Decatur pastor publishes book on lessons learned growing up in north Alabama

It’s a good thing Lick Skillet isn’t an incorporated community — city limits couldn’t hold in all the drama.
   
Or so says Harold Fanning, pastor of Shoal Creek Baptist Church, Decatur, in Morgan Baptist Association. 
   
Lick Skillet may not be in the atlas, but things like a lake perfect for frog gigging and a well-worn route down Butter and Egg Road put the north Alabama town on the proverbial map in Fanning’s mind.
   
“Lick Skillet is located approximately five miles west of Hazel Green. Butter and Egg Road is the main drag through Lick Skillet and runs by New Sharon Middle School, affectionately referred to by the locals as LSU — Lick Skillet University,” he said. “I’ve won more drag races down that road than you can imagine.”
   
Some ages might have more trouble imagining Fanning’s growing-up escapades than others — but it’s for both the younger crowd and the older that he wrote “Life in the Skillet: And Lessons Learned Along the Way,” a book of 38 stories set in that community in the 1950s and ’60s.
   
“I have been writing those stories for a lot of years — they are what got me through high school English and literature classes,” he said. 
   
Prior to “Life in the Skillet,” he had spun stories from the pulpit and printed the tales of his misadventures — each with a moral twist at the end — in his church’s newsletter for years. 
   
And all the while, family and friends — including Hartselle evangelist Junior Hill — encouraged him to put them in book form.
   
“I finally broke down and just did it,” Fanning said.
   
In his foreword to Fanning’s book, Hill wrote, “Whoever said, ‘Some people tell funny stories, while others tell stories funny,’ must have known Harold Fanning. … [He] has a unique and charming way of sharing actual everyday events, seeing the humorous side of them and then carefully weaving into the story clear and helpful spiritual applications.”
   
Fanning’s story-weaving formula shows this to be true. Even stories titled “First-Class Outhouse” and “Butter Bean Back-Talkin’” do arrive — eventually — at a spiritual lesson. And they are funny to boot, say many readers.
   
“I laughed until I cried when I read the story about when he taught his daughter Alison to drive,” said Regina Berry, a member of Bevill’s Chapel Baptist Church, Hazel Green, in Madison Baptist Association. “His stories are so funny — I enjoyed the book very much.”
   
The stories of his younger years in Lick Skillet are based on slightly exaggerated fact, Fanning said.
   
And he’s changed some of the names “to protect the guilty” — though Alison wasn’t so fortunate. 
   
“Other characters have recognized themselves in the book, too,” Fanning added.
   
One of the aspects of the book’s release he said has surprised him is how many young people have devoured the stories.
   
“It’s amazing how many teenagers have gotten the book and are reading it. It’s been somewhat fascinating,” Fanning said. 
   
“And for the older folks, it’s brought a lot of nostalgia and memories.”
   
On many fronts, it’s bridged the generation gap — something he was hoping for, he said.
   
The sense of community in the air when he was young has diminished with the decline of wraparound porches and the rise of the Internet, Fanning said. 
   
“The tragedy of all this is the fact that we are missing the whole reason why we were created to begin with.”
   
God made mankind for fellowship and community, he explained.
   
“I hoped the book would help bring back a sense of community, that we need each other. There are wacky people in everyone’s life, and they are there for a reason and a purpose,” Fanning said with a laugh.
   
“Life in the Skillet” is available in some bookstores, as well as online at Amazon.com.