Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay diary on youtube: https://youtu.be/2SbFCQQtdgk

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Life, Actually

 SMALL WISDOMS, HIDDEN COMFORTS, UNEXPECTED JOYS 

A New Year in this Deep South Village is just another year, right?

Well, maybe it is not just another year. Maybe this year, this instant in time, is as special and unique as it can possibly be.

Calling this just another year is like calling a brand new double-scoop ice cream cone just another ice cream cone.

If all ice cream cones were that boring, wouldn’t I give up on them?

That’s the thing about living life in the Deep South or anyplace else on earth or in space—every day is the same, every day is special at the same time. It’s the promise of what good things can happen, if only…if only this day were better, if only the next ice cream cone were the best of the best.

I like the fact that, lurking within most people, there is fresh hope, there is abiding love, there is resident happiness.

I know, I know, the on-site heckler will quickly point out the terrors and fears and us-and-them-is’ms that get in the way of antiquated concepts like love and hope and happiness. The heckler will point this out as if I don’t already have this knowledge.

I do have this knowledge. But if I dwell on the idea that at any moment the ice cream cone will fall to the ground, the ice cream cone may melt, the ice cream cone might be swiped and carried away by ice cream cone hoarders or ice cream cone kidnappers…if I dwell on this, where lies my enjoyment?

If I show only my sour disposition and pessimism to you, would you look forward to hanging out with me? Sure, I harbor negative thoughts, but here’s the thing: If that’s all I show you, what good am I? What is my worth? What is my reason for being anywhere?

It’s the dream of that next ice cream cone, the reality of that next ice cream cone, that keeps the hopers among us going. I can be a heckler or a hoper. It’s my choice.

It’s the difference between a chocolate ice cream cone topped with sprinkles  and a sauerkraut-filled cone topped with garlic.

You take your pick

© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: 

Life, Actually

A 1940s Deep South Christmas memory, both true and actual…

UNCLE ADRON & THE MODEL-A DANCING MOON CATCHER

My earliest impressions of the big city of Birmingham, Alabama came from the simple act of visiting there when I was very small.

My Uncle Adron and Aunt Annabelle Herrin would load us kids, their kids and my mother into their Model-A Ford and take us from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham by way of the old Old Birmingham Highway.

In my lifetime, there have been three Tuscaloosa-to-Birmingham routes. There was first the old Birmingham Highway that ran right past my Grandfather’s General Merchandise Store in Peterson, then there was the newer Birmingham Highway that bypassed the older road and began the demise of many businesses along the way, including, eventually, R.L. McGee General Merchandise.

The newer Birmingham highway was made of light asphalt and ran by Hamm’s Pottery and a host of other landmarks in Tuscaloosa County. Then, much later, both roads were consigned to oblivion when the Interstate 59 highway made travelling to Birmingham a lot faster and a lot less interesting.

But way back then, in the late 1940′s, the only logical route to the City was via the old Old Birmingham Highway, a black-asphalt, curvaceous two-lane route that took us past Peterson into Brookwood, from Brookwood to Bessemer, where we looked excitedly for the landmarks that would tell us Birmingham was near, such as the old Wigwam Motel—you could actually spend the night in a motel shaped like an Indian teepee, though I never got the chance to do it.

Then, we would look to the far right horizon in Bessemer to see who could spot the gigantic iron statue of the Roman God Vulcan, the world’s largest cast-iron statue standing atop Red Mountain. Once we saw this rusty icon, we knew we were near the end of our voyage.

Speeding along the old Old highway on a clear cold December night, you could see the near-full moon ahead of the Model-A, flying high in the purple-black sky. The moon would dance over the twisting road, touching the treetops, dipping out of sight, rising instantly high up as we followed that snaking trail and rose and fell with the hills and valleys along the way.

Uncle Adron, always a speed demon, would make that Model-A feel like a roller coaster, and he would always remind us that our primary goal was to catch up with that moon.

On the way to the annual Birmingham Christmas parade, we kids would wiggle all over the back seat in impossibly tortured anticipation of seeing the Meccas of the season: Santa Claus on a parade float, and S.H. Kress and F.W. Woolworth, where everything Santa could ever dream up would be on display.

Coming into Birmingham, my first impression was a lasting one: I had never seen so many Black people, and they were a beautiful sight to a small boy, since they seemed to be dressed up in brightly-colored outfits and stylish hats and shoes, the likes of which I had never seen in Tuscaloosa. I thought it would be wonderful to be able to dress so boldly, for bright mixtures of colors always signify to a kid happiness, good times and playfulness.

I noticed that White people didn’t dress nearly as well.

The big wide streets of Birmingham always seemed littered and not very well kept, compared to our little town of Tuscaloosa, but that didn’t much matter to us kids.

It would be unbearably cold on those Birmingham streets, but that was part of the excitement, you understand.

The parade would be gigantic, the stores brightly decorated, the city blocks long and arduous to walk, and the whole experience thoroughly exhausting and delightful.

Then, Uncle Adron would pack all of us and our purchases back into the old Model-A and start the long trip back to Tuscaloosa. By then, the dancing moon and the cold stars in the purple sky would be forgotten because we could snuggle down into our musky blankets and sleep the safe sleep of children who knew nothing bad would ever happen to them as long as Uncle Adron was in charge, as long as Uncle Adron was running away from that dancing moon and aiming us all back toward Tuscaloosa and our own sweet-smelling beds

© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/IT3KWMfHzW8 

or read his transcript below:

THE CHRISTMAS AFTER THIS ONE

 Let’s pretend today is the day after Christmas.

 Pretend it’s a few decades ago in the Deep South:

 What was that that just whizzed by and left us breathless, heavier, broker…and did we get anything out of it?

 What it was, was Christmas.

 Thought we had gotten the latest Christmas out of the way, but its vestiges are everywhere apparent, still.

 On the road back from Fort Payne, Alabama, this weekend, a plastic mailbox wreath blew tattered in the warm wind. On the baby grand piano in our foyer at home, a few wind-up toys and an electric train remain partially dismantled, and soon the small ceramic houses and latex Santas will take their long winter’s naps in tissue-padded gift boxes.

 The toys and trains and holly plastics are little jabs into the past, small probes I issue each year in an attempt to regain an old feeling or two that I can safely identify as the Christmas Feeling.

 I no longer feel self-conscious about it.

 The word has gone out: don’t get Poppy (me) anything but toys for Christmas.

I don’t care for clothes, don’t need a screwdriver or a tie, don’t want a gift certificate, have all the books in the world. Just get me toys, toys that are simple and whimsical and inexpensive.

After years of proclaiming this, the family has gotten the hint, and toys R me!

 The toys do help, and each one opened is one played with by adults around me who haven’t gotten a toy in years. I went around asking each adult I ran across before and after Christmas: are you getting toys for Christmas? Did you get a toy for Christmas? Each time, the same response: a defensive twitch followed by something nameless crossing the face, and then an almost forlorn, “Well, no, I guess I didn’t get a toy.”

 And I watch visitors to our home at Christmastime. They are first taken a bit aback by the toys I pull out and put on display each year. And within minutes they’re fiddling with them self-consciously, then, later, they sneak back to the piano, and we’ll find them winding and switching and playing by themselves with little grins of private satisfaction they probably haven’t had for a long time.

 Allow me a few dollars to spend on a gift for you and I’ll find a toy that meets all the requirements of a Christmas toy: it’ll puzzle you, delight you, make you chuckle out loud, and if all is according to schedule, it’ll break before the day is through. But that’s OK. Part of the joy is taping and pasting it back together and making it work again—gives me an excuse to take it apart to see what makes it tick. If you’re looking for a gift idea for someone who spends a lot of time in front of a computer, you may give them a customized Mousepad.

 Of course, I can’t diddle like this all year, or folks will start thinking up reasons to put me away safely.

 So, I’ll store those Christmas toys away sometime this week, just minutes before my wife is finally exasperated beyond all patience, and I’ll give her a hug she may not have time for and assure her that her foyer and her piano are all hers again for another eleven months.

 And I’ll gleefully think of the day next December when I’ll casually say to her, “Why don’t we get the toys out this year for the kids to enjoy?” knowing full well that kids will pay little attention to them—after all, kids are used to having toys around all year.

 It’s the kids abed within us who want so badly to have their toys back and around them just one more time

© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/YK69HWATHik

or read the transcript below:

Life, actually…

SQUAWK! SPLOIT!

Squawk!

What’s that sound? I’m lying here nestled all snug in my bed, but the squawk! awakens me.

Squawk!

There it goes again. I roll over and glance about. Nothing. Maybe I’m doze-dreaming. I close my eyes and drift.

Squawk!

This time I pop alert and see the heavy wooden bedroom door swing open. Liz is entering, freshly showered and dressed, ready to face the morning just ahead of me.

“Did you say something?” she asks. She’s adjusting and donning her hearing aids and wonders whether the squawk was my voice calling out.

“Nope,” I reply. Now I see—it’s the door making the noise, begging for lubricant to magically arrive and address its unhinged pain.

Liz descends the stairs, heading for her 6:30am Zoom meeting. I can tell she’s descending the stairs because of the music they make.

Creak! Moan!

Our home was constructed in 1906, so we can hear or feel just about any movement within.

Creak! Moan!

I lie here, dreaming of oil cans. When was the last time I really saw one? It’s all WD-40 these days. Spray containers with little red straws that pop across the room, containing something oily that may not really be oil.

Thunk! Pop!

That’s the sound I remember! With an old long-spouted oil can, all I have to do is tilt and aim and press the bottom to release the oil. That’s where the sound comes from. Thunk!  as I press, Pop! as I unpress and the metal returns to its original shape.

Suddenly a concert ensues in my mind. All the long-ago magical instruments of childhood bow beneath my baton.

Clink! Jingle! The sound of belt loop metal coin dispensers worn by village bus drivers so long ago. Give a quarter, receive two dimes and a five-cent piece. Clink! Jingle! An entire fortune of nickel and copper at your fingertips.

In memory so green, I now hear the special mechanical Whirr! of a rotary dial landline phone. Try to spell THAT sound! The “Zztt” sound of  string rubbing against spinning wooden yo-yo. The echoing Crackle! of popcorn quivering in an old stovetop skillet. The Sploit! of a freshly opened can of beans being dumped into a pot. TheThunk! of a loose manhole cover as passing cars roll over it.

You can take it from here.

Join the fun as we together catalog and cherish sounds that may disappear as they are replaced by newfangled gadgets.

Being of sound mind and fragile body, I immerse myself in fond memories for another jiffy. Then, I head for the hallway to face the morn, listening once more to the Squawk! of real life, past and present

© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

Belt loop coin dispenser.

Follow Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/nJKhdi9y3YE

or read the transcript below:

LIFE, ACTUALLY

VENDING JOY IN THE HOPEFUL VILLAGE

“Are you still open?”

A petite customer, her even more petite daughter close behind, sticks her head into the bookstore.

“Uh, sure,” I say, each time I’m closing up and just one more shopper wishes to enter.

The customer hands me two one-dollar bills and says, “She just can’t wait to get some more eggs. Got any quarters?”

I dip into the cash drawer and count eight pieces of fake silver and hand them over.

The petites rush over to the old iron vending machine and begin feeding it a snack of coins.

The contraption is filled with plastic egg-sized eggs. Each egg is packed with tiny memories…figurines or toys or gewgaws or marbles or Cracker Jack prizes or shiny beads or you name it.

The mechanical gears turn as eggs begin popping out. The two customers sit on the shop floor till they have four eggs. They arise, open the enormous creaking door, exit while shouting goodnights. They are happy.

I proceed with the ritual of closing down the store, ready to secure it for a night’s quiet bliss.

Suddenly, the door opens a crack, the mom pokes her face in and jubilantly emotes: “We just found a five-dollar bill next to the ATM machine! Can we buy some more eggs?”

It’s like Christmas, this excitement over small fond memories encapsulated within plastic eggs.

“Yep!” I grin and begin opening the machine to retrieve five bucks worth of joy for these dreaming denizens.

I fetch a shopping bag for them, they once again leave happy and sated. They will later bring the empty eggs back for me to pack them once again with momentary thrills.

As I cruise through the shop, turning off lights, picking up wandering books, checking to see whether the universe is all in order and ready for a break from us humans, I smile to myself. I reflect.

It doesn’t take much to bring a bit of pleasure to strangers.

It just requires motivation and mood and a genuine desire to make what little difference is possible in this village of wildly varied beings

© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay diary podcast on youtube:  https://youtu.be/dScUzM5qHu8

or read his transcript below:

LIFE, ACTUALLY

FIELD OF DREAMS

Across the street from our house, when I was a small boy, there was an enormous vacant lot.

On the lot sprang up golden grass, as high as the waist of a small boy. The soft grass was thick, so that if you lay down, no-one could see you from the road or from the houses across the street.

It was a wonderful playground, a battlefield, a guerilla warfare heaven. We boys and girls of the neighborhood could spend hours crawling on our bellies, hidden from the world and often from each other.

Somewhere along the way, we got the idea that battlegrounds such as ours should look like those battlefields in John Wayne and James Whitmore war movies, complete with foxholes and two-way communications. So we dug holes here and there, and staffed our outposts with the equipment of childhood.

One main foxhole, the headquarters, even had a makeshift roof. But only imaginary rains could stay away from us while we hid and met and planned there. Between the foxholes across the golden field we laid old remnants of hosepipes. Through these, we communicated in muffled faraway tones translatable only to us.

We were the Tab Nam Club (no parent could ever have guessed that Tab Nam spelled backwards was Bat Man, defender of good and fighter of evil men and wicked but sexy women), and we had leaders and followers.

Since I was the oldest boy, I was the pretend leader, and because my younger brother Ronny was the youngest kid in the group, he was usually the bad guy. He would always have to get killed first, or go to jail first or be punished first, just because he was too small to defend himself and because he wanted to be part of the group too much to mind the abuse.

When my tomboy sister, Barbara, came out to play with us, she was the leader and I was relegated to invisible follower. She was tougher and older than us, and no-one dared challenge her authority in the field.

Because I was no longer the leader at these times, I could only choose to be a rebel and a loner. That was more heroic to me than being a follower. Once you’ve tasted leadership, there is nothing satisfying about following and being ordered about.

There were various objects strewn across the field, and I’ll never forget them.

One particularly fascinating one was a Z-shaped iron bar about eight inches long. A number of them were used to terrorize the enemy. Two could be put together to form a swastika, the ultimate symbol of badness in those late-1940′s days. The bad guys had to carry these. Or, the Z’s could be thrown dangerously close to the enemy foxhole to keep them in their place.

There were long flexible sticks that became deadly bows for our even more deadly and unreliable homemade arrows. There were trees to climb and fall from, and we frequently did both. There were small pebbles to use in case of attack. And there were the wonderful long golden weeds.

The weeds could be hidden behind, carefully parted to spy on the enemy or the parents (somewhat interchangeable roles), pulled and gnawed on like the cowboys did in Saturday matinees, used as pitchforks, switches, wands, and the like. Very few real toys made it across the street into our field. There was no room for reality there.

Toys were left inside the home and on the front yard, symbols of parents’ desire to give us something joyful to play with, something they didn’t have when they were kids. But our toys were: the field itself and its natural components.

One day, the field disappeared.

We learned that a house was going to be built on our battleground. In place of our military movements a wooden skeleton emerged and our troops retreated across the street into their front yards, and our world got smaller.

The backyard became our field. But the backyard was different. Short grass took the place of golden grain. No foxholes could be dug except to plant Mother’s bushes and flowers. Our dogs could no longer bury their bones in wide open spaces and had to resort to corners of the yard where grass was higher or where people seldom stood.

But the backyard had some advantages the field did not. Advantages, that is, for Mother. She could keep her eye on us better, and we couldn’t hide because the back windows were high up. The only hiding places we had were behind a few bushes and under the house. Under the house was forbidden to us, so we went there a lot, crawling through spider webs and getting smelly with dust, cut with rusted nails, and generally excited by our newfound hiding place.

But ever so often, we would play in the front yard and start across the street at a crisis point in our games, only to look up at the completed house and be reminded that our field was forever gone.

Developers had not asked us kids permission to take away our childhood fields. They hadn’t thought to inquire.

But many decades later, when I am re-visiting home sitting in the swing of my parents’ front porch, I look across the street at what was once the Livingston family’s home and the Crutchfields’ home and see what was once there: a wide, long field salted with little human critters and one overgrown tomboy laughing and getting dirty and rolling in redbugs and passing secret messages to one another in the hosepipe trenches.

And I imagine one retired developer sitting in his Woodland Hills air-conditioned home and living off the interest generated by selling little kids’ hearts to families who had every right to want a piece of land, but who had no right at all to take over our particular golden-grained field of dreamy dreams

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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LIFE, ACTUALLY

TILL WE HAVE FACES

The smelly old Ritz movie theatre in the heart of 1940s-50s downtown Tuscaloosa is where I get my first glimpse of play-like robbers and bandits and desperados and thieves.

On the big black-and-white screen, bad guys and gals seem to need only one item to turn themselves into lawless—thus, very exciting—bandidos and gangsters.

That one required item is a bandanna. 

I’m way back in time right now. Bear with me.

My childhood pals are sitting here with me, engrossed with the action in front of us. Lots of stylized punching and wrestling and shoot-em-up chaos is choreographed for our pleasure. The greasy popcorn and shared soft drink last a long time, because we want the last gulp, the final crunch, to occur when THE END pops up, when the hero and his best buddy the horse ride off into the sunset, their mission accomplished.

Funny thing about bandannas. I always wonder why some dude covers his nose and mouth, then suddenly becomes unidentifiable to everybody on the range. He’s wearing the same prairie-fragrant clothes, waving the exact six-shooter holstered until just moments ago. His voice is the same, his lope unchanged.

I decide that it’s just a movie. This bandanna-disguise would not work anywhere but in Hollywood. Imagine me, running into the family home, hiding my face with a trusty bandanna, then grabbing a handful of candy and rushing out, knowing that nobody will realize it’s just Jimbo.

“Why, we ought to call the police,” sister Barbara would say. “Somebody just stole our candy.”

“Uh, who was it?” I will say.

“I have no idea. He was your size, wearing the same cowboy outfit as you. But half of his face was covered by a mask, so there’s no way we can tell his true identity.”

Of course, this scenario will never work. It’s only Jimbo, masking up for action like actors on a projection screen.

Where does this fond memory come from? What makes me suddenly recall childhood in the middle of the day in the middle of my old bookstore, in the middle of exchanging books for cash?

Why, my customer is wearing a bandanna. I am wearing a bandanna. Just like those range riders at the Ritz Theatre.

We are suddenly characters from childhood, breathing into cotton face covers and trying to understand our mutual muffled mutterings. I smile extra big, hoping my crinkled skin will help the purchaser know that I am being polite. I speak as clearly as possible to overcome smothered words.

And you know something? There are regular patrons I do not recognize. They don’t look the same when masked.

So, I guess I might actually have gotten away with candy theft back in the day. Or not. You can’t get away with anything when an older sister knows everything about you and your behavior.

Maybe I owe my life of clean living and no crime to my big sister.

There’s always the chance that a bandanna just won’t do the trick. I’d definitely be the only member of the Tuscaloosa Marauder Gang to get caught.

Just my luck  

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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LIFE, ACTUALLY

VALLEY OF THE TRAINS

No matter where I go in this urban village, railroad tracks crisscross my path. Wherever I am, there is soon to be a train rumbling along this way or that way. So many laid-steel pathways are bisecting my travels that I no longer pay much attention to them.

But the trains cannot be ignored. They have been around so long that just a lone, low-pitched whistle can trigger a memory.

Here in the Valley, each train’s passing is echoed. Each foghorn blast bounces off foothills and echoes somewhere in my head.

Lying abed in the wee hours, I can hear the dinosaur howl that startles memory and imagination. I close my eyes and imagine that the southbound-westbound engines are pulling their mysterious graffiti decorated boxcars through Jefferson County toward Tuscaloosa and Meridian and New Orleans and beyond.

I recall a long-ago youth who imagined that he could hop a freight and take off to climes unknown and adventures unpredicted and have the time of his life.

So, the trains and tracks are always present, permanent leftovers from a time when the valley bustled with iron and coal and steelmaking and smokestacks a-billowing.

As a grown-up, I am annoyed when a slow-moving behemoth causes me to pause in my self-important journey. But, as the Youth still inside me mutters, “Yes, but imagine what’s in those linked cars, guess what kinds of people are staring at me as I stare back at their passing faces. Marvel at the lives of engineers and porters and maintainers who keep the monster revved up and running.”

I smile and enjoy the moment, roll down my window to take in the clanging and howling and friction squeal of metal against metal. I watch the precariously stacked top-heavy vehicles roll along, balancing the tightwire. I hope against hope that the next wreck never occurs.

Later, I pause and park on a bridge, gaze down at the tracks and trains below, puzzle over signs and symbols and switchings galore, and pretend that perhaps one of these days I will all-aboard and begin a journey unlike any other journey, not knowing where I am headed or where I will wind up.

It would be nice to take a deep meditative breath and appreciate the ride

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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LIFE, ACTUALLY

FEELING GOOD ALL UNDER

Every Tuesday morning, the laundry freshly done and most things in their place, I pick out the newest pair of undershorts in the drawer and slide them on. As the week progresses or regresses, I put on a fresh pair each day (yes, I do take off the used pair before doing so) and try to face the world with strong and white undergirdings bolstering a flagging confidence.

You know what happens next, of course. By the end of the week and through the weekend, I run out of the newest pairs and start digging down into the drawer for older, slightly ragged shorts until, at last, by Monday I am starting the week off with underwear that is holy but not righteous, as Ma used to say.

The pair I am wearing now is the most tattered I own, since the laundry is a day late.

Now just suppose that this is all metaphoric, and just suppose that the state of my underwear is roughly equivalent to my state of mind and level of energy?

What would happen if one Tuesday morning I began the week wearing the raggedest underwear and progressively turned to newer pairs as the week waned? Would my attitude be thus affected, would I be saving my high-self-esteem underwear for the most worn-down and wearisome part of the week—thus giving me an extra boost to make it crawling through Saturday night toward the Day of Rest on Sunday?

Maybe, if this works, I will no longer find myself sitting in my ragged underwear on my favorite equally ragged easy-chair on Sunday afternoon, staring into space and dozing, trying to rev up my juices for the week ahead.

The secret of life-energy may be in here somewhere.

I mean, don’t we all still believe in magic, and isn’t that why we keep getting up in the morning and trying to tackle each day anew with the idea that there’s just got to be something better about this dawn?

Without this magic-potion kind of thinking, we’re just another bunch of trembling primitives waiting to be eaten or run over, and taken to the emergency room with—horror of horrors—ragged underwear

(an entry from Jim’s Red Clay Diary, first published in his 1998 book, DAD’S TWEED COAT Small Wisdoms, Hidden Comforts, Unexpected Joys)

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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The daily journey from sunrise to sunrise is filled with