Listen to Jim here: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/faragoandlongaway.mp3

or read on…

Far ago and long away, I dreamed a dream one day.

The time is far, far ago, but it is ever fresh in memory. Some of the best times of my life were spent in Peterson, a village between Tuscaloosa and Brookwood, a stripped-out mining town. In Peterson resided my maternal grandparents, as well as various aunts and uncles and cousins, and back then, some sixty years ago, all us kinfolk liked nothing better than to converge and reunite and party together on a Sunday afternoon.

Now this may not be you young’uns’ idea of partying, but it was everything we knew to do, in order to have a good time. The time is long away, but here’s what a McGee reunion felt like:

Dried butterbeans under a tree in Uncle Pat and Aunt Elizabeth McGee’s sideyard. No, we didn’t eat the butterbeans except one time, and once was enough. What my uncles did with the butterbeans was use them instead of chips, to sit on the ground and play poker. The summertime buggy and humid heat was barely noticed, because the Games and the Slow Roast were the thing. Two games went on simultaneously. The poker game—in which all the winner got was a bunch of dried beans—and the baseball game on the radio. You see, back then, nobody had portable radios, so the Big Game emanated from one of the old cars in the family. One uncle would pull his car near the Game and leave the door open so we could all hear the big plays, the excited crowd, the crisp snap of wood against hide, the terse shouts of the umpire.

The Slow Roast was right next to the game—big hunks of pork turning over an open-pit fire, smoking up the woods and forcing all humans who care about eating to salivate involuntarily. Cousin Patricia reports six decades later that, after we’ve eaten, Uncle Buddy reveals that it is goat meat—not pork.

This was Division of Labor stuff back then. The men were in charge of staying up all night, tending the cooking, biding their time with poker and baseball, and trying their best to set sedentary examples of good behavior for dozens of run-amok kids. The women did everything else.

Mind you, this was the post-economic-depression era when all men worked hard at hard-time jobs, when Sundays with family were their only respite, when for a few hours they could pretend to be hotshot gamblers and master chefs and wizened tribal chiefs.

Meanwhile, cousins and their playmates were free to roam wild in Uncle Pat’s woods, chase after and be chased by spiders and snakes, attract redbugs and ticks, laugh out loud and wrestle, play their own baseball game in the nearby cornfield, pretend to be feral Tarzans and Noble Savages and in general let out all that energy that had been pent up during the week.

The women would cook and wrangle kids and socialize and gossip and knit and darn and set tables and wash dishes and collect detritus that the men would later dispose of. Both men and women would share in the arduous task of making gallons of ice cream on the spot, emptying ice and salt into buckets while older kids took turns cranking and cranking and cranking, their only motivation being the sweet taste of fresh peaches absorbed into the creamiest ice cream you could ever imagine.

Everybody knew their responsibilities in those days, nobody hid from helping out, everyone came to each other’s rescue when a bruise appeared, all accidents were tended to in gentle good humor, all conflicts were mediated and peacefully settled, all passions channeled for the good of the one-day commune.

At the end of the long day, each family would sit wearily and happily in automobiles waiting while relatives leaned and said 45-minute lingering goodbyes to each other. Nobody wanted to leave the scene, everybody had to, and, regardless of how tired and spent and scraped and bloated and bugbit each of us was, we couldn’t help but think about the next reunion when we’d do it all again.

Yep, far ago and long away, I dreamed a dream, a dream that still seems true when I look at the results of those strong and handsome adult relatives who set such powerful examples for us kids. The truth is in watching those kids today, now elderly kinfolk with their own kids and kids of kids, each year once more holding a reunion and passing down the generations a rich appreciation of tribe and family and genetics and mutual support.

It’s all still there, and the next reunion is next year, and I’m salivating already

Listen to Jim here:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/havinganepitomeontheroadtodamascus.mp3

or read on…

What it is, is words.

The old saw that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” is merely an ironic way of saying the opposite of the truth.

You and I know that words can hurt, maim, destroy, brand, make reality turn on a dime.

A broken bone is nothing compared to a destructive or uncaring word. The bone may heal, but we humans have trouble disremembering what people say to us or about us.

The good news is, healing words have an even more powerful effect—it’s just that we don’t use them enough, we don’t allow them access to our better judgement.

A kindly word, a gentle word, a caring word, an uplifting word—each can change the rotation of the earth when sincerely applied.

Listen to Jim here:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/itisadarkandstormynight.mp3

or read on…

Here’s the way it works whenever someone is driving my mother anywhere.

Say we are cruising along, looking for 10th Avenue, Mother in the passenger seat, giving instructions to Dad.

Just after we whiz past 10th Avenue without seeing it, Mother yells, “Turn there!”

“Wait, was that the street?” my Father says, looking at the road dwindling in the rearview mirror.

“Yes, I told you it was the road–why didn’t you turn?” Mother frets.

“Because you didn’t tell us to turn till we passed it,” all us passenger kids exclaim in unison.

Mother doesn’t get it. Why can’t the car obey orders and just materialize on 10th Avenue? After all, it’s just an instrument piloted by a human.

My father, ever stoic and patient, ignores all this and looks for a convenient u-turn opportunity. We kids groan, because we know our mother’s habits oh so well.

For one thing, mother has never driven a car, so she has no feel for how to navigate. It just never makes sense to her that the car can’t read her mind, perhaps like the family mule did when she was a kid in the 19-teens of the 20th Century. The mule knew the way, but our father does not.

Another complicating factor in this scenario is the fact that mother always has trouble with the concept of Right and Left. If you tell her to look to her right, she has to stop and ponder–do you mean to her left facing you, or to her left from your point of view? You know how that works. If somebody has a particle of food on the right cheek, you get their attention and point knowingly to your right cheek. But, since the person is facing you, it is not clear whether you are acting as a mirror image–in which case it is apparent that you mean the left cheek–or whether you mean the right cheek, in which case a temporary dyslexia kicks in and the food-particle partner is momentarily confused, thus quickly moves to wipe both cheeks.

So, once Dad u-turns and heads back to 10th Avenue, he asks mother, “Which way do we turn?” Instead of saying right or left, mother points to the left from her lap–only thing is, Dad can’t see this, since he’s trying to stay on the road and avoid death. Mother doesn’t understand why he can’t look over at her and search for her hand motion.

Frustrated, Dad says, “Do we turn right or left?” Mother is confused and this time just points dramatically so that she can be seen.

We eventually get where we’re going, but Mom pouts because she has the vague feeling we’re all teasing her.

The sad ending to this story is that some of us kids inherit her inability to give or take travel instructions. Four of us kids to this day can’t find our way out of a dark and stormy night, and one kid–Ronny–beats the odds and learns how to find his way without having to depend upon us bumper-car meanderers.

After decades of trying to learn directions, I come to accept my limitations and turn them into field trips. Now I don’t mind not knowing how to get there, I just drive around till something looks familiar, enjoying the surprises along the way and in the process having experiences both scary and funny.

Want to go for a ride?

As the suit guy used to say, it will be an adventure, I guarantee

Listen to Jim here: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/whyifihadmydictionary.mp3

or read on…

For once, I’d like to say something dramatically effective to win my argument with you.

“You dirty rotten scoundrel!”

“You’re just a…just a rapscallion, that’s what you are!”

“Why, you no-good son-of-a-son-of-a…”

“You terminological inexactitude!”

Mmm…I want to express my expletives in an original or surprising way, but I just can’t find the right word. Most current literary and journalistic and social mediaistic jargon is filled with a few key and unimaginative cuss words, most beginning with f and s and a and a handful of other worn-out exclamations.

I’d like to use a word that is either made up (that’s too easy) or resuscitated or reborn or hopefully funny.

What about You Simon Legree? Well, you’d have to be literary to know you don’t want to be called that.

Hmm…

What about “You slimy Ewok!” Well, only HGW would take umbrage.

Howz about “You dirty human!” But Pierre Boulle would just laugh.

“You scum-sucking pig!” Only an Amigo can get away with that.

See how hard it is for booknerds to come up with something powerful? There aren’t enough fellow booknerds around who would “get” these allusions.

I’ll just settle for, “You cad!” That way, you won’t even be offended, I won’t get punched, no profanities will have been employed, and, as Dylan Thomas would say, “Then, we can both sit down and have some tea.” Just one nerd and one cad and some goodwill to round out the day.

There, that wasn’t so tough, was it?

Meanwhile, be prepared—I’m still trolling through all those old dictionaries I keep around the house and the shop, to find just the right word to diminish you and make you jealous of my word skills. Problem is, not all words appear in dictionaries—said dictionaries seem to go out of date upon publication. This has been true for several centuries.

Listen to Jim here: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/standingonthecornerwatching.mp3

or read on…

“Oh, look at that poor man!” Mother says, as she and we kids wait on the corner, scanning the horizon for the next bus. Mother is referring to an elderly slow-trekking man with a wooden walking cane. He’s wending his way through the side-walkers who are in front of the Bama Theatre here in Tuscaloosa, circa 1950.

We’ve occasionally missed the bus because we like to spend our time observing people and critters as they wade through their private lives on the streets of Tuscaloosa. It’s more interesting than any downtown parade, more fascinating because you can select which of  several simultaneous parades to enjoy.

There is the sidewalk parade passing by us bystanders.

Pedestrians, pets, strays, wheelchair-drivers, drunks, a beggar or two, all brush by each other following their personal destinies. 

There is the wheeled and pedaled and hoofed parade on the paved street.

This day, In 1950, there are still mule-drawn carts now and then, weaving bicyclers, motor scooters and cars and trucks and buses and service vehicles and even an occasional leftover WWII jeep, pieced-together jalopies and hot rods and some hand-pushed food carts.

There are the indoor lookers gazing out at the bystanders and the dual parades.

Men sit lathered in barber shop chairs, women sit in shoe shops, watching wistfully through the window while bored clerks grapple with their feet, secretaries on lunch break look down from upper-story offices, roofers with metal pails lean over to watch the ants below, movie theatre ticket booth teens stare selectively at their strolling dream hunks and pin-ups, a smiling police officer greets everybody by name…

Then there are the watchers sitting in parked cars, observing us all through rolled down windows.

Two kids in a back seat count the number of passing ladies’ hats, a passenger-seat woman refreshes her lipstick and checks out the shoe styles of other sapiens, one sweating man turns his back to the sidewalk, his head under the hood of a steaming car, one teenager lounges on the roof of a pickup truck, waiting for his father to return from city hall. 

There are the surprise paraders you don’t expect.

A man pokes his head up from a manhole in the center of the street and begins to struggle out. Driving drivers and the occupants of their vehicles gaze at the sidewalk parade, the bystanders and window-shoppers, the shadows of office workers near windows, all noting the milling behaviors on display in busy little T’town.

“Oh, my, look at her—isn’t she beautiful?” Mother exclaims about a smartly-dressed young woman, causing us to appreciate loveliness wherever it appears and the instant that it appears, as if each sighting could be the final one.

Back here in my home, many decades later, I realize that Mother’s gift to us kids is the gift of observation—more than that, the gift of appreciation—and the ability to find something special about everybody, even those every-bodies who don’t seem to deserve it. There’s always something.

Whenever I’m in an audience, I have the impulse to turn about and face that audience. I’d prefer to watch them watching the event than to watch the event itself. Even when I’m the event itself, I get a kick out of standing on stage talking or performing while secretly viewing the audience viewing me. They always have more to say than I. 

Wish I could take you back to the streets of Tuscaloosa back in the day, just for an hour. I think we would have a ton of fun watching the watching watchers

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/beautyisintheheart.mp3

or read on…

A few words about the beauty within mirrors.

Most mirrors around the house are poor reflections on me.

That is, the harder and longer I gaze at myself in a mirror, the less I know exactly how I look to others, let alone to myself.

Just replacing a light fixture in the bathroom can make all romanticized images disappear—suddenly I see myself at high wattage, bereft of subdued shadings. Holy mackerel, where did all those blemishes come from, whence came the additional wrinkles and bags, how did I transmogrify overnight into a large prune with extra-long nose hair and unkempt blotches? When did I seriously begin to consider laving myself with pancake makeup, essentially to airbrush reality away from all undesirable features?

The mere act of cleaning the bathroom mirror can have the same effect.

Being a literary type, I search for solace among great works of literature:

“Am I beautiful? I think it must be the rose.

My hair–it only weighs me down.

My eyes–I only see with them.

My lips–they only help me to speak.

Of what use is it to be beautiful?”

–Spoken by the robot Helena in R.U.R. by Karel Capek

Helena must have looked into the wrong mirror the morning she spoke those words.

I know that I am not beautiful, but could it be that somebody, somewhere, under unusual circumstances, might consider someone like me to be beautiful? Again, what do my favorite authors say?

“Has any psychological experiment yielded

a more delightful suggestion than this one:

that there is a part of the mind without ambition

or information, which nonetheless is expert on what is beautiful?”
–Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I think I know what is beautiful, but how can I be sure that the red I see doesn’t come across as purple to you, that what I find repugnant might seem wonderful to you? I can’t see through your eyes.

As H.G. Wells once said, “Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.”

Karel, Kurt and H.G. are iconic literary figures, so, in the absence of any hard data concerning beauty, I must embrace their confusion and poetic ponderings. Must depend on the intrinsic and indefinable beauty that lurks here and there in great books…or in ornate mirrors…or in your heart

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/dagwoodfixesbreakfast.mp3 

or read on…

Found this in my five-year-old Red Clay Diary. This is the way it was back then:

DAGWOOD FIXES BREAKFAST

First things first is what gets me through the morning ritual of preparing breakfast on Sunday morning. Breakfast usually comes late, since this is my sleeping-in day. Never been good at sleeping in, since my brain is always coming up with ideas and projects and guilts that I should be up and around and taking care of.

Anyhow, first things first. I descend the stairs to the hundred-year-old kitchen and begin the ritual–I should say, the ritual with variations, since it is boring, just doing things the same way all the time.

I pull clean coffeemaker parts out of the dishwasher and assemble them, making sure I dip caffeinated coffee into the little metal cup. I’m not a coffee drinker, but I am married to a world-class coffee drinker, and I’ve learned over a thirty-year period that they cannot be fooled. She will know whether I’ve filled that little metal cup with high-test or decaffeinated. My parents drink coffee, but we kids don’t. That’s because we really believe her when she tells us kids that drinking coffee will stunt our growth. The evidence is unarguable…Mother is right. I never achieve the height of a basketball player. Must have smelled too much of her coffee.

Once the brew is brewing and the milk is microwaving, I trot out to the yard to retrieve two newspapers, each hidden in creative places in bushes or behind bricks or in the street. The New York Times paper delivery-person throws one way, the Birmingham News deliveryperson throws another way, and they get creative at times.

Once I strip the papers of their wet plastic covers and ouchy rubber bands, I’m ready to pour the coffee and deliver the papers upstairs to my wife, who is always grateful for the effort.

Then, it’s back downstairs to prepare breakfast…excuse me, to fix breakfast.

I pull out my favorite frying pan, pull a couple of jumbo eggs from the refrigerator (excuse me…ice box), crack the first one open with two hands, then, bored already, try to crack the second one with one hand, like I’ve seen it done in the movies by macho actors. The yolk leaps into the air, splattering itself half on the counter and half into the sink, at which point I thank my lucky stars that no-one is watching. I slide another egg out of the ice box and do it right this time, beating both eggs with a metal whisk thing. I pull forth a spatula…excuse me, the (Chinese-translated) label says it’s a NYLON COOKING TURNER. Now I see it in a new way. By the way, it is “ideal for non-stick surface.” If the surface is truly non-stick, why would I need a spatula, er, NYLON COOKING TURNER?

Back when I am a kid, my job each evening is to clear off the dining table after everybody has eaten. I wait till Mother is in the kitchen, Daddy is reading the paper, and siblings Barbara and Ronny are doing their specific tasks (Ronny dries as Barbara washes), then I try to accomplish something my hero, Dagwood Bumstead, does so well. I try to clear the table in one trip. This requires stacking the dishes flat, placing aluminum utensils on top of the stack. With plates in one hand, I pile the serving dishes on the arm leading to the plate hand, place napkins and other detritus atop the plates, pick up five glasses in the other hand by sticking one finger in each glass and squeezing, and lifting anything else it is possible to lift in the crook of my elbow and under my arm. Sometimes, it actually works! A couple of times, everything comes crashing down, along with my sense of accomplishment. I now know why Mother started purchasing Melmac and other unbreakable dishes–if she is to have her kids do their chores, she’ll have to make it as safe and inexpensive as possible, since taking over all the chores herself is not an option, what with a new kid on the way.

While bacon is microwaving itself, I am heating up the skillet on the gas stove. Back when I am young, Mother’s gas stove has no pilot light–we have to strike a large wooden match and hold it to the gas burner until WHOOSH the fire appears. Then, I plop some butter–or what appears to be something that looks and smells like butter–into the heating pan. When I am young, our butter is oleomargarine that comes white and pasty in a sealed plastic bag with a red cherry-like dye in the middle. To make it look like butter, the bag has to be massaged till the dye spreads throughout, yellowing up the contents, as if this will fool us into thinking this is cow butter.

I drop some cheese bits into the cooking eggs and pull marmalade out of the ice box to spread on toast. When I am young, we can afford no toaster, so the sliced bread (light bread to you) has to be placed inside the oven and checked constantly till browned. And the marmalade or jelly always comes in glasses that can be used later.

Soon, some semblance of breakfast is ready. Since this is Sunday, I take care to select eating utensils that are not scarred by traumatic encounters with the garbage disposal, and I take the plate up to a beaming wife, who cooks 98 percent of our other meals, and my good deed is done for the day. Then, because nobody is looking–I’m downstairs and she is upstairs–I get to try for Dagwood’s record again. The kitchen is cleaned in one swell foop. Blondie will never know!

Now, if only I could learn to take sofa naps like Dagwood. Unfortunately, my Mother didn’t believe in naps, and neither do I. There are so many other records left to break–such as making the largest Dagwood sandwich possible, or avoiding collisions with the letter carrier. I have achieved at least one Dagwood aspiration. I no longer have dictatorial bosses.

Now, if I can only find Dagwood a good job

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/jessicdawngrammy.mp3

or read on…

BIG LITTLE THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR

How can it be that so many years have passed since I entered the following in my Red Clay Diary? Seems like yesterday. Read on…

Jessica, all sixteen years and nine months of her, brakes her car in front of our Southside home just seconds after I pull up and stop in the parking place right in front of her.

She and her friend Dawn get out and strut their stuff.

Jessica has just bleached her beautiful red hair a lemony color, and she’s wearing some kind of gel to make the hair stand up not of its own accord. Dawn’s jet black hairdo is puffed up on top and longer in back, and they both wear the latest things that can be had at your friendly neighborhood thrift store.

I’m happy to see Jessica, because she’s the first granddaughter of a long line of grandkids, and I guess she’s taught me more about how to be (and not be) a grandfather than all six of the other grand kids—and sometimes, she’s enough of a handful to overshadow the other grand kids.

But that’s Jessica, you see. Jessica has always been an in-your-face kind of woman, a woman who’s liable to tell you what she thinks even when you wish she would pull her punches just a little. In the long run, I appreciate this ability of Jessica’s, the ability to tell the truth unexpectedly and the extra-added ability to lie when you wish she wouldn’t. This is how Jessica makes sensible her world, this truth-telling and truth-bending, this saying what you know is true but would rather not hear, this saying what isn’t quite true when you wish you knew the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. As a teenager, at this time in her life, Jessica is an artful dodger, but this is just her way of getting through the thicket on her terms. She has to keep you a little off-balance in order to maintain her balance.

Anyhow, Jessica and Dawn accompany me into the house, helping me carry loads of freshly-done laundry and newly-formed smiles to bring to her grandmother, Liz, whom she has called “Grammy” since she was able to talk. I’m “Poppy,” you know.

Grammy brightens up considerably when she sees Jessica. She always brightens up when she sees Jessica, Jessica being attached to her by an almost visible chain of experience and genetics.

Jessica sports her new lemon hair and we make all the necessary comments about it and about how it got all lemony, and then we get down to the business of eating and sipping and chatting about this and about that.

It’s a nice visit. Its significance is unfathomable, but it’s quite significant that, once Jessica got her license to drive and her own wheels, she started attempting to visit us more often. We need to see her, you know, just to be sure she’s still with us, still thinks of us, still needs to appear.

Jessica and Dawn head out of the house, full of coffee and laughs and expectations, headed for their next Southside adventure.

Grammy and I finish our soup. We reflect on the complications of simplicity. As always, we try to find a way to simplify the complications. Too often, we stumble and complicate the simple. We take our daily doses of friendly encounters and season them with whatever seems to work at the time, based on experience, skill, and just plain luck.

That’s how we get through the day—a chunk at a time. We don’t spend too much time looking back at what we should have done. We don’t dare look too far into the future for fear of actually seeing it (wouldn’t that be scary?). We try to focus on right now, right this moment. We try to appreciate the times we feel good. We try to see the sunny light reflecting off lemony hairdos. We try to wish real hard for peace and love for everybody, including us

That’s a long-ago entry in my Red Clay Diary. Just to update you, it’s gratifying to note that Jessica grew up, became even brighter, carries on her career full speed ahead, and still takes time now and then to drop by and show us how she’s doing these days.

Are we lucky, or what

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/mispronouncersoftheworld.mp3

or read on…

Can’t stop my brain.

That is, I can’t stop my brain from delving into realms best left undelved.

For instance, when I hear a word mispronounced, my instant impulse is to correct the mispronouncer. I hold my tongue when the mispronouncer is a casual acquaintance or a friend who doesn’t need to know better, but I feel free to correct any mispronouncer who is well-educated and well-paid and should know better.

When I hear a word misused or or misenunciated, I want to quickdraw my aural red pen and be helpfully enlightening to people who in reality don’t want my help and don’t appreciate my avidity.

So, all I can do is share my whimperings with you, the hapless reader of this note.

NPR announcer talks about unrest in Monty Video (monty-vid-DAY-oh to you and me). Montevideo.

Highly paid news reporter laments the muh-LEZ of the public (mah-LAZE to us-all). Malaise.

Customer asks whether I carry books by GO-eeth (GER-tuh or something like that to the semi-educated). Goethe.

And one chatterer clearly enunciates the word MORE-ass (muh-RASS to us pseudo-intellectuals). Morass.

Which reminds me that the late undearly departed Alabama icon George Wallace used to lambast all those SUE-dee-oh intellectuals (SUE-doe is the way it’s pronounced among us pseudeos). Pseudo-intellectuals.

How many ways have you heard Obama pronounced? (uh-BAMA, oh-BAH-muh, oh-BAMA, etc.)?

Worse still, is it ee-RAN, ee-RON, uh-RAN, uh-RON, eye-RAN, eye-RON? (ee-RON in Farsi, ee-RAN most likely everywhere else). Iran.

If you’re at a diner, it’s EYE-tal-yuhn dressing, elsewhere it might be eh-TAL-yuhn or ee-TAL-yuhn (eh-TAL-yuhn might be correct). Italian.

Depending on who’s on duty at WBHM, it’s DUBB-yuh bhm or DUB-ull-you bhm. Which would George DUBB-yuh approve of? Way back in the ol’ days of broadcasting, I was taught to say DUB-ull-you—and I still do. Thanks to Don Rollins and Joe Langston, two of my early mentors.

Maybe I should drink less coffee—no, wait, I don’t even drink coffee. Then why can’t I stop my brain

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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