Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary at https://youtu.be/sSRe5w8d2ro

or read his transcript below:

BUTTERBEAN POKER MEMORIES OF GOOD TIMES PAST

I’ve had some good times during an incredibly long life in the Deep South. Now and then one of those times pops up and makes me smile, makes me yearn to spend another happy Sunday afternoon with all those long-gone friends and family from the past.

Here’s a page from the Red Clay Diary.

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

The time is far, far ago, but it is ever fresh in memory.

It is Sunday afternoon in this village, when getting together with kinfolk and outlaws and in-laws is so much fun. 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. Here are some snapshots.:

Dried butterbeans under a tree in Uncle Pat and Aunt Elizabeth McGee’s sideyard. No, we don’t eat the dried butterbeans except one time, and once is enough. What my uncles do with the butterbeans is use them instead of chips, to sit on the ground and play poker. The summertime buggy and humid heat is barely noticed, because the Games and the Slow Roast are the thing. Two games go on simultaneously. The poker game—in which all the winner gets is a bunch of dried beans—and the baseball game on the radio. You see, back in these times recalled, nobody has portable radios, so the Big Game emanates from one of the old cars in the family. An uncle pulls his vehicle near the Game and leaves the door open so we can all hear the big plays, the excited crowd, the crisp snap of wood against hide, the terse shouts of the umpire.

The Slow Roast is right next to the game—big hunks of barbeque turning over an open-pit fire, smoking up the woods and forcing all humans who care about eating to salivate involuntarily.

This is Division of Labor stuff. The men are in charge of staying up all night, tending the fire, 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 do everything else.

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

Meanwhile, cousins and playmates are free to roam wild in Uncle Pat’s nearby woods, chase after and be chased by spiders and snakes, attract red bugs and ticks, laugh out loud and wrestle, play their own baseball game in the nearby cornfield, and in general let out all the energy that has been pent up during the week.

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

Everybody knows their responsibilities in these olden days, nobody hides from helping out, everyone comes to each other’s rescue when a bruise appears, all accidents are tended to in gentle good humor, all conflicts mediated and peacefully settled, all passions channeled for the good of the one-day communion.

At the end of the long day, each family sits wearily and happily in automobiles, waiting while relatives lean over open driver windows and say 45-minute lingering goodbyes to each other. Nobody wants to leave the scene, everybody has to, and, regardless of how tired and spent and scraped and bloated and bug-bit, we can’t help but think about the next reunion when we’ll do it all again.

Yep, far ago and long away, I dream 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.

Right now, because of the pandemic, the reunions are on hold. I miss them all the more.

When we finally do get to draw close and resume these happy events, there will be much hugging and cherishing and storytelling, as we catch up and attempt to make good all the fun times missed

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/

or read the transcript below:

LITTLE JOURNEYS INTERSECTION BY INTERSECTION

The high-up traffic signal before me dangles in the wind. My car automatically obeys, comes to an idling stop, giving me time to glance around and see what’s to see this sunny day.

Out the left driver’s window a greyhaired man sits atop a decorative brick barricade on the street corner. Twenty feet away towers a cold glass and steel medical facility. The greyhaired man is wearing hospital slippers and an open-backed green hospital smock, his legs bare from the knees down. He sits alone in puzzled silence, suspended somewhere between co-pay instructions and the healing arts and a someday hospice.

Ahead of me, the widescreen windshield exposes static buildings and passing pedestrians, pedestrians focused on their journeys and oblivious to the solitary greyhaired man.

Out the right-hand passenger window I see static faces of people who wait…wait for a bus, wait for an Uber, wait for a lift. One face animatedly converses with an invisible phone pal, another face squints against the sun to see the traffic light, yet another face looks up to his package-toting mom and squeezes tight her free hand. Another face stares dreamily at nothing much.

In the rear view mirror a driver peers at her reflection and adjusts makeup.

The signal clicks and changes color and grants permission to my car to proceed.

All the lives I’ve just borne witness to are whisked away as I continue my journey to the next stop and the next up-close views of this dazzling and diverse and sometimes delightful Deep South village

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary broadcast/podcast: https://youtu.be/IZyFEUI2L-I

or read the transcript below:

THE HIDDEN WORLD OF THE UPSIDE-DOWN ROCKING CHAIR

Thirteen vertical wooden bars. That’s all it takes to imprison me today.

Today I am four years old, way back in time, in the living room of my family’s small bungalow in long-ago Deep South Alabama.

This is a time when a gigantic world war is winding down. Soon my military uncles will be wending their way homeward from Europe, carrying purple hearts and small souvenirs, sporting battle scars, telling riveting stories to us adoring civilian kids.

While we wait for the world to calm down and get going again, we summer children just play and entertain ourselves, as if nothing strange is happening in the rest of the world.

That’s why I am behind bars, waiting for older sister Barbara to discharge me from jail and proceed to play cops and robbers and cowboys and Tarzan again.

The jail is actually an old curved-wood rocking chair with thirteen posts that, when turned upside-down, makes a great cage for small tykes to crawl into. I peer through the spaces between the posts and await my fate.

Mother used to rock us kids to sleep in this chair, but since we no longer require infant care, the chair is a perfect time machine.

Later, after we’ve tired of conflict games, the inverted rocking chair becomes a teller cage. I’m the banker dispensing change and old cancelled checks between the posts. Barbara is the pretend grown woman who is extracting pennies and nickels from Mother’s old purse. We try our best to imitate adults and make smart monetary decisions.

Our Aunt Gladys is postmistress of the tiny nearby town of Peterson. When we visit, we see her reassuring face through metal bars as she takes care of postal patrons. She is framed by green combination-lock mail boxes.

With this knowledge in mind, the upside-down rocker becomes a postal cage with one kid playing Aunt Gladys, the other pretending to purchase used stamps to place upon discarded postcards and envelopes. Play money consists of checker pieces, butterbeans, bus tokens and whatever else seems to be negotiable.

When break time occurs, I sip my lemoned sugared iced tea and, turning the chair rightside-up, sit and rock myself into daydreams. The chair’s creaks and moans are music to my ears. They become sound effects to accompany Dr. Frankenstein’s loping monster.

After sundown, after we’ve had all the firefly-catching, mosquito-bite-scratching, banana-popsicle-munching fun we can stand for one day, I retire to my small bedroom, listen to the cricket chorus through open windows, snuggle beneath handmade quilts, and soon nightdream about heroic soldiers and brave jungle natives and squeaky  pedal cars and Santa in his faraway workshop, carefully handcrafting my next Christmas surprise.

The forlorn rocking chair sits in the darkened living room, awaiting the attention it craves.

And, today, many decades later, the rickety old chair still rests in mellow retirement at my faraway Deep South home. The chair is too fragile to rock infants in, but too precious to send away to strangers. I smile each time I pass by, recalling how sweet and innocent we kids were, how sweetness and innocence still abide somewhere deep, deep inside me

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

ANTICIPATING 364 UNBIRTHDAYS

What do I get each time another birthday rolls around?

What is my reward? Where is my gift?

More to the point, what makes me think I have a reward coming my way, each time another 365 days pass me by?

What is so significant about our birthdays, mine and your’n? (Don’t let “your’n” throw you—-it’s just one of those middle English words that a bookie nerd like me finds swimming among the silt in my brain.)

Speaking of silt, how many hundreds of songs and poems and stories are indelibly branded into my memory?

This is definitely one of them:

MARCH HARE:

A very merry unbirthday to me

MAD HATTER:

To who?

MARCH HARE:

To me

MAD HATTER:

Oh you!

MARCH HARE:

A very merry unbirthday to you

MAD HATTER:

Who me?

MARCH HARE:

Yes, you!

MAD HATTER:

Oh, me!

MARCH HARE:

Let’s all congratulate us with another cup of tea

A very merry unbirthday to you!

MAD HATTER:

Now, statistics prove, prove that you’ve one birthday

MARCH HARE:

Imagine, just one birthday every year

MAD HATTER:

Ah, but there are three hundred and sixty four unbirthdays!

MARCH HARE:

Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer

BOTH:

A very merry unbirthday to you, to you

ALICE:

To me?

MAD HATTER:

To you!

BOTH:

A very merry unbirthday

ALICE:

For me?

MARCH HARE:

For you!

MAD HATTER:

Now blow the candle out my dear

And make your wish come true

BOTH:

A merry merry unbirthday to you!

***

Now, why is it that I can’t remember where I placed my Diet Coke five minutes ago, but I can recall hundreds of songs and poems and stories like this from my ever present childhood?

Don’t strain yourself—I don’t really need to know the answer to this question. I just want to ruminate and contemplate and masticate…eating my breakfast and thinking useless but entertaining thoughts all the while.

Go ahead and laugh at me. It’s a life I’m stuck with.

And during the best of my times, I celebrate at least 364 times a year.

Quick! Let’s appreciate and savor our unbirthdays with gusto, now and then distracting ourselves with the delusion that all is right with the world.

We do deserve a break from all this now and then, don’t you think?

Lewis Carroll and Jack Kerouac and Aldous Huxley and Steve Martin all know the value of self-delusion. Each has a different way of celebrating silliness.

My way is to share random thoughts and allow you to find your own significance or distraction as a result.

Couldn’t hurt.

Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.