redclaydiary.com » Jim

THE 9 1/2 MOST PROFOUND THOUGHTS ANYONE EVER HAD

Jim — Sun, 31 May 2026 07:15:56 +0000

Listen to Jim: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/the9andonehalfmostprofoundthoughts.mp3

or read on…

Life, actually…

THE 9 1/2 MOST PROFOUND THOUGHTS ANYONE EVER HAD

1. When eating a doughnut, meditate upon the significance of the hole, for without it, you’re merely munching on a patty of cooked dough.

2. Always begin the day by awakening—otherwise the night will just keep extending itself.

3. When applauding, you get a better sound by using both hands.

4. You can stand alone in a forest and tell a joke, but you’ll never know whether it’s funny.

5. It is better to pay the power bill than to curse the darkness.

6. Tomorrow is the day after the first day of the rest of your life.

7. Most things work fine till they break down.

8. If you misplace your comparative analysis skills, you will become disallusioned.

9. Try never to be more than one place at once.

10. The secret of life is like an ice floe. You never—wait, I don’t have that one ready yet

ROUSTABOUT WEAKLING

Jim — Sun, 24 May 2026 13:08:12 +0000

Catch Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/PdrfGUPIFFc

or read his story below…

Life, actually…

ROUSTABOUT WEAKLING

Jimmy Three sneaks into the family living room to check his appearance in the cracked full-length mirror next to the doorway. Jimmy lives at this moment back in 1952, when the entire life ahead of him will extend at least another bunch of decades.

As an eleven-year-old going on twelve, Jimmy is wrestling with nature. Nature is pounding him with new feelings, fanciful insights, reality-laden fantasies, imaginary realities.

Right now, Jimmy Three cannot see himself objectively in the wavy mirror. His vision is clouded by random ideas scattered in his path. Ideas of what grown-guys-to-be should look like, ideas of whether he will soon become a heroically handsome dude or a wimpy 98-pound weakling.

He flexes his meager muscles, turning in the light. Not so good an image. Okay, I’ll probably be the last teammate selected for today’s playground games. Maybe I’ll get lucky and be the next-to-last selection, should my scrawny pal Billy show up.

Jimmy Three should be in despair about his future prospects, but it turns out that he eventually does find hope and adventure in his own way. He is happiest when huddling over a favorite book. He is content to sketch and write random stories of his own. He is able to entertain himself, a talent he later learns that many kids never experience.

Through the years Jimmy Three morphs his life into what is tailored for his own strengths and flaws. Intensely observing others of his species he comes to know that people are immensely interesting. He also learns that each person seems to be on track to becoming whatever they once were. Each starts out dreaming dreamy dreams about things that will never be. Those who finally come to terms with themselves eventually discard those peculiar ideas that never bore fruit.

Jimmy Three and his fellow star-scattered roustabouts find ways to navigate the world using their own individualized roadmaps, not the pre-ordained roadmaps structured by dogma and prescribed behavior and rule makers and bullyboys.

Maybe these roustabouts who avoid and disdain all ironclad dictums, will bump into things more often. Maybe they will measure their successes by refusing to measure their successes. Maybe they won’t turn out to be rich and famous and helpless. Maybe they will find their laughing places of bliss by simply taking one last look at a mirror and thereafter building their own wings and soaring their own migrations.

Maybe being a 98-pound-weakling is a safe way to hide out from the improvised shaming devices that unhappy wanderers seek to toss my way, Jimmy Three tells himself

© Jim Reed 2026 A.D.

BUMPER CARS AND ROLLER COASTERS AND LIFE GOES ON

Jim — Sun, 17 May 2026 12:10:56 +0000

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/ip1CEeB286A

or read his story below…

Life, actually…

BUMPER CARS AND ROLLER COASTERS AND LIFE GOES ON

Blue or pink metallic balloons softly dance around one another above a village mail box. A freshly born life is celebrated with vim and vigor.

Nearby, somberly garbed neighbors gaze at a carved box as it rests beneath remembrance flowers in a patched green field, with only silent granite witnesses remaining later to stand guard.

Red carpet welcomings and thoughtful goodbyes are never far apart.

Let’s call these first and last things Bookends to life. Ceremonial displays. Attention must be paid and all that.

Tokens and trinkets abound between these bookends. After the long dance, tokens and trinkets remain, reminders of people we once knew.

The tokens and trinkets may not be important in the schemelessness of things, but they do have purpose. Their presence jars the memory, jags us back to sweet recollection.

Once we send these silly props to Goodwill, we risk dispatching fond memory into faded vagueness. We risk waking up one day with nothing to remind us that these special beings ever existed.

So, bits and pieces can outlast people themselves. They can be passed down the generations. They can be our visual genealogies. They can be touched and caressed and hidden nearby, or displayed up front.

Maybe a flattened metallic balloon in the sock drawer will emerge one day, maybe someone will suddenly smile and recall. Maybe a dried flower from the granite field will be found tucked into a favorite book. Maybe it will strike a note of familiarity in those of us who welcome the indentured images that skulk about in our minds, awaiting reinstallment.

We begin to understand the meaning of bumper cars and roller coasters. Very few words are needed to comprehend the absolute thrill of unpredictable existence. We bump and bounce and scream in joy and howl in fright. It is one heck of a journey.

Together, let us experience the journey and hold close the best of our memories.

It’s what we cling to before coming up against the right-hand bookend

© Jim Reed 2026 A.D.

CALL ME ALABAMA!

Jim — Sun, 10 May 2026 07:30:20 +0000

Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/021bu0seOSY

Life, actually…

CALL ME ALABAMA!

A DOWN-SOUTH ANTHEM

Alabama is a state of mind.

No, I take that back.

Alabama is your state of mind.

Alabama is my state of mind.

Look at the map.

There is no logical border.

If logic prevailed, Alabama would be panhandled-with-care to the Gulf and barely miss the Mississippi River to the west and stick-toed in the Atlantic to the east.

The Alabama state of my mind is…

Alabama is a truncated

Arbitrarily-bordered

Mixture of Appalachian

Foothills and Gulf beaches

And Tennessean

Valleys and Southern

Pines and black dirt

Flatlands and red

Clay banks and

Human-formed mounds

And dinosaur-chalked

Banks and ‘gator

Swamps and

Cricks and meandering-barged rivers

And angel-haired falls and bluebird

Nests and mosquito bites

And chigger itches and ancient

Warrior-ghosts and

Dirt-poor moonshiners

And proud farmers and

Vegetable-stand pickups

And blue highways

And washboard roads

And scorching sun and

Humid rashes and

Fields endless fields

And full-moon-activated

Cemeteries and

Tombstone graveyards and

Midwife shacks and

Breezeways and clapboards

And wild blackberries and lazy

Cows cud-ding and calves

Cuddling and hay bales and

Barn lofts and suckling puppies

And strutting blue roosters

And water moccasins

And synchronized

Twilight fireflies and glistening

Stars so close you can

Touch them.

Alabama in my state of mind is

Far-off 3:00 A.M. train

Whistles and howling dogs

And skittish deer and roadside

Tire carcasses and skulking

Buzzards and dearly departed

Armadillos and skunk-fragranced

Air blended with sweet honeysuckle and smothered

With kudzu and life-saving

Breezes interspersed with

Gasping-for-air heat.

Alabama in my state of mind is

At her best

When you close your eyes

And remember how

Good she was when you

Were young, how wise

She became as you yourself

Wised up and how good she

Can be whenever she

Re-claims her fairness

Of spirit, whenever she

Gets back to

The earth, gets back

Down to earth,

Remembers her hard-working

Closely-tied families.

In my state-of-Alabama-mind,

Alabama is at her best

When she’s all potential and

Hope and strut…at her

Best when she remembers

Her humble beginnings…

At her best when she

Gives up the chanting

And pays attention to

The babies and the infirm and the

Poor…at her best when

She recalls how wonderful

It is to be paid tender attention to,

To be well-paid with tender attention

Y’all come visit. Stay as long as you like.

See how easily we embrace you

How lavishly we feed you

How generously we share stories with one another

See what we are really like

© Jim Reed 2026 A.D.

Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/021bu0seOSY

GOOD NIGHT STACK OF BOOKS

Jim — Sun, 03 May 2026 12:24:44 +0000

Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/t0nw3IksojE

Read his story below…

Life, actually…

GOOD NIGHT STACK OF BOOKS

Good night stack of bedside books holding firm your promise to levitate my dreams.

Good night volumes of verse waiting for a chance to teach me how to be a better denizen of the world.

Good night dreary tomes that make me try harder to wade chin deep through the infinite choices you lay out for my inspection.

Good night adventures and antics and plots and twists that just cannot wait to bring me out of my doldrums and into fresh light.

Good night books brimful of mushy ideas and aha! epiphanies and sad but loving passings.

Good night corner-folded pages that show me where I left off and where I resume.

Good night books topped off with nightmares and daymares and scary beginnings and happy endings.

Good night books with texture and heft and fragrance and hints of previous readers.

Good night books that accompany me through infancy and into youth and onward to smartly sassy adulthood and heavily responsible middle age.

Good night books that will chaperone me into elderliness and pleasant-dream continuances.

Good night to you, the next foster parent who will adopt and take sweet care of these living bindings and pages that meant so much to all who loved them

COMFORT AND JOY AND A LIFELONG SCAR

Jim — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 12:54:21 +0000

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/NQ9TX3MTXRo

or read the story below…

Life, actually…

COMFORT AND JOY AND A LIFELONG SCAR

Dr. Ruby Tyler is leaning over me while I lie flat on my back in her examination room.

This is way back in time in Tuscaloosa when I am a kid who just fell out of a tree, a kid who at this moment is Dr. Tyler’s sole emergency patient.

I have never been an emergency patient before, so fear and trembling infuse my soul. I am hysterical and refrain from gazing at the gape in my right arm. I am certain that all the blood in my body will exit onto the sheets. I am sure to die an embarrassing death after my playmates-witnessed fall from grace.

Dr. Tyler doesn’t blink. She calmly glances at the wound. She places her hand on my shoulder and calms me down. I can stop screaming now. All will be well. Comfort and peace sooth me and the rest of the morning goes pretty well.

Dr. Tyler stitches me up, no anesthetic employed back then, and I dissolve into the role of helpless victim and happily healing patient.

There are perks to being wounded in public. The little girl across the street brings me flowers, fellow playground buddies delight in recounting events leading up to my accident, neighbors check my wound and count the stitches.

I can milk this incident for a few days by dramatically displaying an arm resting in its red bandanna sling.

Like everything else in life, other anecdotes reveal themselves. Bob Crutchfield reminds me that I landed upon him, not on the red clay dirt. Lenny Fulmer notes that I also scraped my back against the barbed wire fence next to Bob Crutchfield. Brother Ronny notes that the wooden planks forming a crude ladder on the tree trunk actually broke, causing my rapid descent. It’s a group participation thing, this episode of mine.

Anyhow, to this day I sport a scar that is no longer visible among the surrounding wrinkles and sags and discolorations that have become my ancient body.

But I do get something useful out of this split second in time. I learn it only takes a calming gesture to settle down a frightened creature. I learn that every victim is part of a posse of people who have their own individual mini-traumas. I learn that life is not all about me myself and I.

I am a participant in your pain just as you are involved with mine. I can choose to ignore this fact or I can become part of the healing and nurturing team. I get that.

On my better days I actually rise above whines and complaints. I actually try to become part of a solution. I transform into the role of splint or bandage or clumsy comforter. Or just a friend close by who is comrade to a crisis

TO DRIVE A NAIL

Jim — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 12:42:06 +0000

Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/sPxoeN3MEt4

or read his story below…

Life, actually…

TO DRIVE A NAIL

Jimmy Three is a good dawdler.

After all, at age five, lacking the vaguely envisioned future burdens of adulthood, Jimmy Three has a great deal of dawdling time.

This morning’s first dawdle is all about nails and hammers and claws and ouchies.

At the end of the front yard sidewalk, where concrete gutter meets grainy asphalt, Jimmy Three bends to pick up a sheeny metal object. A bent-thus-discarded nail that glints in the sunlight. He rotates the nail between thumb and forefinger, holds it close to the eye, examines it at arm’s length, wonders how it got where it wound up.

What to do with a bent nail on a dewy morning. It’s not like Jimmy Three to throw anything away. Mimicking his mother’s habits, he pockets the nail that will later join other possibly useful discarded objects into an old Hav-A-Tampa cigar box gifted by his grandfather.

Oh the treasures within that box. But that will be the subject of a future story.

Right now, Jimmy Three races into his home, digs under the bunk bed, retrieves a small green metal toolbox, squeaks it open, finds a couple of unbent nails and a tiny hammer. He is inspired to do something useful with hammer and nails, something no-one else will find significant.

He occupies himself attempting to drive a nail into a scrapped two-by-four. Grasping the wooden handle up near the weighty iron top, he timidly taps the flanged head and gets little result. Swinging the hammer higher so that gravity and sinew can bring it down harder, he manages to bend the nail. It flies off and hides beneath the bunk.

Jimmy is not frustrated, because he has other nails. But he is also aware that calmly assessing the situation will go a long way toward saving future nails. His father once showed him the proper way to get the most out of a hammer. He finally recalls this: Grasp the handle much lower, away from the claw, thus increasing the power of the downward swing.

He holds the nail so that it is vertical while the pointed tip is touching the wood. With the confidence of youth and the help of gravity and the assistance of young muscle, Jimmy Three joyfully brings full force to the nail head.

No reason to explain that Jimmy’s thumb ouchy takes a few minutes out of his project. But he knows that to complain is to risk having unwanted drama and perhaps hammer-banning.

The next time is magic. Using all his hastily garnered wisdom, the nail is pounded neatly into the two-by-four. For a second he considers creating an exhibit of wood and nail to show off his prowess to playmates. The pounding in his sore thumb reminds him to calm down.

The world is relieved when J3 abandons the project and runs away to the butterfly tree to see who has shown up this morning.

There is so much to do during dawdling time

BEST ADVICE ARCHIVED FOR LATER CONSIDERATION

Jim — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 12:57:01 +0000

Click here to hear Jim’s 3-minute Red Diary: https://youtu.be/SFvunLJBTEc

or read his story below:

Life, actually…

BEST ADVICE ARCHIVED FOR LATER CONSIDERATION

My high school science teacher Mrs. Ingram once gave me some good advice.

“Never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.”

This happened a way long time ago. You know, back before the Earth was round.

I have studiously followed Mrs. Ingram’s advice all these years. I am proud to say I’ve not once been taken to the ER with something big stuck in my ear.

As to all the other wise and useful advice I have received from scores of well-meaning people, I’m not proud to report that I have blithely ignored and rejected most of it.

This not the fault of all those who generously took the time to mind my own business. This is merely a stubborn lifelong resistance I have to all attempts to change my behavior.

Don’t get me wrong. Had I followed even an iota of this advice I’d probably be healthier, richer, wiser, kinder…

But my contrarian nature generally holds me back from following other people’s guidelines.

As I navigate these many years of living my own life my own way, I do notice a mellowing. I actually accept advice more frequently these days.

For instance, someone once quipped, “Never drive under ten miles an hour on an interstate highway.” That sounds solid enough. I’ll consider it.

I’ll stop trying to be cute at this point.

I truly appreciate all the life lessons I have learned and continue to follow, the tutorials that keep me suspiring and aspiring and perspiring.

I appreciate the dozens of good examples set by family and acquaintances, many demonstrations of how to do this without suffering horrifying consequences, when to do the right thing, when not to do the wrong thing.

The thing that annoys me is the fact that there are so many ways those who encounter me have helped me…and I have seldom thanked them! How come I am becoming sensitive and kindly so far down the road?

I should have thanked these unpaid advisors. I could have hugged them more. I might have listened more. I wish I could look each of them in the eye and really experience them. I wish I could tell them what they continue to mean to me.

Since these denizens of life’s better moments are long gone away, all I can do is follow my own advice and hope that you who are paying attention can take something good from these words.

The best advice I can take from this day forth is my own advice: Do the good deed now. There will never be another good deed moment exactly like this good deed moment.

Eat the chocolate chip cookie right away.

Thank and appreciate all sincere advisors in the moment. Regardless of whether the advice is helpful or useless, remember to appreciate the intent.

If it is well-meant it is worthy of thanks.

And do spread Mrs. Ingram’s words when you can. Each ear saved causes the world to listen a little better

THERE GOES WHO I WAS

Jim — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 12:51:34 +0000

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/1l6CNGVp66w

or read his story below…

Life, actually…

THERE GOES WHO I WAS

Roy Rogers is chasing down those Gopher Creek gunmen. Shiny pistol drawn, vertical-lined frown of intensity showing focus and determination, golden steed Trigger pounding the trail. The stalking is about to bear fruit…

I turn the page of my Whitman pictorial cover book, ready to read the fate of Roy and the pursued bandits.

Oops! The brittle pulpy paper has broken loose. The next two pages are missing. Arrggh! Will I ever learn what comes next? I wonder.

I’m sitting on the floor of the bedroom I share with brother Ronny. The tattered book on my lap awaits the next suspenseful moment. What will I do now? Will I angrily discard the rest of the volume?

The book cannot speak aloud, nor can it defend itself. Only words on thick pages can forward the plot.

I scour the room for the absentee book parts. I retrieve a walking stick and scrape beneath the bottom of the bunk bed. I riffle through old comic books and paperbacks, peek beneath socks and shirts. Nothing.

I sigh deeply. My compulsion to read each and every word in every book dominates the moment. My to-do list now includes going to the county library in search of the Gopher Creek caper. I am philosophical. I weigh other options.

Wait—what if I write down what I imagine happens next in Roy’s adventure? I could become co-author! This is an original thought. It excites me. It provides a peek into my imagination. In a split second, I become a writer-to-be.

Distractions suddenly take me away from these fleeting thoughts. Playmates call out, refrigerated snacks beckon, tangled shoelaces dominate. I don’t return to these authorship yearnings for some time. But the idea endures.

Eons later, while I compose these thoughts, I wonder whether the Gopher Creek Roy Rogers Trigger episode planted some kind of seed. I am now a writer, so this is possible, isn’t it?

Or maybe I just needed something to occupy my mind while spending yet another day being a human

STALKING THE CELERY AND DRAFTING THE WILL

Jim — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:10:49 +0000

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/bHcLz2r0OTo

and read his true story below…

Life, actually…

STALKING THE CELERY AND DRAFTING THE WILL

I am in the Way Back of my early life, a kid sitting on a front step blithely munching on a celery stalk.

This special moment exists all by itself. There is no just-a-few-minutes-ago thought, there is no dread of the next few minutes, there are no responsibilities looming.

There is just me, there is just myself and one celery stalk.

Will life ever get purer or sweeter?

Maybe you had a childhood like mine. Maybe you had no childhood at all. Just in case you didn’t, I thought I would throw a few lines your way to help both of us refresh and reboot something called kidhood.

As this humid morning settles over me I stare at the celery and prepare for the next loud crispy crunch. It is mystifying and satisfying. The chewed bits disappear into my innards, a few greenish strings catch between teeth and have to be extracted.

I wonder whether celery feels pain. If I find out it does indeed feel the pain of being eaten, will I commence to starve to death rather than cause any more trouble? If celery and all living things have inner lives does this make us cannibals?

Fortunately for a young and excited mind such as mine, a dozen other inquiring ideas overlay this frightening aha! moment. I am easily distracted by the next split second—a thirsty mosquito intervenes and provides a welcome distraction.

I rub my palms dry, examine the wrinkles that appear and disappear as fingers flex. I squint at the sun and wait for the first playmate to appear on the lawn.

Later that day, supper and chores having been appeased, I lie abed and think about the large carrot waiting for me in the refrigerator. The thoughts of pain and puzzlement do not reappear any time soon.

Life is so good. I am in no rush to grow up. I hold on to my simplicity as long as possible. I revisit it to this day, each time I feel burdened and overloaded with the maddening varieties that the accidental universe presents to me.

Celery is one of a thousand escapes I employ in order to hold tight to life.

I tell myself that we the stubborn shall inherit the Earth. The stubborn among us who stave off the power of overseers, the power of those who missed childhood by that much.

Even if we the stubborn do not inherit the Earth, we will definitely contest the will