After my Fall from the Tree House:
a Memoir
by
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After my Fall from the Tree House relates funny or engaging events in my life following a fall on my head when I was not quite three. During the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, I was a senior in the all-white high school. I questioned the reactions of the white citizens to the boycott and was labeled a "free thinker" by my family. This memoir is a whimsical speculation that I might have "Fallen" into free thinking when I struck my head on the ground beneath the tree house. "With Adam's fall we sinned all," especially free thinkers. Included are vignettes about me, my family and friends. The subjects range from my childhood through military service, college, graduate school, and teaching career. Since retiring I have devoted much of my time to writing, and a Supplement section includes examples of what I have written, both published and unpublished.
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About the Book
When I was not quite three, I fell out of the family tree house and landed on my head. Since then friends and family have wondered about my brain. This memoir of several dozen vignettes explores my “fallen” condition while growing up in Alabama, while serving as a medic with the Navy and Marine Corps, and while pursuing my teaching career. As a five-year-old I hated suspenders, so when I got my first belt I stood next to the highway in front of our house with my stomach stuck out so people in cars passing by could see my belt While serving in the Navy, I once tried to impress a barmaid in Tijuana with my knowledge of high school Spanish by reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. Other vignettes celebrate normal times, as when I provided nursing care for a slowly dying, 84-year-old veteran of the Spanish American War. Another is when I attended the graduation of a former student of mine, a 50-year-old black woman who graduated summa cum laude from Mercer University. At eighteen she was denied admission to Mercer because of her race. Of course the best times have been with my beloved Danish wife of fifty-one years, our son and his family, and my parents, brothers and sisters. I hope the reader finds all of the vignettes either amusing or engaging.
About the Author
Is it possible for a blow to the head to cause free thinking? Maybe shake a screw loose? I grew up in a family of nine just outside Montgomery, Alabama. When I was not quite three years old I fell from a family tree house and landed on my head. While in high school I questioned some of the Jim Crow racial practices and was labeled a "free thinker" by my family. Could it be that I "fell" into free thinking? After my Fall from the Tree House: a Memoir examines dozens of funny or engaging experiences involving family, friends, classmates, fellow sailors and Marines, and fellow teachers. Today, as a retired Professor of English, I live in the beautiful north Georgia mountains with Annelise, my wife of fifty-one years and, some say, my keeper. Harris is also the author of Chinaberry Summer: Riverton, Alabama, 1947. In this novel the River Road Rangers look forward to a summer free from teacher demands but learn that Life is the most demanding teacher of all.