Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/TDlx0LFTTRc

or read his story below:

INSPIRATIONS PASSING BY ON THE WAY TO OVER THERE

For every thousand or so thoughts or ideas that invade my brain, only a handful are scooped from the cartoon bubble hovering above my head, then retained for possible inspiration later on.

These out-of-nowhere glitches and doodads are piled high in a corner of my mind and sorted and possibly matched on word-laundering day.

A few examples of stuff that arrived from nowhere and for no good reason reappear on this page today:

A PEW THOUGHTS

Would you term a belligerent preacher a pewgilist?

 Would a smelly boxer be a phewgilist?

If the phewgilist attended church, would the pew say phew!?

You tell me: where does this material come from? Another example:

DISLIKE

 That disliker dislikes me.

Not only that,

That disliker dislikes the likes of me.

I dislike not so much the

disliker, but the disliker’s

dislike of me.

I dis the disliker, not

because I disliker, but because

I disliker dislike of me.

Where am I going with this drivel? I dunno. May I impose another example?

“I can’t get very far without my body.”

Hmmm…

” If my mind wanders, it can’t get far because it is tethered to the body bag within which I reside.”

Can’t stop my brain. There’s more:

“Wisdom imparted by the wind would be called a wind advisory.”

The question may now be asked, Is there a very fine line between bursts of wisdom and instances of insanity? OK, here’s another:

“My greatest hope is that Science will find Cheese Curls to be a sure path to a healthy life.”

Now, that is almost sane. Hmmm… Another:

“If you speak the unspeakable, it isn’t.”

And on and on:

“If you build it, there is no telling whether anybody will come.”

Either I’m losing it, or this stuff is beginning to sound, well, Sound—if not of mind, at least of whimsy. Can you take another?

“I’m so skeptical I’m skeptical about my skepticism.”

I’m not so sure I’m a skeptic.

Uh-oh, this is now becoming Zen-like:

“Why do people only have flights of fancy? Can’t one occasionally enjoy a sea voyage of fancy or a hike of fancy?”

Now, Grasshopper, this exercise starts to morph into quotable realms of ephemeral wiseness.

Why don’t I shut up while I’m still behind

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/IURRe-m1PtA

or read his tale below…

I GOT SHOES YOU GOT SHOES

 I got to have shoes you got to have shoes. Most everybody’s got to have shoes.

But, you know, sometimes barefoot is the best disguise.

If you’re barefoot, nobody can judge you by the quality, price, stylishness, source and brand-name of what’s encasing your feet.

Barefoot is always the best way to be—every child knows that.

But shoes eventually win out, the wearing of shoes eventually becomes mandatory and womandatory.

I had to start wearing shoes every day when I entered the First Grade at Northington Elementary School. That’s back when the school was physically located inside old Army and Prisoner of War buildings left over from World War II.

My father, Tommy Reed, was a carpenter—later, a city building inspector. But before that, he had been a coal miner when he was a boy, then a shoe salesman.

By the time I was old enough to wear serious shoes instead of fun ones (hard leather-soled shoes to replace the black and white gym tennis shoes and the summer sandals), Daddy declared that after extensive research and experience, he had determined that the best shoe store in Tuscaloosa County was Central Shoe Store at 519 Greensboro Avenue, Downtown.

As a career carpenter, my Father had once done some carpentry work at Central Shoe Store and had become friends with Paul Applebaum, who, with his father Abe, operated the shop. After their discussions of past shoe sales experience, it was decided that Paul Applebaum was the best judge of proper shoes and proper shoe fit.

Back in those days, nobody would dream of allowing a kid to pick out his or her own shoes.

When families were close and warmly connected to one another, parents had a great deal of say-so in their children’s lives. Shoe-purchasing trips were on the level of car-buying, since one was likely to own only two pairs of shoes at a time—Sunday shoes and school shoes.

Back then, there was no such thing as extravagant ownership of dozens of pairs of highly-priced shoes.

It was a serious affair, this shoe-buying thing. But it was also a comforting experience because it meant that my brother Ronny and I would have Daddy all to ourselves for a Saturday while the three of us traveled Downtown to Central Shoe Store.

Paul Applebaum would carefully measure our feet for length and width in a serious but friendly manner. The beauty of Paul Applebaum was that he paid close attention to his job and his customers. I liked him because he treated my Father, who was literally a quiet and humble carpenter, as seriously as his most well-to-do clients from the better side of the tracks.

And that new pair of heavier-than-lead thick-leather black wingtipped Sunday shoes took weeks to break in—you never knew if the fit was good till you’d pretty well worn the shoes down a bit.

Paul Applebaum and his generation of apprenticed shoe-sellers are gone now. Buying shoes today is just another fast-convenience off-the-rack experience. Nothing like those days when getting into a new pair of shoes was the result of hours of study, measure, contemplation, talking and comparing…and good-natured visitation with the county’s greatest shoe salesman, Paul Applebaum

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/anotherreallifemartianhorrorstory.mp3

or read on…

PREPARE YE FOR ANOTHER HALLOWEEN

A true and actual Martian Horror Story

 It is 21 years ago, right now, in sweet memory:

We are trudging through the sand pits at Woking, looking carefully about for any signs of Martian space ships, when I realize for the umpteenth time in my life that it’s good to get away and do something different with mind and body and spirit.

I am in England with a group of scholars, authors and fans of H.G.Wells. We are walking together near the town of Woking.

H.G. Wells lived in Woking whilst writing THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, and a few things, such as the sand pits, have not radically changed.

In the cool and humid forest we finally find the exact landing site of the Martian cylinders, then go on to other landmarks of the Martian invasion—places where, in the mind of HGW, houses and buildings have been destroyed by the invaders, and we pass the house where the story’s hero had lived.

Once in the town square, I get to stand beneath a replica of one of the 55-foot-high Martian robots, something these aliens had left behind when an earthly virus finally killed them all off.

HGW would have been delighted to see this machine, but he might have expressed disappointment that his warnings about unanticipated invasion (invasion from Fascists, invasion from bad ideas, etc.) have gone largely unheeded, generation after generation.

Soon after he published WAR OF THE WORLDS, the invasions of WWI began, the war destined not to be the war to end all wars. And finally, in 1945, Wells had a chance to see what horrible use his predictions about atomic energy would be put to.

The good news is, Wells’ early draft of a universal human rights statement for mankind was adapted, then adopted, by the League of Nations, then the United Nations. His visionary views of racial harmony, feminism, equality and freedom from repression have stuck with many of us.

But it’s good to know that there’s an ever-present reminder of what can happen if mankind doesn’t learn to stick together and get along: the Martian machine can be re-animated at any time and the world can plunge once more, as it has plunged many times in the past, one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back…

It’s hard to find the pony some days, but, as Wells reminded us: Despite the despairs and depravities of humanity, we must accomplish two things simultaneously. 1. do everything we can to fight them, and 2. live our lives each day as if these despairs and depravities do not exist.

After my Martian trek through the forests of Woking, I return to the States with renewed hope.

Within two days I contract a strange virus

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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