"To Kill a Mockingbird": A Curmudgeon's Guide

I love To Kill a Mockingbird. I love it so much that a little time ago I watched it several times in a short period. But like a lover in a rushed romance, I’ve started to have questions.

• Those hickory nuts that Atticus got from the farmer, Mr. Cunningham, as payment: Did Atticus declare them on his income tax return?
• If Atticus is so poor, now come he has a full-time housekeeper? And a car?
• In the middle of the night, when the neighbor shot at a "prowler" in his garden, who was really Atticus’s son, Jim, how come nothing happened to him? Like, what’s this lynching thing I hear so much about?
• Why does Judge Taylor come to Atticus’s house at night to appoint him on the Robinson case? Was Atticus's house half way between Judge Taylor's house and a brothel?
• How did Judge Taylor know that the grand jury was going to indict Tom Robinson in the morning? Did he also foresee the Kennedy assassination?
• How come child actors in modern films can’t be as dog-that-talks amazing as the child actors in this film?
• Who ever heard about spitting on a hinge to make it not squeak? Me, I would have urinated on it.
• If this is such a great film, how come nobody’s character has an arc of development, except for Boo Radley, who goes from father-stabber to savior for no apparent reason?
• In the time when this movie was set, did everybody back up a car by looking over their left shoulder?
• Does anybody believe that Tom Robinson died trying to "escape"? 
• Under what circumstances does Atticus take off his tie?
• What’s the point of the woman from across the street, who has breakfast in Atticus’s home? Do they get married in the sequel?
• What does the rabid dog do the whole time that Atticus is coming from work to home? Smoke a cigarette?
• If Atticus needs glasses to see distances, why does he take them off to shoot the rabid dog? If he needs them to read, why is he always wearing them?
• When did lawyers stop spending the night in front of jails, to keep angry mobs from lynching their clients? I assume that the Sheriff was too busy to guard the jail, because he was writing Atticus’s closing argument to the jury.
• Why was Atticus guarding the jail alone? Did everybody expect the "lynching mob" to be a sad poet with a cat?
• And, since he was alone, why was Atticus guarding the jail armed with only grave looks and a basso profundo voice?
• If the jail was made of bricks and bars, and it was locked, how was the lynching mob going to get in?
• How many men from the lynching mob ended up on the jury? As any criminal-defense attorney knows, that’s a genuine question.
• Not a question, but an observation. "Lynching", as a legal term, is the act of taking a person out of official custody. So Atticus faced down a "lynching" mob. But if the African American audience in the balconies of the courtroom had taken Tom Robinson out of the courtroom to freedom, that also would have been "lynching".
• Did the prosecutor need lessons and a license to be so arrogant?
• How did the judge know that Mr. Euel was left-handed, since Mr. Euel wrote with his back to the judge, and the judge’s bench was between them?
• Does anybody else think that the testimony of Tom Robinson was overacted?
• Why is it that when I lose a case, my client’s friends and relations don’t stand up as I leave the courtroom, in mute gratitude?
• I can't get past this "escape" thing. When Tom Robinson "escaped", did the deputies have to use their boots, or could they just push him out of the car? (By the way, technically, after the U.S Supreme Court decided Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), it might be that the deputies would have to chase him (this handcuffed prisoner) instead of shooting him in the back.)

And yet at the end of the film, I am moved.

And when furies whip me, after some provocation, to which I am subject, I tell myself, "Be Atticus."