Harper Lee & Jim Morrison

Yesterday I finished listening to Sissy Spacek read To Kill A Mockingbird on audio CDs. Spacek does a masterful job of reading this timeless southern novel. What does Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird have to do with Jim Morrison’s story about “Dawn’s Highway?” For a southern guy like me who has spent two years working on a project about “Dawn’s Highway,” there are plenty of similarities.

Jim Morrison tells us the story of a childhood experience from a young four year-old’s perspective, and Morrison describes a traumatic encounter on a highway in the desert to provoke the biggest existential question on the planet, “what is death?” Harper Lee tells a fascinating story about growing up in a small town in Alabama through the eyes of a young girl named Scout. The second part of her novel focuses on a trial that provokes not only serious questions about racial discrimination, but ends on the note that “it would be a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Death is a central theme in both stories.

Both Lee and Morrison use personal experiences to illustrate how events in life can shape us. Both storytellers challenge us to reflect on the choices and quality of our own lives as we face the overpowering issue of death. Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird uses the trauma of two deaths in young Scout’s life to challenge us to cherish the lives of those who support and help us. Morrison’s “Dawn’s Highway,” challenges us in similar ways to take events from our own lives and question what shapes us, and more importantly, to question death itself. By questioning the meaning of death, we question the meaning of our own lives.

Personally, I have learned much from Harper Lee and Jim Morrison. After finishing To Kill A Mockingbird, I found my wife’s copy of a biography on Harper Lee. As I skimmed through the biography, I identified with Lee’s long struggle to produce her one and only novel. I have identified with Jim Morrison’s story, “Dawn’s Highway” on a couple of levels. The trauma in my life was the early, unexpected death of my mother. I don’t have “Indians,” in my head, but I do have one or two other things that are still in there.

This has been a long, perhaps rambling introduction to get to the point of this message. Two years ago I went to New Mexico to research Jim Morrison’s story, “Dawn’s Highway.” The number one objective was to find an accident that matched Morrison’s story. That accident has been documented and revealed on my website, www.dawnshighway.net. I tried my best to give this story to everyone connected with Jim Morrison, The Doors, and the national media. To my surprise, I found that I had to bring the research to the public by myself. A short, documentary film appeared to be the best medium for presenting the research.

The film, “Dawn’s Highway” is finished, and only a couple of minor technical steps remain from reaching a “final edit.” Yet, for reasons that I cannot state publicly, the film has been suspended. I hope that before I die, an appropriate word to use in this message, the film “Dawn’s Highway” can be released. Personally, I believe the film clearly documents that Jim Morrison actually encountered an accident that he describes in the story.

It took Harper Lee years to write and publish To Kill A Mockingbird. Jim Morrison’s film, “HWY’ has never been released to the public. Therefore, I cannot complain about not being able to release my film. But it is good to mention Harper Lee and Jim Morrison in the same sentence.