I spent the long Easter weekend in Monroeville, “The Literary Capital of Alabama.” It earned its moniker by virtue of being the home of Nell Harper Lee and the setting of her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. (Gregory Peck came to town for the local film premiere. I’ve seen pictures.) A young Truman Capote was also known to roam its streets on occasion, as was my wife, who grew up there and whose family still calls Monroeville home. Miss Nell was invited to our wedding, actually. She didn’t come, but, as I recall, her sister sent a nice note.
After spending the last decade or so transplanted in various locales throughout the South, I feel pretty comfortable calling Monroeville a typical deep South town. It’s filled with nice folks and big churches. It’s got a Wal-Mart and a Rite-Aid, a McDonald’s, a Hardees, and a Burger King. Two courthouses fill the town square (the old one is now a museum), and the air smells of azaleas and paper mills. It also has that Old South segregation — unofficial, of course. Most of the whites who can afford to, send their kids to the private Academy — the new “white flight,” you could say. According to the 2000 Census, about 25% of Monroe County’s residents live below the poverty level and only 55% of those over the age of 16 are employed (that last one’s a complicated statistic, I know). Just over 40% of the population is African-American. I can only guess how closely all those figures are linked. But I seldom see that side of Monroeville.
We were married at the Baptist Church — not because anyone in the family attends there (they’re mostly Presbyterians and Methodists), but because it was the only one large enough to hold all of the guests. I kept my nose out of the arrangements, so I don’t have an exact figure, but I clearly remember standing up there, looking out over the deep rows of pews and the hundreds of strange faces as my bride walked towards me. Quite a sight. Then I remember being whisked away to the reception, which was held beneath an impressive encampment of rented tents in the back yard of a restored Victorian home. If you’ve seen Sweet Home Alabama and remember the wedding that wasn’t to be, then you can probably picture it. My midwestern family and Yankee friends from back home had never seen anything like it. Several of them still call it the “Big Party in Alabama.”
“The Party” was, of course, paid for by my father-in-law, the honorable small town doctor who reduced my wife to tears at our rehearsal dinner by stepping up to the microphone and delivering flawlessly Steve Martin’s monologue from Father of the Bride:
I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. A boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say “I do.” I was wrong. That’s getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition. I know. I’ve just been through one. Not my own. My daughter’s. Annie Banks-MacKenzie. That’s her married name. MacKenzie. I’ll be honest with you. When I bought this house seventeen years ago, it cost me less than this blessed event in which Annie Banks became Annie Banks-MacKenzie. I’m told that one day I’ll look back on all this with great affection and nostalgia. I hope so.
You fathers will understand. You have a little girl. An adorable little girl who looks up to you and adores you in a way you could never imagine. I remember how her little hand used to fit inside mine. How she used to sit in my lap and lean her head against my chest. She said that I was her hero. Then the day comes when she wants to get her ears pierced and she wants you to drop her off a block before the movie theater. Next thing you know she’s wearing eye shadow and high heels. From that moment on, you’re in a constant state of panic. You worry about her going out with the wrong kind of guys, the kind of guys who only want one thing–and you know exactly what that one thing is because it’s the same thing you wanted when you were their age.
Then she gets a little older and you quit worrying about her meeting the wrong guy and you worry about her meeting the right guy. And that’s the biggest fear of all because then you lose her. And before you know it, you’re sitting all alone in a big, empty house, wearing rice on your tux, wondering what happened to your life.
See, that’s one of the perks of marrying into the South. In all of the weddings I’ve attended up north, I’ve never seen anything that cool. That gentle, soft-spoken man put himself on display, but managed still to turn the spotlight on his daughter on her day. That’s the part of Monroeville that I see. The part where cousins drive you out onto the property they manage for a day of catfishing. The part where friends take you for a morning horseback ride and let you spend the day in their camphouse. It’s Utopian. Kind of.
One of my best friends is writing his dissertation on the intersections of race and class in Southern literature. I’m hoping that, by the time he finishes, he’ll have some advice for me, something that will cure me of the paralyzing ambivalence I feel whenever I visit Monroeville. I tend to slip quietly into a reserved resignation when there. I smile politely at the jokes and find excuses to leave the room when talk turns to politics. It seldom seems worth the effort to me then. Pass the pie, please.