Tag Archives: time travel

Under the dome of Birmingham: Stalking the elusive mom and pop breakfast places

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http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/underthebirminghamdome.mp3

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The man of a certain age sits alone in the diner, his girth mastering most of the booth space.

He eats his breakfast as if he’s never eaten before, smacking and stuffing and sopping and glugging, like he’s not had a meal for days, though it’s evident that he’s been frequently well-fed and well-groomed. He leans into the food and stuffs away, his blow-dried sprayed whitening hair and monogrammed track pullover shirt quivering in the morning fluorescent light.

He is his own world for a few minutes in the crowded eatery.

Across the room, a mustachioed baseball-capped good ol’ boy with hand in napkinned lap eats mannerly and methodically, gazing all the while into the indiscernable space before him, ignoring the blaring TV set hanging from the ceiling.

Worldly waitresses, ears slanted from cached pencils, skillfully walk the tightrope assigned to their lot—the tightrope walk between appearing simultaneously aloof and chummy, careful to balance the roles of Mom and Flirt and Nurturer and Businesswoman while keeping all these morning shovelers of food happy and distant.

Four elderly men at Table 4 grunt and chat and laugh and tease as they relate oft-repeated stories about how the world is going to hell and how the young people these days…

They are having the best time they’ll have all day, for a smattering of minutes avoiding all responsibility and duty and honey-do tasks which will face them down later in the morning, no matter what.

One four-year-old sits with his grandmother and diligently stabs into waffles and syrup and butter with zeal usually assigned to a nervous dog digging for its favorite bone. In just a few years, he, too, will be trying to find the perfect breakfast place that replicates this perfect childhood experience he’s having right now.

He, like all of us in the diner, is imprinted with the combination of taste, texture, fragrance, feel of what it’s like to be in a safe, familiar, non-threatening place, being cared for by kindly strangers whose only goal is to feed you well and stay out of your way while you soak up all that nurturing atmosphere, the nurturing atmosphere you take with you to start the day right, even if later on, some grumbly non-breakfasted bastard wonders why you’re in a better mood than he is, and tries to take it all away from you

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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I’ll never forget the day I read a book

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Listen to Jim:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/illneverforgetthedayireadabook.mp3

 or read on…

So…what is the first book you ever read?

What is the first book I ever read?

Allow me to crank up the Time Machine and get back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when books slowly insinuated themselves into my life.

First thing I do is SEE a book. It’s over there, just within reach of my chubby little uncoordinated fingers. I can roll just a quarter-roll in my crib—that’s all it takes to see this unfocused blur of colors and shapes on the cover. All I know how to do is experience the book, not knowing that it can be read and manipulated. So, I do what I know how to do: lick the cover and gnaw at the corners. It tastes different than those mashed-up things they are feeding me. It would be even tastier if I could bite off a piece and swallow it, but that comes later.

So, first I SEE a book. Then I TASTE it. Then I masticate a bit. Then, I lose concentration and fixate on a wiggly toy that is hanging above me. I’ll get back to the book later.

Next thing I know, I’m snuggled up to my mother’s chest, experiencing the words she is reading to me as they vibrate the side of my face. I can HEAR her voice with one ear. I can FEEL her voice with the other. And then I note that she is gently turning the pages, causing the colorful shapes and strange markings to shift each time. I can hear her inflections of warmth, suspense, happiness, as the pages drift by.

Before I know it, I’m sitting up in my own wobbly fashion and turning the pages—not necessarily one at a time, not necessarily in any order. But I am doing the book the way I know how to do it. And, now and then, I even taste it again. I’ve been known to rub a crayon onto the paper to add color and design.

Time flies and now I’m reciting a book to my mother and sister, pretending that I’m reading it as the pages pass, but actually I still don’t know how to read, I’m just feeding back what I’ve heard them read aloud so many times. They play along with the ruse.

Now, at last, I am picking out a word or two in preparation for enrolling in the first grade. I’m excited about the prospect of actually making my way through the words with some degree of understanding. And, amazingly, after a while I start to read big-lettered words on my own.

What is the first book I can read without assistance? Hard to tell, since the books at school are not the same books we have at home. I’m reading some in both places. But in class, I get to read a Dick and Jane and Sally story all the way through! When I become an author many years later, I am jealous of those who wrote this reader. Wouldn’t you like to be the writer whose works can be recited by heart by millions of school kids? “See Dick run. Run, Dick, run!”

In middle age, I discover the song that comedian Jimmy Durante co-wrote and performed with gusto:

 There’s one day that I recall, though it was years ago.

All my life I will remember it, I know.

I’ll never forget the day a read a book.

It was contagious, seventy pages.

There were pictures here and there,

So it wasn’t hard to bear,

The day I read a book.

It’s a shame I don’t recall the name of the book.

It wasn’t a history. I know because it had no plot.

It wasn’t a mystery, because nobody there got shot.

The day I read a book? I can’t remember when,

But one o’ these days, I’m gonna do it again.

(Listen to Jimmy sing it, at the end of this column.)

Just yesterday, a pleasant family enters the shop, looking around and remarking upon the variety of things to read. One young girl is just tagging along, so naturally she’s the one I try to engage in conversation: “What do you like to read?” I ask, hoping to introduce some titles to her. She performs a sly smile and doesn’t answer because, like so many other children I meet these days, she knows her avid parents will answer for her. “Oh, she doesn’t read,” her father says. I know what he’s saying, but I play dumb just to see what kind of response I’ll get: “You mean she doesn’t know how to read?” I ask sympathetically. She grins even more deeply, waiting for her parent’s punchline. “No she just doesn’t like to read.”

I get it now. This lass has found a way to rebel against her parents, assert her own identity, appear cool to other kids. Normally, I get to talk up a book enough to inspire someone like her to try it, but I know there’s no way this can happen when hovering but well-meaning parents are there to puppet-master her conversation.

So, I say what I always say whenever the situation calls for it: “Oh, too bad. Mark Twain once said that a person who does not read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

This is aimed at no-one in particular. The girl gets the joke but continues to play dumb. The parents remain perplexed.

What will no doubt happen—I’ve see it often—is she will discover a spicy novel proffered by a friend and, in secret, read it voraciously, becoming hooked on reading despite herself. She will, in the tradition of all kids, hide this novel and this fact from her parents as long as she possibly can.

The cycle goes on.

And maybe one day she’ll hear an old Jimmy Durante song and get excited all over again

Here’s Jimmy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLOR8gKwyoo 

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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Singing in the bathtub with Billy Eckstine and John Lee Hooker

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Listen to Jim:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/thewannabebillyeckstine.mp3

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The Wanna-Be Billy Eckstine Bass-Baritone Life Plan Caper

I’m a barely-teenage superstar belting out my acapella rendition of “That Old Black Magic” in the privacy of the family bathtub, and my audience of none thinks it’s the best thing ever heard on planet earth.

That old black magic has me in its spell.

That old black magic that you weave so well.

Those icy fingers up and down my spine.

The same old witch-craft when your eyes meet mine.

The same old tingle that I feel inside

And then that elevator starts its ride *

The bathtub is private tonight because I have the house to myself for a while—a rarity because two parents and five kids usually live here.

This is back in the early 1950′s in Tuscaloosa, when pre-rock ‘n’ roll singers who make it to the top of their profession know how to enunciate and carry a tune and actually SELL lyrics to the listener. Once you hear the most dynamic of these performers, you are hooked for life.

Anyhow, I’m singing away in the bathtub, hoping against all hope that someday I’ll have a great voice that can belt out “That Old Black Magic” to beat the band, a voice that will make me the most popular kid on the block.

Among the best of the best of all pop singers is Billy Eckstine, whose powerful bass-baritone voice and sense of jazz-disciplined improvisation make him an icon alongside the great male vocalists of the day—Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Nat “King” Cole, Mel Torme, Bobby Troup, Tony Bennett, Cab Calloway, Bing Crosby, Big Joe Williams, Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr., Steve Lawrence, John Lee Hooker, Fred Astaire. These guys are wonderful storytellers and back in these times they all get to be heard on local radio stations. This is long before music appreciation becomes segmented and self-limiting, long before a true Sinatra fan isn’t allowed to appreciate Hooker, long before it is unfashionable to pair Lawrence with Williams, or Satchmo with Mario Lanza.

In my family household, a great singer is a great singer, regardless of genre or age or race or style…so we listen to Hank Williams and George Beverly Shea and Dean Martin and Leonard Warren and Homer and Jethro equally, because we know each has a talent that must be embraced and appreciated.

That’s why I’m anxious to be home alone now and then so I can bellow out songs that bounce off the tiles and echo my temporarily enriched tones. Today, I’m emulating Billy Eckstine, whose incredible range and clarity make me feel I could make any woman within the sound of my voice swoon.

Funny thing about my particular generation is that we not only love our own music, but we love our parents’ and grandparents’ music as well. Our recordings span half a century—waltzes and bebop and scat and honky tonk and opera and polka and Cajun and country and gospel and schmaltz and jazz and blues and satire all combine according to the mood of the moment.

Later, when I become a disc jockey, I get to play all these forms of music, perhaps the last time any disc jockey is accorded this honor. As soon as the mid-1960′s approach, radio stations begin segmenting, specializing, becoming frozen in playlists. But for a while, I get to ply my trade in several worlds:

At a public radio station, I play classical and opera and ballet, along with show tunes, jazz, folk and international sounds from various exotic cultures. At commercial radio stations, I play “mood” music, rock ‘n’ roll, pop, comedy tunes, country gospel, ol’ time religion, barber shop quartets, upper-crust sacred works—you name it, I am exposed to it. Plus, I get to expose my audience to this wondrous variety of talent.

Nowadays, in the nervous present, I find it difficult to explain my taste in music. Hip hop fans know nothing about bluegrass, punk rockers don’t know who Howlin’ Wolf is, opera enthusiasts look at me funny when I mention that John Denver made recordings with Pavarotti. And heaven forfend if I suggest that Dennis Day also sang with Spike Jones.

So, the evergreen memory I hold close is one of pretending that I, like Billy Eckstine and his generation, might actually, for a coupla seconds at a time, sound great.

This love of understandable lyrics carries me into the future and influences what I later do for pleasure. After all that practice emulating male superstar singers and male superstar actors (Richard Burton, Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, Dick Martin), I grow up knowing how to make clear what I am saying, how to express the meaning behind the words. It serves me in good stead when, now and again, I get to perform in public, teach, act, communicate the love of great books. I have Billy Eckstine and all his buddies to blame.

So, many moons after the Tuscaloosa bathtub performance days, I still sing at the top of my lungs in the shower—but only when no-one is around. After all, the worst thing anyone could tell me is that I may sound more like Don Knotts than Eckstine.

Darling down and down I go,

‘Round and ’round I go,

In a spin, loving the spin I’m in

Under that old black magic called love! *

Denial of unpleasant truths is something I’ve honed to a fine art. It keeps me going forward, keeps me from facing unwanted realities, keeps me performing for my admiring shower stall audience of none

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

( Listen to the man himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SATmftj-Qbc )

(The above lyrics are verbatim from the original sheet music by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen. Lyrics found elsewhere on the internet are inaccurate–and mostly transcribed phonetically.)

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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If only forever lasted a moment, if only a moment lasted forever

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If only forever lasted a moment, if only a moment lasted forever.

Things I have learned that don’t make common sense but seem true all the same:

1. There’s no such thing as a moment that lasts for just a moment.

It’s been sixty years since I last rolled myself around the back yard inside an oil drum, but that moment plays itself back to me whenever I recall the good times of being a child who had nothing to worry about but mosquito bites, Orange Crush colas and the next playmate’s visit. That moment has lasted nearly a lifetime.

2.  Time never proceeds at an even pace.

Waiting in a soundproofed dentist’s office while frowning people disappear through a doorway and later come hobbling out, transmogrified, is a time-altering experience. Ten minutes seems like ten  hours. But one sweet first and only kiss from a girlfriend you’ll never see again occurs in an instant, and you wish it had lasted an hour. In green memory, it’s still going on.

3.  If you lose your car keys, it will only happen when you’re late for something really important.

The more frantically you search, the longer the keys stay lost. It’s only later, when you don’t need them at all, that you find them sitting in plain view, just five inches from where you’re used to seeing them

4.  When you’re old, you still refer to old people as old people, as if you’re the exception.

Even in her 80′s, my mother hated to hang out with “those old people,” because she never took a nap in her life and didn’t understand why anybody would…there was so much to do that could only be done while conscious. I’m always shocked when I find that that old person over there is actually ten years younger than me!

5.  I’ll always be twenty years old.

No matter what age I attain, I never feel that I’m over twenty. When I glimpse myself in the mirror, I mutter, “What alien being has thrown my body away and replaced it with this Halloween costume?” Holy Moly! Nature is some jokester.

 6.  I’ll never get it all said.

I’ve been writing at least one personal column or story a week for 35 years now, not to mention all the stories and columns I wrote during earlier decades when I had to write what my bosses required. When I began writing solely what I wanted to write, I assumed I would write myself out, that all my thoughts and stories would be told, that there would be nothing more to say. But each time I sit at the keyboard, apply pencil to pad, ink some thought on a wayward napkin, I am amazed that, once again, something gets said. What’s this all about?

7. Even if I don’t think it’s important, you just might…and vice versa.  

Writing down thoughts and feelings and inspirations—if done honestly and spontaneously—just might mean something to somebody who reads them…so it’s important that the writers of words refrain from making judgements about what is written. You and I are not competent to determine what is important and what is unimportant, so we should get out of the way of what we write and allow other readers and other generations to conduct the critiques. We are merely taking dictation from our innards. Let it happen!

That’s all I have to say at this moment, but beware of the next moment, and the next

(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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Notes in Bottles Float to the Center of the Universe

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Some days at the shop, my visitors remind me of notes sealed in bottles.

Each customer brings a message to me. Often, the customer is not even aware.

But I see the message and treasure it.

Some examples of messages plucked from bottles that floated to the center of the Universe, which is what Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories is, most definitely:

1. One reader tells me how he discovered his first John D. MacDonald book by accident, while staying at a rat trap motel back in the 1980′s. Since MacDonald was so good at describing the underbelly of Florida night life through the eyes of its movers and victims, it was the right time. I sell the customer a bio of MacDonald, wishing I had read it first. Travis McGee was one dude.

2. A good ol’ boy browser noses about with his wife, and manages to do something any ventriloquist would envy. He talks without touching his lips together. You’d have to be there, if you don’t already know what I’m experiencing. “All right” becomes “awe ITE” and “yeet yet?” is actually “Have you eaten yet?” and so on. He was a cool cat back in high school. His ducktail has thinned.

3. Another junkin’ couple cruises the shop, and the male partner expounds on his store of imcomplete knowledge: “See that Ray Bradbury book? You know, he created Star Trek. He’s dead now.” 92-year-old Bradbury is not in great health but he’s still happy to be alive, according to all reports. Don’t know whether the late Gene Roddenberry is happy.

4. One more curiosity-seeker walks around with his pal and is heard to say, “With all them computers, people ain’t even gonna need books no more.” Employee Marie Peerson overhears this and reports back. She, too, is entertained by messages in bottles, even if the bottles sometimes leak and make soggy the messages.

5. A large baseball-capped man is awed by the life-size stand-up of Elvira, Mistress of the Cleavage, or whatever her stage name is. “She got me through my formative years,” he chuckles.

6. One silent customer forces me to read his mind, as he looks at an old publicity photo of Lauren Bacall. “Does she feel as pretty as she looks?” and, studying a Rolling Stone Magazine with Tina Turner thereon, “Does she do it like she dances?” I distract myself from further mind-reading. As Bugs Bunny said, “Enough is enough, and too much is plenty!”

7. One enthused customer is everywhere at once, overwhelmed at the variety of literary treasures she’s unexpectedly finding in the shop. Her shoes defy gravity, and she finally purchases more than she intended. I wish for a moment that I possessed a remote control that would allow me to replay her energy for the inspiration of other customers.

8. A happy young man picks a leatherbound Robert Louis Stevenson collectible book for his library and is already looking forward to the next visit. Yet another collector spends the entire day carefully deciding upon which century his next selection will time-travel from. He loves it all.

9. A Lincoln-conspiracy scholar has me order two more obscure assassination study volumes for his collection. He and his wife are always smiling and satisfied when they leave. Wish I could bottle them, but they are already bottles, and I their opener.

So it goes.

Anybody anywhere anytime who claims the old-book business isn’t fascinating and educational and riveting just hasn’t dared to take the time to come in, spend an hour or two, and allow the tomes of yore to whisk them away to better lands and imaginations

(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com