Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/khtgsRte980
or read the actual transcript below:
THE 47 UMBRELLAS OF ELSEWHERE
Raindrops plop upon my head as I rush from grammar school to home back here in the 1940s of Deep South Alabama. My book satchel filled with damp homework assignments and half an uneaten apple left over from lunch, I am on course to find safe haven before the storm ramps up.
But childhood distracts. I slow down to let the rain soak my clothes and leaden my shoes.
Taking time to scan the horizon, I see so many wonderful challenges. There are mud puddles everywhere, beckoning. There are gutters spouting off ready-made outdoor showers. There are cars rushing by to splatter me with smiles and gasps.
I begin stomping at least once in every pothole, each soaked-grass median, pausing only now and then to catch my breath beneath sheltering trees.
Adults can be spotted along the way, leaning with their umbrellas, fighting against the brisk air.
I wonder what it would be like to own my own umbrella.
As the 1950s overtake me, I begin to experiment with the idea of not being soaked to the bone after walks in the rain. I even discover a tattered umbrella and wrestle it into partial usage. This time, the raindrops no longer fall upon my head, at least.
Then, I find myself using my Mother’s umbrella as a wind-catcher when I roller skate down our little avenue, even on rainless days.
I am seldom rewarded for arriving home drenched, or showing up with Mother’s turned-inside-out umbrella. But the fun I have seems to belong just to me, since I figure everybody else in town uses umbrellas as walking-sticks or protective weapons, or as just a way to look suave and prepared.
Then, I discover Gene Kelly in the film Singin’ in the Rain. Gene is doing all the things for his audience that I always felt were forbidden to kids like me. I instantly see that he remembers what it is like to be in grammar school, finding jolly good times in the gift nature is bestowing. It is OK to go racing in the rain!
Now, decades later, as a Deep South geezer reminiscing about umbrellas, I begin to count all the umbrellas I’ve owned or borrowed or lent or destroyed during this incredibly long lifespan.
As you and I know, umbrellas have a life of their own. Umbrellas are seldom where you need them when you need them, because they tend to remain in the last place you were. No amount of compensating addresses this problem, even when I purchase a dozen and scatter them about for convenience. They still migrate and mock and remain elusive, inanimate denizens of a merrily disjointed world.
They are crying out to be forgotten. They are screaming, “Toss me aside and accept what is coming down. Find your bliss and cling to it for dear life.”
Oh, the total is 47.
47 umbrellas I’ve owned or known, and they all live in the town of Elsewhere.
And Elsewhere is where I will find them once I’m done with treading the healing waters of Now
© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.