The boy Don E. Harrison, barefoot and britches rolled up, is on the cover of the book he wrote, vines creek. He's holding a big ol' squirrel by the tail with his left hand and the barrel of what looks like a .22 rifle with his right, presumably the gun that put an end to squirrel's tree-hopping ways.

The cover of the novel isn't exactly the kind of slick covers that get generated in the Baldwin County of the 21st century, covers touting paradise, the good life, tourism, and buildings that go up and up at the expense of green spaces that disappear all together.

Harrison's novel is about the old Baldwin County of the 1940s. It's a mixture of fact and fiction all cooked together like the ingredients in a good squirrel stew. It's about Harrison, now 67, and a kid named Roy growing up in the Foley area at a time when the highways known today as "59" and "98" were the only paved roads around.

Harrison's humility is a throwback as well.

"If you don't like it don't put nothin' in the paper about it," he said of vines creek, the 277-page novel he published in 2005. Again, "A lot of books I give away people don't read them."

Harrison estimates that 400 copies of his novel are circulating in and around the South Baldwin area, most of them given away by the author, a 1958 graduate of Foley High School, who said his favorite subjects were agriculture and physical education, not English.

"I missed more days to farm than I did going to school," he said of his youth.

Vines creek is a novel of contradictions much like the author's early preparation or lack of it for writing a novel. The first part of the novel is "basically all true," Harrison said. That's also the last part he wrote in the creative process.

The first line of the novel is, "I never visit graveyards." And yet, that's exactly where the protagonist is at the story's outset. It's in that graveyard that his childhood is buried. Yet, as Harrison points out, the two boys in vines creek never get any older than 8 or 9 years old.

"For the first few years of our lives we got to go to Foley only twice a year, once on Roy's birthday and again on mine. The rest of the time we were busy growing up and just being boys."

So, where is Vines Creek? According to Chapter 1, "Vines Creek is a small clear creek. If you follow it west for a few miles, it becomes the Magnolia River, which empties into Weeks Bay, which empties into Mobile Bay, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico and so forth. You get the idea of how important this little creek is, especially to two small boys."

Harrison, who lives near the intersection of Baldwin County roads 26 and 65 today, had a severe heart attack about three years ago. He started writing something for his grandchildren because he sometimes hurt at night.

"After about the first chapter, I felt inspired to write this novel," he said. "This book came from my heart. There's parts of it where I laughed and parts where I cried even though it's fiction."

Harrison spent about two years writing vines creek but said he would sometimes go six months without working on the story at all. The last eight chapters, however, he wrote in two weeks.

He credits Susan Wilbourne with the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce for helping him edit the rough draft of the novel.

"She did such a great job on it," Harrison said. One thing she suggested was writing the book the way the author talked, as in not using a "g" on the end of words. Thus, there is "huntin'," "fishin'," and "fightin'" in the book.

Jan Burch of Glenlakes is another person to whom Harrison is indebted for the finished product that is vines creek.

Humility aside, people have bought multiple copies of Harrison's novel and taken them back to places like Canada and London. Copies are available at the Magnolia Springs Pharmacy and from the author (943-5424) for $10.

Asked to assess the Baldwin County ofvines creek and the Baldwin County of today, Harrison, who was in the Navy for 26 years, said there is no comparison.

"In my opinion it's worse (today). Back then, nobody had money, so everybody was equal. White or black had to struugle to make a living."

As Harrison writes at the outset of the book, "Of course, we really didn't need much money because, back then, we didn't have electric bills, phone bills, water, sewer and gas bills, credit card bills, insurance bills, cable or TV bills, house payments, car payments, alimony payments, child support payments and etc."

Harrison's novel has references to such Southern hallmarks as the "rolling store" and "Sooner Dogs" ("They'd sooner eat at your house or mine"), but the author was especially gratified to read that a true Southern story had to have a dead mule in it. Indeed, there is a dead mule in vines creek.