Reading Distant Son: An Alabama Boyhood by Norman McMillan has served well in tandem with our travels along the backroads of Tuscaloosa County, as well as our meandering journey down to the white-sand beaches of the state. The other day, as we drove through historic Leroy tracing what Micah dubbed the "farm city" along County Road 34, I found a house that reminded me of a few lines from McMillan's book.
"We took our fun where we could get it, catching June bugs colored with the turquoise, black, and blue of peacock feathers and tying string to their legs and flying them like airplanes. We caught fireflies at dusk and made a lantern by putting them, vibrating with yellowish-green light, into a pint jar, or we made rings for our fingers by pinching off their phosphorescent tails. We observed the tumble bugs pushing pieces of excrement far too large for them and wondered at their persistence. We coaxed the doodle bugs out of the ground by saying
Doodlebug, doodlebug,
You'd better go home.
Your house is on fire
And your children are alone.
We buried sticks in the ground and conducted funeral services, taking turns preaching the funeral sermon. If the stick were long, we said we were burying Longfellow, if it were short, Longfellow's baby. It didn't take too much to keep us occupied."
Though McMillan never lived in Leroy and spent more of his growing years in Ralph and various parts of southern Tuscaloosa County, something about the house just made his words vivid again.
