This is not a recipe.  This…this is me salivating over the words by Harper Lee chose to tell her story, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

We went to see the classic, Academy-award winning movie starring Gregory Peck (1962) last night at the AMC (a Fathom Events deal in conjunction with TCM), and o-my-gosh, it just gets better with time.  And seeing it on the big screen was worth every single penny, so much more worth it (for the 50 of us who were there) than the flick the hundreds of people plastered along the hallways and walls behind ropes were awaiting (the latest, and final, Twilight movie), I can guarantee you!

To Kill a Mockingbird is celebrating its’ 50th anniversary.  50 years from now, it will still be a cherished movie.

See the original trailer on YouTube, click here

At least the way it begins in the movie (I have never read the book, shamefully), these are the words that just drew me in.  They are so beautifully arresting, picturesque and vivdly striking – I am there, in small-town Alabama in the 1930s.

Maycomb was a tired, old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it.

Somehow it was hotter then.

Men’s stiff collars wilted by 9:00 in the morning.

Ladies bathed before noon, after their 3:00 naps…

and by nightfall were like soft tea cakes…

with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

The day was 24 hours long, but it seemed longer.

There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go…

and nothing to buy; no money to buy it with.

Although Maycomb County had recently been told…

that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

That summer I was six years old.

The ladies, the talcum, the soft, tea cakes – don’t you just get it? Ohhhhh….this is when I know I cannot write.  Love.

Published in 1960.  Dear Santa…pretty please (an old copy!)?