Monthly Archives: November 2023

THE JOYFULLY ANNOYING HOT DOG TRUCK

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Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast

https://youtu.be/yUXusDrOajA or read his story below:

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Life, actually…

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THE JOYFULLY ANNOYING HOT DOG TRUCK

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Now you just have to be patient for a moment here and listen to my true tale about THE JOYFULLY ANNOYING HOT DOG TRUCK.

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It goes like this:

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More than a couple of decades ago, my two-year-old grandson Reed received from friends of the family a beautifully crafted bright yellow purple-tired red-hubcapped red-fendered battery-operated toy HOT DOG TRUCK. 

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Now this is not just your regular run-of-the-toys-r-us hot dog truck. This hot dog truck is nine inches long and nine inches high and has clear-plastic display panels on each side which display six small hot dogs (wieners to you, weenies to us Southerners). 

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In the open front cab of the truck sits a pink-faced mustachioed guy with a blue hat, orange shirt, white pants and white gloves—not to mention blue eyes… shaped like this: + + 

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The green headlamps, bright green bell and slogans animate everything—”Happy Hot Dog” on the front hood, “Yum Yum” on the side doors, “Chili Cheese Dog 99 cents Mustard Dog 59 cents Deluxe Combo (fries and drink) 99 cents.” 

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Behind the six vertical hot dogs (no mustard) is a sign, “Happy Hot Dog Dancing for You.”

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Did I mention the fact that atop the hot dog truck is a great big hot dog (with mustard snaking across the top) that looks almost real if you squint or if you’re two years old? 

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Now this hot dog truck toy is pretty cute and quite unusual looking, but what makes it really fun and annoying is what it does. When you throw the switch on the bottom of the hot dog truck, it suddenly begins playing loud, rhythmic and unidentifiable music, and the front purple wheels begin walking (not turning) the front of the truck in time with the beat.

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The truck walks! 

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Then, after the tune goes on for a few seconds, the hot dog truck driver yells, “Hot Dog! Hot Dog!” in a clipped accent of some kind—could be Brooklyn, could be Hispanic. Part of the mystery, you know.  While he’s yelling, his upper body shakes back and forth, he rings the green bell, and the six hot dogs (three on each side) start dancing! Then, the truck repeats this routine until an annoyed adult turns it off or stomps it. 

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A most wonderfully annoying toy! 

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Well, two-year-old Reed was afraid of that hot dog truck and wouldn’t have anything to do with it, but I loved it. It was just the thing every kid dreams of having—a toy that makes you laugh while annoying all adults within hearing distance.  Even after you turn the truck off, you can still make it yell, “Hot Dog! Hot Dog!” twice by pushing a rose-colored button next to the driver, or you can make that funky music go on for a couple of seconds by pushing the violet button.

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Gosh, did I have fun with that hot dog truck! Nobody else did. 

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As we were leaving my daughter’s home after the Christmas weekend, she presented me with the bright yellow hot dog truck. “No,” I said. “This belongs to Reed!” She looked at me for a second and said, “Dad, I want you to have this toy.”

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The steel in her voice made me realize that she not only NEEDED for me to remove this toy from her home, but she knew that it would make me a lot happier than it would ever make her or Reed. 

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I grabbed this gift and drove the five hours back to Birmingham, occasionally annoying my wife and granddaughter by pushing the rose-colored button. And, once in a while, by pushing the violet button. What fun! 

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Now, the Happy Hot Dog truck sits atop my bookloft counter (I’m at least smart enough not to take it home) for me to show off to annoyed customers and annoying little kids. 

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If you know anything about other annoying toys made by the Metro Toy Company in the Philippines, please let me know. My joy may be your pain, but what’s wrong with making an old guy happy

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© 2023 A.D. by Jim Reed

THE VACANT THANKSGIVING DAY CHAIR

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 Life, actually…

THE  VACANT THANKSGIVING DAY CHAIR

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:
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http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/thanksgivinghappiestsaddest.mp3

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or read on…

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Here is a true story I re-tell every Thanksgiving, just

to remind myself and you that everything that really

matters is right before us, all the time. Here ‘tis:

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THE EMPTY THANKSGIVING DAY CHAIR

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The saddest thing I ever saw: a small, well-dressed elderly woman dining alone at Morrison’s Cafeteria, on Thanksgiving Day.

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Oh there are many other sadnesses you can find if you look hard enough, in this variegated world of ours, but a diner alone on Thanksgiving Day makes you feel really fortunate, guilty, smug, relieved, tearful, grateful…it brings you up short and makes you time-travel to the pockets of joy and cheer you experienced in earlier days…

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Crepe paper. Lots of crepe paper. And construction paper. Bunches of different-colored construction paper.

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In my childhood home in Tuscaloosa, my Thanksgiving Mother always made sure we creative and restless kids had all the cardboard, scratch paper, partly-used tablets, corrugated surfaces, unused napkins, backs of cancelled checks, rough brown paper from disassembled grocery bags, backs of advertising letters and flyers…anything at all that we could use to make things. Yes, dear 21st-Century young’uns, we kids back then made things from scraps.

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We could cut up all we wanted, and cut up we did.

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We cut out rough rectangular sheets from stiff black wrapping paper and glued the edges together to make Pilgrim hats. Old belt buckles were tied to our shoelaces—we never could get it straight, whether the Pilgrims were Quakers, or vice versa, or neither. But it always seemed important to put buckles on our shoes and sandals, wear tubular hats and funny white paper collars, and craft weird-looking guns that flared out like trombones at one end.

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More fun than being a Pilgrim/Quaker was being an Indian—a true blue Native American, replete with bare chest, feathers shed by neighborhood doves, bows made of crooked twigs and kite string, arrows dulled at the tip by rubber stoppers and corks, and loads of Mother’s discarded rouge and powder and lipstick and mashed cranberries smeared here and there on face and body, to make us feel like the Indians we momentarily were.

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Sister Barbara and Mother would find some long autumnal-hued dresses for the occasion, but they were seldom seen outside the kitchen for hours on end, while the eight-course dinner was under construction.

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There was always an accordion-fold crepe paper turkey centerpiece on display, hastily bought on sale at S.H. Kress, just after last year’s Thanksgiving season. It looked nothing like my Aunt Mattie’s turkeys in her West Blocton front yard.

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And for some reason, we ate cranberry products on that day and that day only. Nobody ever thought about cranberries the other 364 days! And those lucky turkeys were lucky because nobody ever thought of eating them except at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They were home free the rest of the year!

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Now, back into the time machine of just a few years ago.

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It is Thanksgiving Day. My wife and son and granddaughter are all out of the country. Other family and relatives are either dead or gone, or just plain tied up with their own lives elsewhere, doing things other than having Thanksgiving Dinner with me.

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My brother, Tim, my friends Tim Baer and Don Henderson and I decide that we will have to spend Thanksgiving Dinner together, since each of us is bereft of wife or playmate or relative, this particular holiday this particular year.

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So, we wind up at Morrison’s Cafeteria, eating alone together, going through the line and picking out steamed-particle-board turkey, canned cranberries, thin gravy, boxed mashed potatoes and some bakery goods whose source cannot easily be determined.

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But we laugh at our situation and each other, tell jokes, cut up a bit, and thank our lucky stars that this one Thanksgiving Dinner is surely just a fluke.

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We’ll be trying that much harder, next year, to not get blind-sided by the best holiday of the year, Thanksgiving being the only holiday you don’t have to give gifts or reciprocate gifts or strain to find the correct gifts.

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 Left to right: Tim Reed, Tim Baer, Jim Reed lining up for Thanksgiving.

Don Henderson is behind the camera.

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On Thanksgiving holidays ever since, I make sure I’m with family and friends, and now and then I try to set a place at the table of my mind, for any elderly lady or lone friend who might want to join us…for the second saddest thing I’ve ever seen is a happy family lustily enjoying a Thanksgiving feast together and forgetting for a moment about all those lone diners in all the cafeterias of the world who could use a kind glance and a smile

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© 2023 A.D. by Jim Reed

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https://youtu.be/xDLnyTrOchc

LIVING WHILE STAYING ALIVE

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Life, actually…

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LIVING WHILE STAYING ALIVE

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In the quiet pre-populated morning hours of this Down South neighborhood, a sole grocery-cart pilot rattles his descent.

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He steers downhill, relying on gravity and momentum to transport the cardboard-and-doodad-laden vehicle to the next street.

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The momentarily barren and foggy incline blends with his gray coat and gray helmet and the gray asphalt. He fades into the distance and becomes part of the landscape of the gray and muted-green village.

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I am his silent witness as I prepare to mount my metal steed and wend my way through morning errands. During this one second of time, no other member of my species is present. It is up to me to transcribe the existence of this rattletrap man so that there will be a record. A record of attention paid to a gossamer life

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A one-syllable dog barks his presence and is satisfied until the next bark.

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A neighborly neighbor materializes and beeps open trunk and door, loading schoolkids up for the rote journey. A green next-door scrub-suited med heads to work, silently nodding in my direction and receiving a return nod.

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There is just the right humid chill in the air. Not too warm, not too cool. Perfect for this miracle jiffy of activity.

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Just above me, a dispassionate cast-iron statue gazes east to the sunrise and prepares to warm its innards when new rays visit the pedestal beneath his sandals.

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I work my way around a humongous city-enforced plastic trash pail, check for leavings in the grass (dogtritus), click the doors of my dew-slicked car, and descend into its small man-capsule for a two-mile workaday journey toward commerce.

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NPR entertains me with news of the wretched and forlorn activities of nations and bully leaders, adds a dash of anecdotal humor to give me 2 1/2 seconds of hope, then re-enters the sausage machine for more, more…then asks for donations.

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I parallel park next to my parallel universe of a bookstore. I gather my sheaves and enter a daytime of bliss, a day of challenge, a day of opportunity, a day of variegated personalities and quirks.

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I have an aha! moment and realize that I am always safely at home wherever I go on this lonesome village-by-village planet.

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I realize that living within paradise requires examining carefully each passing blink…double-checking to make sure I don’t miss the pure, the simple, the beautiful, the inherent teeming lives that surround me.

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Living here is a privilege and a gift. It’s up to me to reciprocate and spread the message

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

 

The Solitude of the Long-Ago Diary-Keepers

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Listen to Jim:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/TheSolitudeoftheLongAgoDiaryKeepers.mp3

or read on…

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Life, actually…

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THE SOLITUDE OF THE LONG-AGO DIARY-KEEPERS

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The small worn leather-bound diary on my desk offers up clue after clue about its owner, who lived way back in 1919. Whether I truly understand these clues is something that cannot be determined. So, I weave my profile of the diary-keeper, unfettered by fact and evidence.

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Here it is. The title page of this century-plus old diary says much, reveals little:

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Bought at “Fowey”

Dec. 6, 1918

U.S.S.C. #352

Ray P. Rogers

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The facing blank page states:

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Belonging to Ray Rogers

U.S.N

Radioman

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The first day of the calendar, January 1, 1919:

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Stayed on boat all day

Stood 10 to 12 watch

Wrote some letters

turned in

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An action-packed day for a man at sea

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Skipping over to February 6, 1919:

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Loaded depth bombs all day on Lake View

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Skip to April 7, 1919

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At sea between Lisbon and Azores.

At last I am able to give my thoughts

full sway. My friend has been at home with my girl

and pals all day. I seem to be bursting open with

pleasant thoughts of the things I am to do when I

reach the best place in the world—home in Alabama.

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You can imagine the rest, since the actual diary is in safe but unknown hands by now.

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What intrigues me most about forgotten letters and diaries and scrapbooks is the economy of words, the shorthand thoughts and, mainly, the unwritten reflections that rest between the lines.

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As I read the words of people long gone, I begin to get an image of what they must have been like. The astounding revelation is that no matter how blustery or humble the entries are, each diarist winds up sounding like you and me.

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Just folks alone with themselves, writing down what their fingers dictate.

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The poet Rilke called all of us Solitudes.

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We diarists and poets and authors are all solitudes, no matter how many people surround us. When it comes to recording thoughts and feelings, each of us has to do it alone. Each of us has to face our own solitude as squarely as possible.

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Each of us makes the Journey hand-in-hand with ourselves

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.