At age five Crews fell victim to infantile paralysis, and his legs curled far under his body until his feet touched his thighs. Young Crews had just begun to walk again when he fell into a pot of boiling water while playing pop the whip with playmates. His deep burns required months to heal. "Never once did I ever think that my life was not just like everyone else's, that my fears and uncertainties were not universal," Crews wrote in
A Childhood. "For which I can only thank God."
Crews's childhood did, at least, instill in him a strong sense of place and southern identity, as well as a love of storytelling. Crews has traced his interest in writing to his earliest memories of hearing adults swap stories on the front porches of Bacon County. Crews first practiced his storyteller's art using the only book in the Crews household, the Sears Roebuck catalogue, which he and childhood friend Willalee Bookatee used as a springboard for weaving detailed stories. To young Harry and Willalee, the unbelievably perfect faces of the Sears models were a sharp contrast to the imperfect inhabitants of Bacon County. "[A]ll of the people that Willalee Bookatee and I knew were maimed, mutilated, crippled in some fashion.
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