Listen to Jim: http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/survivingtheredmudsnake.mp3
or read on…
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Life, actually…
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SURVIVING THE RED MUD SNAKE FILLED STORM CENTER DITCH
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I am sliding down the muddy red-clay slope of The Ditch, and wondering whether I’ll land head-first or rump-first on the bottom. It’s a split-second skid that lasts an hour during the rewinding playbacks of my memory.
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This is back in the late 1940′s of my elementary school childhood, back when things are still clear and mysterious and enormous and simple all at the same time.
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The Ditch is deep and long to a small kid my size, and within it ranges water moccasins, a diversity of insects, swirls of soft plant matter, tadpoles and…Germs. Germs are invisible, but we kids think we can see them, since Mother warns us about them all the time—”Wash your hands, get rid of those germs before supper!” or “Flush the commode and wash those germs away,” or “Don’t pass your cough germs to anybody else, wash up!”
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So, the Ditch we play in is all the more fascinating because of its threats and germs, because of its constant humorous surprises—ever looked real close and long at a frog or a smooth stone or a mudpie? All science and theology and philosophy lie dormant inside them until you decide to revive and employ them.
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Anyhow, I’m walking home from school in a driving rain, holding onto one telephone pole after another to keep from blowing away in the strongest wind I’ve ever encountered. At the edge of The Ditch, which runs parallel to the retired Army barracks serving as Northington School in Tuscaloosa, I squint down to see how far the water has risen, and that’s when I slip and fall—and eventually land.
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The bottom of The Ditch blocks some of the wind and rain, so I’m kind of safe, even with the thought of those snakes and critters creeping about. And by now I don’t even remember whether I’ve landed on bottom or cranium. Now it’s all about the mud and trying to decide whether to stay and slosh around or head home and get clean and dry.
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At last, it seems more prudent to get the heck out of The Ditch and traverse the Night on Bald Mountain landscape to security. When you’re this age, you can always find a way to climb a slippery bank. You’re just full of energy and adrenalin and vim, and you don’t have enough experience to know that sometimes you can’t make it out of a tough situation alone. You just do it.
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Just recently, I stand where The Ditch used to be, thinking about another storm that hit dead center at this very spot, a storm that destroyed most of the neighborhood I used to play in, a storm that was not as forgiving as the one I survived way back then. I realize that coins flip, fate decides what’s what, some kids get to live another half century or so after a crisis…and some don’t.
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Thanks to this particular flip of the coin, I live to tell you the tale of one kid whose love of getting through the day drove unabated through the years, pretty much the way most kids most everywhere get through the years…by enjoying the mud and chaos, but by also appreciating the love of an anti-germ Mom, a nice hot bath, dry clothes, and dreams about what adventure might take place the next day, if you’re lucky
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(c) 2021 A.D. by Jim Reed
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