A.B. Blass and the Christmas Parade and the KKK, by Kerry Madden:

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"The Yankees hit the consonants, but Southerners hit the vowels," was how A.B. Blass described the difference in speech between the North and South.

Our interview with A.B. Blass went for six hours. It started with dinner at the Radley Café and a trip to the town square. In the South, a story takes as long as it takes. That is the way it was with Blass, too, a childhood friend of Harper Lee's.

Even as adults, Blass and Harper Lee swapped stories whenever she came home from New York. She liked to work at her father's office in the mornings, and when she'd see Blass leave his hardware store, she'd call out, "A.B.!" and he'd say, "Nelle Lee!" And the two of them would have coffee and catch up on gossip.

As a high school boy, the clock tower of the courthouse proved irresistible to Blass. He explained that a man who "liked a drink" happened to be in charge of winding the clock. Blass said, "The man gave me the key to go up there if I'd wind it up for him. Well, this one time I got this idea to add an extra gong after clock struck midnight. I hit the bell with a heavy piece of metal. The next day at church everybody was saying, "Did you hear the clock struck 13 times last night?" Blass did it again the following week, and the old clock man said to him, "A.B., I need the key back. Clock is broke, striking 13 times, upsetting folks."

Blass told him, "I'll fix it for you." He quit striking the clock.

He was in charge the annual Christmas Parade in the 1950s, and the local black high school had marched without incident for years until the KKK tried to make it "Whites Only." Instead of caving into the KKK's demands, Blass canceled the parade. That night, the KKK rode in their cars to Blass's house. They circled the house with their inside car lights on, so Blass and his family could see them in their robes. His wife and daughters were crying in terror. Blass called police departments in three different counties, but no one would come out.

Finally, they went away, but the next morning, Harper Lee's father, Mr. A.C. Lee came up to Blass and said, "Son, you did the right thing. You stand by your guns. It'll be all right."

Tomorrow: Two Alabama Girls and a Trip to Gee's Bend.

Kerry Madden, Harper Lee: Up Close, Viking Children's Books, Penguin Books