be our mother’s day to shine, after all.

“Well," she said finally, “I don’t think it would be too tacky. I have an autographed copy. I think you should have one, too."

The answer didn’t sound all that convincing.

“OK," I said. “I don’t really want to bother Miss Lee. I’ll think about it."

I thought until last Saturday, when I decided to go ahead and be gauche. I’d read that Lee is polite, but a friend also said she has “hell and pepper in her." I figured if she didn’t want to sign, she would say so.

The only problem was, I couldn’t lay hands on my copy of her famous book.

We recently introduced a massive new entertainment center into the great room of our house, displacing novels, records, tapes and electronic gear. We haven’t quite gotten things straightened out yet, and books, towering in precarious piles, still clog the area around the coffee table.

Searching for “Mockingbird," I waded into the thick of this literary logjam, pulling out volumes I hadn’t seen in years: a biography of John Lee Hooker, a collection of Chekhov’s works, Archibald Rutledge’s wonderfully anachronistic portrait of a vanished South, “God’s Children."

But Lee’s masterpiece remained as elusive as its author.

Then I remembered. I had loaned it to my son, who had the book on his ninth-grade reading list last year.

“Oh yeah," he said when I pressed the issue. “I think I still have it ... somewhere."

Again, it was not a reassuring answer. By early Sunday afternoon the book still hadn’t turned up.

Only 20 hours remained until the Academy of Honor induction. I prepared to head out for one of Tuscaloosa’s two bookstores that do business on Sunday.

I was tying my shoes when he burst in triumphantly.

“Found it, Dad!"

And so he had ó or most of it. The dust jacket was missing, and the cover bore scars of public school classrooms. Inside the front cover, in large block letters, he had written his name with a black Magic Marker.

It was not the kind of thing to present to an eminent author. I decided to look for a more presentable copy.

I couldn’t find one. The stores had paperback copies of “To Kill a Mockingbird," but if I wanted a hardbound copy, it would be a special order.

That wasn’t an option, and presenting a paperback for Lee’s inscription offended even my sense of decorum.

Deflated, I decided to forget about seeking an autograph and just enjoy the ceremony with my family.

It was only at the last moment ó as I headed out the door early Monday for Montgomery ó that I decided to grab the old hardback copy anyway. Just in case.

I met up with my younger sister at her home in Birmingham.

“What do you think?" I asked, showing her the scarred, jacketless, written-in book.

“I think it’s fine," she said. “Look what I’m taking."

It was a huge poster for the movie of “To Kill a Mockingbird." Apparently it had been collected from some Spanish-language cinema. A portrait of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch dominated the poster, under a banner that read “Para Matar un Sinsonte."

“The English-language posters for ëTo Kill a Mockingbird’ are pretty hot," my sister explained. A friend had given her the more easily available Spanish one.

I didn’t feel nearly so awkward then.

Privately, I doubted that Lee would give either of us an autograph, but I had pretty much convinced myself that it didn’t really matter. It would be much more interesting, I thought, if we could talk to Lee about her life and literary career.

What little I knew about her current activities I gleaned from an article by a writer named Marja Mills that was published last September in the Chicago Tribune. Lee wouldn’t be interviewed, but Mills managed to talk to her sister, some of her friends, a Monroeville minister and others to put together an interesting portrait.

It said, among other things, that Lee is a Republican, a conservative on some issues and liberal on others. One of her friends said she is frustrated that the world has grown “coarse and obscene" and that the South has failed to come to grips with racism.

Why she has never published another book is a question that has fascinated her fans and critics for years. Alice Finch Lee explained to Mills that her sister had simply “hit the pinnacle" with her first novel and there was no need to try to top it.

I’ve heard alternate explanations. Years ago, I met Archulus Persons, Truman Capote’s father (Capote took the surname of his Cuban stepfather after his mother remarried). By blood, Truman was related to the Alabama family that includes Gordon Persons, the governor who brought Coach Ralph “Shug" Jordan to Auburn and martial law to Phenix City when Attorney General-elect Albert Patterson was murdered.

Arch Persons didn’t say so, but he and his wife weren’t very good parents during their troubled marriage. Truman was reared mostly by female relatives in Monroeville. Their house happened to be next to Harper Lee’s; Lee and Capote grew up together and remained firm friends.

What Persons did tell me was that Capote wrote “almost all" of “To Kill a Mockingbird."

I don’t believe it, especially coming from Persons, who struck me as a blowhard. Moreover, Lee’s sister adamantly denied the same allegation in the Chicago Tribune piece, calling it “the biggest lie ever told."

Perhaps Capote helped here and there with her novel, just as Lee helped him during his research for “In Cold Blood." But I believe “To Kill a Mockingbird" is very much Lee’s own work. The similarities to Capote’s own pieces set in Alabama are no more than one would expect from great artists who shared a childhood together, talking about people, ideas and stories.

I figured Lee would never talk to me about Capote, but I figured there would be plenty of other things to discuss.

We share a lot of mutual interests. She is a devoted follower of Alabama football. Like me, she had a father whose given name was Amasa. She enjoys fishing, local history and down-home foods. Eudora Welty, Mark Twain and William Faulkner are among our favorite writers.

My sister and I got to Montgomery in time for a reception before the induction ceremony. I gave my mother a kiss and a bear hug. Then I couldn’t help myself. I asked her if Harper Lee had come.

“She’s right there," my mother said, gesturing toward a coffee table near a corner.

I couldn’t have picked her out. She was short, gray-haired, bespectacled and smiling. She wore a blouse with pleasing patterns of crimson and white.

Furthermore, she didn’t shy away when I asked for an autograph ó for my son, I explained, proffering the battered book. She graciously agreed at once.

There was no room on the coffee table, so she suggested using my back as a substitute. I stooped over, she placed the book firmly between my shoulder blades and signed it.

I pressed my luck. “May I have a photo of you and my mother?" I asked.

Again, she readily agreed. As I aimed in their direction and fumbled with the digital knobs, a swarm of other cameras erupted from nearby coats and bags and flashes fired off from every direction. Lee did not seem particularly pleased.

Realizing that it was not a good time to try to start a conversation, I thanked her and wandered off with my book to find my sister.

She stared at the inscription.

“Oh, I hate you," she said. “Do you think she’ll sign my poster now?"

“Only one way to find out," I replied.

Again, Lee agreed. But her patience clearly had worn thin. A friend trying to photograph her in the act of autographing the poster got a waggling finger signifying “no" from the author.

It was at that point that my old friend and colleague Alvin Benn, now retired as a reporter from the Montgomery Advertiser, cruised up.

Al is no shrinking daisy and he doesn’t live life in kid gloves. You know when Al’s in the house.

“Harper Lee!" he exclaimed.

Evidently they’d crossed paths before.

“You’re retired," she said, heading out of the reception room. Then she added with a smile, “You bastard."

Their exchange was loud enough for everyone to hear but Al took it in stride. Laughing, he said he might use Lee’s comment on the dust jacket of a book he’s writing about his life and times in the news business.

My mouth was open. I decided the hell and pepper had temporarily taken precedence over the part that finds the world crude and obscene.

Al saw it as kind of an affectionate salute.

“Besides," he told me later, “it’s not every day that a world-famous author calls you a bastard."

Soon we were summoned to the induction ceremony in the old House chambers.

Unlike other members of the academy, who took their seats on the floor in comfortable antique chairs, Lee sat in the balcony, where the press corps had covered the lower chamber when the old Capitol was still used by the Legislature.

Afterward, she attended a luncheon for the honorees but she was seated at another table, in a decidedly inconspicuous position against the wall.

Our table was slow to leave. People kept dropping by to talk to my mother. By the time I looked around, Lee was gone.

Still, it hadn’t been a bad day. I was full of pride for my mother’s honor. And I could one-up Alvin Benn. How many people can say they had a great American author autograph a classic book squarely between their shoulder blades?

The next day, a friend e-mailed me a photo he snapped of Lee using my back as a writing desk. But “don’t forward it to anybody," he warned in the e-mail. “I don’t think Miss Lee likes that kind of thing."

Don’t worry, cuz. I’ll keep it down home.

Reach Editorial Editor Ben Windham at (205) 722-0193 or by e-mail at ben.windham@tuscaloosanews.com

Harper Lee signs movie poster for Dilcy Windham Hilley. Looking on are Kathryn Windham's grandson,
Ben Hilley, a seventh grader at Pizitz Middle School in Birmingham; Kathryn Windham; and Dilcy Windham Hilley.

Alabama Academy of Honor inductee Don Logan,
chairman of Time Warner's Media and Communications Group.

Joyce Bodiford prepares one of Chris' famous hot dogs "all the way," while owner Theo Katechis looks on.
Behind Katechis is employee Greg Cumuze.

Odd-Egg Editor
By Kathryn Tucker Windham

This eye-opening memoir by a far-minded and engaging writer recalls what life was like for a female reporter in that unbudging male bastion, the southern newsroom.

Chapter 3
Recollections of Chris’s Hot Dog Stand
Dexter Avenue
Montgomery, Alabama

In the days before Pearl Harbor I was still covering the police beat, still leaving with Mr. And Mrs. Allen Woodall and their two little boys, Sonny and Buddy, at 28 Cloverdale Park (I paid forty dollars a month for a room with private bath, maid service and two meals a day), and still being paid fifteen dollars a week. I was making small weekly payments on a Schwinn bicycle and an Underwood portable typewriter. They, and a few books, constituted my worldly possessions.

My recreation budget would have been extremely limited and I likely would have been broke most of the time had it not been for my radio movie reviews and the “lamp shade circuit.”

Allen Woodall, who was advertising manager for Radio Station WSFA, arranged for me to get passes to aall the movie theatres in exchange for doing brief weekly reviews for the station. The experience I had had writing movie reviews for my cousin Earl’s weekly paper, back when I was in high school in Thomasville, stood me in good stead.

For the “lamb shade circuit,” I wrote fluffy articles about small local businesses, such as specialty shops, tearooms, home furnishings and interior decorating establishments (hence the name “lamp shade circuit”) and others. The articles were used on the business review page of the paper, and I was paid $7.50 weekly for my contributions. This work was separate and distinct from my job as a reporter and was dune during my off hours.

Even with my augmented income, I might have gone hungry at noon occasionally if it had not for for Chris’s hot dog stand. Chris’s place was on Dexter Avenue, convenient to the newspaper office, and until the war with its blackout regulations came along, his big neon sign “Famous Hot Dogs” illumined the area at night. I patronized Chris’s nearly every day. At the entrance were racks of cigarettes and candy, often scarcely filled because of World War II rationing, and a soft drink box.

Although I cannot now find anyone who can verify it (as Mark Twin said, “I find that the further back I go, the better I remember things, whether they happened or not”), I recall that near the entrance was a device known as a Pan-o-ram where customers could insrt a dime and see a talking movie. The machine was a sort of glorified nickelodeon and was owned or promoted by James Roosevelt, son of the president. It obviously was never widely popular, and the advent of television marked its doom.

A long counter with stools extended down the left side of Chris’s place, and over on the right side, behind a partition, was a long corridor with booths and small tables along the walls. The stand was crowded with customers (white only) during the lunch hour, and Chris seemed to be everywhere – taking orders, serving food, running the cash register, checking on the kitchen, greeting customers. “Yes, ma’m. Wudkinidufuhyse today, ma’m? One hot dog? Two? Bestindewholewol.” They were.

Chris’s hot dogs were juicy and tender, served hot on a fresh bun with everything on them, including his own secret Greek sauce. They cause eight cents each. He had to sell a lot of hot dogs to support his wife and five children.

Chris, who had come over from the old country, had a rounding stomach and a swarthy complexion that made him look as if he needed a shave. He had a scattering of gold teeth and his black eyes sparkled with friendliness. He always cashed my check on payday. “Gotta check? How much, ma’m? What? No grow! No grow! Sometimes I felt that he lamented the smallness of my salary as much as I did.

Chris was intensely patriotic, and after the way started, he was always eager for news. When I walked in, his daily greeting was, “Watzewarnus? Good? Bad? Wewwhipem yet?!”

After Pearl Harbor, Chris became even more ardently patriotic. He invested in war bonds and urged his patrons to do the same, he promoted scrap metal and aluminum drives, and he displayed flags all over his hot dog stand. When customers complained of shortages, Chris was prompt to remind them, “Wegottawinwar!”

The end
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