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Life, actually…

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WHICH FIRST? BOOK OR EGG?

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Way back when, so many years ago I can’t count, I am a nine-year-old peering at a vending machine, sweaty-palmed nickel in hand, wondering…

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I wonder what will pop out of that machine once the coin drops. What Cracker Jack-type prize will next grace the innards of the battered cigar box I keep under the bed at home.

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Everything is nine-year-old magical in my mind. Everything glistens with mystery and meaning.

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The vending machine is Pandora’s Box to me, only I choose to make Pandora a guardian of good and fun instead of a portender of pestilence and horror. As an avid reader I have already experienced the thrill of changing lore of old to suit my own imaginary world.

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Whatever is in that machine will cause my imagination to take off and build a story to comfort me in the dead of night.

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The old cigar box patiently awaits the arrival of Pandora Boy—me. Whatever lovely memory I add to its contents will improve and enrich my short time on this small planet.

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Now, the time is Today. At the bookstore, Allie is searching the front display table for one elusive old book that will be shipped to one elusive old customer, once found.

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“What’s this?” she asks, holding open a hollowed-out book, a book containing no words. A book someone has carefully crafted to look normal to the casual browser. A book intended to hide some treasure.

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I explain that I have found hollowed-out books now and then for many years—some filled with trinkets and treasures, some hiding love letters, some securing diaries, some waiting to be filled with secrets.

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These time capsules almost always are nondescript, adding to their invisibility. If a book’s cover and title instantly bore you, you are not apt to open it for further examination. The hidden secrets remain hidden secrets. Think what you may have missed.

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Allie reverently closes the hollow book and makes it invisible again, waiting for someone—maybe Pandora Boy—to hide something really special within.

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I walk to the front of the shop and stand before the old vending machines filled with invisible delights.

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Whenever anyone—a child of fifty or a child of five—places two quarters into the metallic slots, turns the handle to dispense the surprises, a colorful plastic egg pops out. Each egg contains various miscellaneous objects designed to mystify or delight or puzzle the five to fifty child.

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Each egg brings a nine-year-old smile back to my face and jolts me into the Good Pandora parts of life that are always worth exploring

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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THE MAN WHO COULD PREDICT THE PAST

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I live mostly in the past.

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Why, you ask, do I make such a statement?

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For one thing, back here in the Past, I can re-enact all things troublesome and make them somewhat more bearable. Or at least re-sort them into less mysterious configurations.

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What I shoulda done. What I shoulda said. What if I had turned this way instead of that way, at just the right moment?

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What really happened that time back then, instead of what I supposed was happening?

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Great questions to ask myself when my brain is in between heavy copings and lazy meanderings.

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Anyhow, come join me in re-organizing the past. Seeing life from different angles can be useful. Or at least hilarious.

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Let’s suppose I could actually alter the past, thus altering the future? Would I do anything significant, or would I just pick on the little things?

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I wave my magic wand and proclaim:

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NATIONAL NO HONKING DAY. Lay that heavy hand down and listen to the quiet.

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Life, actually…

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 WEARING PEE-WEE’S PLAY SUIT

 After many decades of living, loving and getting by, I’ve come to the conclusion that everybody feels cool at least once in a lifetime–maybe even a few times in a lifetime for the lucky ones.

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Life, actually…

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NOVELS DOODLED ON STICKY NOTES

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Some people doodle their thoughts, then wad and toss them. Being a keeper of things, I tend to save my own doodles for later examination.

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Here are four stories I have doodled and archived on sticky notes.

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You are now my sticky-note judge and critic.

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STICKY NOVEL NUMBER ONE:

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PREMEDITATION

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Molly was curious to know why her dreaded teacher, Mrs. Philbin—the one who always looked like she’d just bitten into a lemon and chased it with a green persimmon—was so cruel to her.

What makes a teacher act like this? she pondered.

Molly couldn’t get Mrs. Philbin’s behavior out of her mind, so she made one covert and desperate attempt to spy on the cruel teacher. Just one more time, to see whether she had misjudged her, to see if she had any redeeming qualities.

One night, peeking into the teacher’s kitchen window, Molly observed Mrs. Philbin biting into a lemon and holding ready a green persimmon.

THE END

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STICKY NOVEL NUMBER TWO:

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SCRUNCH

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“This is the life,” he said to himself, as the sunny beach sand scrunched between his toes.

“It doesn’t get any better than this.”

He was right.

For the next fifty years, nothing got any better.

THE END

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STICKY NOVEL NUMBER THREE:

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GIDDYUP

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Back in the before times, he had driven a horse and buggy for thirty years before finally purchasing a Model-T automobile.

One day, the brakes failed.

As his Model-T hurtled toward a fence, he shouted, WHOA!”

THE END

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FOURTH AND FINAL STICKY NOVEL:

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SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

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The day after the Liberators brought Democracy to the people, the people were heard to cry out, “Hey, why isn’t everything perfect now? You and your Democracy!”

Some of the people yearned for a powerful yet benevolent leader who would provide for them, Democracy or no Democracy.

Since they had not experienced Democracy, they did not miss it.

THE END

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You are now free to write your own one-page sticky novel.

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Be not afraid

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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THUNDERING ANTS, SCURRYING GIANTS

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I am stooping at eye-level beside our kitchen counter, closely watching dozens of tiny ants encircling a dab of insect attractant.

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I could be doing more important things. But at the moment I am transfixed by these indigenous creatures. They are mysterious and inscrutable. Their  unknown intent drives them to act in ways I do not understand.

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I feel like a child again, recalling endless summer days of play and study, study and play. I imagine impossible adventures. I wonder and observe the critters around me. Sometimes I wish I were small enough to engage them.

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Tiny versions of myself scurry up blades of grass, briefly acknowledge a passing scurrier, disappear into the shadows, make way for the next traveler.

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What if the ants were my human size, what if I were their size? Would they be observant, or just too big and too busy to take time? What if ant-sized me had to run for my life to avoid a huge descending foot?

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Do ants even know I exist? Does a guardian ant relate mythologies to its young’uns, tales about near-miss encounters with beings too large to see?

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And, in my case, are there nearby things so humongous that they become invisible? Like thunder? Is thunder the vibrating result of a sky-sized stomp by an entity I cannot see?

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As I gain years and wisdoms I pay less attention to unexplainable things. If a Leviathan calls me by the thunder do I shrug it off and continue my daily rounds, just like the ants?

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Am I a rolling thunder to these minuscule denizens? Have they shrugged me off, too?

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Arising with a groan from the effort of changing from kitchen-counter stoop to bipedal strut, I leave the ants now. They have their world and must protect and maintain it. I must do the same with mine.

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But it is nice to stop to smell the roses now and then…and notice an impossibly small critter running harmlessly amok among the fragrances

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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KA-THUNK! A FEW BUMPER CAR MEMORIES

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The very idea of Bumper Cars cheers me up, eggs me on, drives me beyond the negatives and the irritants of daily life Down South.

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Seriously.

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I have not seen or driven a bumper car for some sixty years, but I recall the experience so vividly. Why is that?

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Nowadays people all around me frequently use the term Bumper Cars in their daily anecdotes. I wonder whether they have ever boarded a bumper car, whether they know what it is like to be six years old, knocking about and pretending to drive without a proper license.

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What it was like to be inside a vehicular collision without getting hurt. What it felt like to crash into strangers and still smile and wave and share a laugh.

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The bumper cars of my youth still roll about, popping up now and then to help me describe a confusing situation, a perplexing encounter, a humorous melding of crisis and comedy.

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Maybe my bumper car memories serve as an anchor when life is perplexing or disorienting. When I make my way through crises large and small, I tend to beam down into the driver’s seat and just enjoy the ride.

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Knowing deep down that that’s about all the true solidity I can ever expect of life, life and its invisible and mysterious book of rules.

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Life may be vague and perplexing, but maybe that is as it should be. If we ever figure things out, the quest will be over. What will we do with our time?

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Should we become all-wise and all-knowing, what excitement will we find when we awaken from our beautiful bumper car daydreams

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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HEALING HANDS AND ASPERGUM DREAMS

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In today’s true tale, Jimmy Three is ten years old, some seven decades ago.

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As Village Elderdom wends its way down the years, it becomes easier to time-travel to the way-back country of youth—youth and its barely-containable energy.

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This morning Jimmy Three is gazing into the metal mirrored medicine cabinet of his childhood bathroom. He searches for the Aspergum container. Brother Ronny has a fever and Aspergum is decreed the curative of choice.

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Jimmy Three is fascinated by, fearful of, mysterious shelved unguents and salves and multi-shaped pills and spoonable fluids, cardboad boxes housing bandages, tapes and cushiony pads. Cellophane wrappings and flexible-tubed pastes hide behind mild-mannered mercurochrome and ouchy merthiolate.

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He dares not touch the castor oil bottle because it retains memories of squinched-face gulps during sickbed episodes. He is fascinated by Alka-Seltzer wafers because dissolved they taste like embittered soft drinks. Why can’t I drink them even when I’m not ill, he wonders.

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Tooth powders and toothpastes rest side by side. Denatured alcohol awaits emergency chigger bites, Vicks VapoRub is there in case stuffed-nosed colds lurk. Vasoline soothes and slides. Menthol cough drops heal sore throats—and they make guilty-pleasure candy, too.

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Jimmy Three is amazed by Mother’s knowledge of what to do with each of these dozens of medicinal wonders. She tells tales of her own mother’s country-bred wisdom about which plant, which herb, which tree bark, which paregoric, which asafidity cure is best for each malady, each emergency.

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Now, living in a small village separated from much of nature, Jimmy Three’s family relies on over-the-counter and mail-order solutions to daily medical urgencies once scooped from yards and hillsides.

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Aspergum is today’s drug of choice. Even if brother Ronny’s fever runs its course naturally, Aspergum at least distracts him from the demi-reality of fever dreams and giant calming hands descending to his forehead. Those hands pretend to be testing his temperature, but their real purpose is to assure him that comfort and care and love are always nearby, in this tiny bungalow in this long-ago village.

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This long-ago village that will persist in time till final memory fades, making  way for the next family, clearing room for another generation to find its own special paths to love and healing

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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CALL ME ALABAMA!

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A DOWN-SOUTH ANTHEM

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Alabama is a state of mind.

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No, I take that back.

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Alabama is your state of mind.

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Alabama is my state of mind.

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Look at the map.

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There is no logical border.

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If logic prevailed, Alabama would be panhandled-with-care to the Gulf and barely miss the Mississippi River to the west and stick-toed in the Atlantic to the east.

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The Alabama state of my mind is…

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Alabama is a truncated

Arbitrarily-bordered

Mixture of Appalachian

Foothills and Gulf beaches

And Tennessean

Valleys and Southern

Pines and black dirt

Flatlands and red

Clay banks and

Human-formed mounds

And dinosaur-chalked

Banks and ‘gator

Swamps and

Cricks and meandering-barged rivers

And angel-haired falls and bluebird

Nests and mosquito bites

And chigger itches and ancient

Warrior-ghosts and

Dirt-poor moonshiners

And proud farmers and

Vegetable-stand pickups

And blue highways

And washboard roads

And scorching sun and

Humid rashes and

Fields endless fields

And full-moon-activated

Cemeteries and

Tombstone graveyards and

Midwife shacks and

Breezeways and clapboards

And wild blackberries and lazy

Cows cud-ding and calves

Cuddling and hay bales and

Barn lofts and suckling puppies

And strutting blue roosters

And water moccasins

And synchronized

Twilight fireflies and glistening

Stars so close you can

Touch them.

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Alabama in my state of mind is

Far-off 3:00 A.M. train

Whistles and howling dogs

And skittish deer and roadside

Tire carcasses and skulking

Buzzards and dearly departed

Armadillos and skunk-fragranced

Air blended with sweet honeysuckle and smothered

With kudzu and life-saving

Breezes interspersed with

Gasping-for-air heat.

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Alabama in my state of mind is

At her best

When you close your eyes

And remember how

Good she was when you

Were young, how wise

She became as you yourself

Wised up and how good she

Can be whenever she

Re-claims her fairness

Of spirit, whenever she

Gets back to

The earth, gets back

Down to earth,

Remembers her hard-working

Closely-tied families.

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In my state-of-Alabama-mind,

Alabama is at her best

When she’s all potential and

Hope and strut…at her

Best when she remembers

Her humble beginnings…

At her best when she

Gives up the chanting

And pays attention to

The babies and the infirm and the

Poor…at her best when

She recalls how wonderful

It is to be paid tender attention to,

To be well-paid with tender attention

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Y’all come visit. Stay as long as you like.

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See how easily we embrace you

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How lavishly we feed you

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How generously we share stories with one another

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See what we are really like

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/021bu0seOSY

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Life, actually…

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FIDGETING AND SALVATION EVERY SUNDAY

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In memory fresh, I am fidgeting and squirming here on a varnished hardwood church pew in the Forest Lake neighborhood of Tuscaloosa.

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Time is leaping a seventy-year chasm and taking me back to Sunday morning sometime in the 1940s. You know—the ’40s, just yesterday to us long-timers who are still around to remember.

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I am trying to be patient this day. As the multi-tuned untrained-but-sincere voices of the congregation blend precariously with intonations from the burgundy-robed choir, I can only think of what is coming next.

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Thinking about what is coming next is what gets me through the holy services this humid morn.

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Fidget. Squirm. Scrawl with pocket knife-sharpened number two pencil in the margins of my parents’ pre-Thermo-Faxed paper program, printed especially for today’s services.

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Check the cracked face of a bandless wrist watch found just this week on the Northington Elementary School recess playground. The watch still works and I can keep up with time as the second hand spasms away the seconds.

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I feel the vibrations from overlapping singers and wavering organ notes as they wash over me and attempt to regain my wandering attention.

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The program scratchings completed, I now carefully examine backs of necks in forward pews. Some are freshly shaved, some are scraggly, others are pockmarked or wrinkled or graceful or baggy.

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May I can write a poem about backs of necks some day.

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Reverend Bronnie Nichols now bids the congregation to rise, an apparent effort to rouse dozers and alert offering-plate deacons.

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Everybody behaves during this hour of a Sunday morning, except for a baby or two. But isn’t that what babies do?

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Playmates are scrubbed and quiet, unlike their rowdy selves a few minutes from now when they are discharged into the wilds of childhood.

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I’m happy to stand up. It is something to do. And it means I, too, will be released into an extra-churchy world any moment now.

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But Brother Nichols is not done with me yet.

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Everybody sings verse after verse of an elongated hymn designed to press guilt upon unbaptized attendees who are supposed to rush to the front to be saved from perdition. Brother Nichols will not cut short the overtime singing until somebody responds to the pressure and reaches out for dispensed holiness.

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I am relieved when a teared-up churchgoer finally inches forward to please the preacher and the saints on high. This takes the pressure off of me. Maybe another Sunday will be my day to confess and repent and relent.

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Not today.

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We sheep are eventually released, but not until Bro’ Nichols has shaken every hand and patted every shoulder as we all pass through the front door.

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Now blessed and cleansed, I can stop fidgeting and start salivating. After all, the next thing up in my small life is fried chicken and apple pie and endless hours of playground hollering and jumping and laughing, and nursing the occasional boo-boo that will surely occur.

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But the boo-boo will heal quickly under the influence of a morning of overflowing righteousness.

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And in less than seven days I’ll be fidgeting and squirming all over again, just prior to salvation

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©  Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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