Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/hrHYlBAf1JA

or read his story below…

PULLEY BONE WISHES, DRUMSTICK COMPETITIONS

Oh boy, I hope I hope I hope I get to get the only thing worth getting today.

I’m sitting here at the tiny dining table in the tiny dining room adjacent via swinging door to the tiny kitchen at my childhood home on Eastwood Avenue at the fulcrum of the tiny town of 1940′s Tuscaloosa.

My younger brother Ronny and older sister Barbara and handsome father Tommy and beautiful mother Frances are about to dine together this Sunday-after-church afternoon.

The fragrance of fresh-fried crunchy-breaded chicken blends with all the other fragrances of the hour. Steaming mashed potatoes. Hot corn bread. Carrot sticks. Gravy. Catsup for newly-shelled black-eyed peas. Salt and pepper for boosted flavor. Hot pepper for Dad. And maybe, just maybe, sweeter-than-sweet lemon meringue pie made from scratch.

This magical and flavorful event pales  in comparison to my lust for one big drumstick. Just one.

It’s more than desire. More than mouth-watering anticipation. More than hunger. We are always well-fed, no matter how scant the income, no matter how high the food prices. My parents find a way to shield us kids from the realities of scraping by. The drumstick will make everything feel right, feel secure.

Mother is always the last to sit down, for she is captain of the ship. She backs into the dining room from the kitchen, pushing the door behind her just enough to slip through, carrying a steaming platter of chicken.

I’m at the ready, hoping to get first dibs on a drumstick.

Everything is negotiable. Should Sister Barbara decide she wants first choice, she will get first choice. The privilege of being eldest child. Should my father be of a mind to have a drumstick, so it shall be. Should Mother want a drumstick—wait, Mother never gets the drumstick because she waits till everyone has chosen, then meekly selects from what’s left. Being youngest voter, Ronny takes whatever he’s served, at least till he becomes older and more assertive.

Today, Dad serves himself a thigh. Barbara grabs a drumstick. And, miracle of miracles, I get one, too! Life is good. Life would be even better if chickens came with five legs.

The feast is talkative and noisy and filled with laughter and signifying.

But one more ritual must be observed. One more punctuation mark must be applied to this happy mythology.

Who get’s the pulley bone?

Lunch-before-dessert will not be complete until two of us get to make wishes, then tug apart the pulley bone. Today, it’s Barbara and yours truly.

She holds one half of the slippery arch, I hold the other. We close our eyes and make our silent wishes. We pull hard. The pulley bone cracks.

One of us has a wish fulfilled

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s podcast:  https://youtu.be/adU4x_8LBNM

or read his thoughts below…

QUICK! BEFORE IT ROLLS UNDER SOMETHING!

Small Wisdoms Hidden Comforts Unexpected Joys

That is the working title of my upcoming book, in which I jot down errant ideas that, if not transcribed, will simply tumble out, fall to the floor, then roll under something. I am herewith quoting myself and no-one else!

Here’s a page from the book:

“It has been many years since I first occurred.”

“I think, therefore I might be.”

“Temptation is always so…tempting.”

“My enemy cannot take this moment from me. It’s the one thing my enemy cannot take. For the moment is already gone, too late to steal.”

“If precocious is a word, why isn’t postcocious a word?”

“If you keep an open mind won’t your thoughts tumble out?”

“Climb every molehill.”

“The purpose of all my writing is to pose the question, ‘Is this just me?’”

“There is no future like the present.”

“One day I will write a book about things not meant for what they will become.”

“I plan to die happy. Except for the dying part.”

“I like to brag about not being a braggart.”

“Write down your thoughts and feelings and inspirations. They just might mean something to your reader. Refrain from making judgments about what you write. You the writer are not competent to determine what is important and what is unimportant, so get out of the way of what you write and allow others to absorb or critique. You are merely taking dictation from your innards. Let it out. Let it happen!”

“Filling time is about all we do, whether or not we actually do anything.”

“Time is ephemeral but strangely real–no other unit of measure makes as much sense.”

“One task of the writer is to record all the disappearing reference points.”

“As I have traversed all these years, with myself as traveling companion, having never deserted Me, isn’t it about time I made friends with Me?”

“How many years will it take for you to become the person you always were?”

“I can’t get very far without my body.”

“What it is possible for me to become is beneath my hopes.”

“I seem to rely upon other people to make me feel bad. Why can’t I just feel bad on my own?”

“I believe in special moments and the disconnected interstices that come between them.”

“The flash of inspiration is the only truth, the only beauty, worth recording.”

“To pay appropriate homage to life it is important to thank Goodness whenever possible. Thank Goodness!”

” If my mind wanders, it can’t get far because it is tethered to the body within which I reside.”

“Would that I had been born fully grown, fully mature. Bid misspent time return!”

“An actual physical object is worthy of preservation because it is there to remind us of what happened when, what happened where, and what when and where felt like in the palm of a hand.”

“Wisdom imparted by the wind would be called a wind advisory.”

“Innocent bystanders. Where is the proof they are innocent?”

“My greatest hope is that Science will find Cheese Curls to be a sure path to a healthy life.”

“What is it I know that I have yet to learn?”

“If you speak the unspeakable, it isn’t.”

“I am the last Me standing.”

“Filling time is anything we do or do not do.”

“If you build it, there is no telling whether anybody will come.”

“Sooner or later is way too early.”

“Her shallowness ran deep.”

“I’m so skeptical I’m skeptical about my skepticism.”

“If you’ve never been bad, how will you know when you’re being good?”

“Why do people only have flights of fancy? Can’t one occasionally enjoy a seavoyage of fancy or a hike of fancy?”

“Acceptance is the only real test of a civilized world.”

“The curse of youth is that they think they have time.”

“Of all the Duddies I know, I am the Fuddiest.”

“Our fellow travelers are watching us, so we must set inspiring standards of behavior. If we fail to do this, what good are we?”

“Living a kindly life is difficult. Difficult is the only way anything good ever gets done.”

“I cannot keep my hands off books or my mind off the beauty of words and stories.”

“Don’t deny the enemy’s existence, just show the Universe that the enemy does not matter, has no effect, exerts zero control…over your innate ability to chuckle.”

“The present does not have much heft, since it is either immediately in the past or immediately about to happen.”

As I note, this is an excerpt from my next book. No telling how many thoughts have tumbled out and fled while I wasn’t paying attention

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute podcast:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbI3e3I5hZY

or read his words below:

NEXT IN LINE THROUGH GRITTED TEETH, PLEASE

The long gray line inches forward. Inch by inch, of course.

For a moment I am at the far end of the line, but I soon shed that status when other people queue up behind me. We are all temporary victims, er, postal patrons, waiting our turn at posting packages to far away climes.

Since we are in a long gray line we slowly become grayish and glum in order to match the gray and glum clerks whose mood is…gray and glum.

Just another day in postal service paradise. Just two clerks to service the long gray line.

Every few minutes, without looking up from the gray and glum counter, a clerk will shout out NEXT IN LINE! The uninitiated patrons do not first respond, since all they hear is the voice of someone saying something like NEXT’NLINE! No way to tell what this means the first time you hear it.

Eventually, a more experienced patron will nudge the nextinline person and say, “That means you.” As if startling oneself from a deep sleep, the nextinline looks around, sees a clerk with no customer, and makes the assumption that it’s time to go get postalized.

Once more, the line inches forward, then pauses.

The clerk mumbles something so muttery and rote that it’s barely understandable, SORRYFORTHEWAIT. It’s a mandated statement with no meaning, so it does not stand on its own as a sincere apology.

No matter, the patron is relieved at getting on with the transaction and escaping this gray place, the sooner the better.

Just as the line gets longer, one of the two clerks slaps down a CLOSED sign and disappears into the cavern behind her. The remaining clerk just keeps on keeping on, trying to be efficient, even polite at times, to diminish the line.

Once in a while the gray clerk brightens up when someone she knows arrives. They chat merrily. I am relieved that there is humanity acting itself out. I am not amused that this means the line will stop until the clerk is good and ready to reboot.

There are some ways I can help myself get through these moments. I can go postal and get all wrought up over much of nothing. Or I can enjoy the experience, talk and signify with my temporary nearby gray line neighbors. I can amuse myself by gazing at the posters designed to make me happy at being at the mercy of the system. I can watch the interaction between one glum and gray employee whose job is to tote boxes half her size from the outside, swing them up onto the counter, wipe sweat from her brow, then exit into the cavern to join her fellow worker.

Eventually, the second clerk reappears and yells NEXT IN LINE!

Life is back to normal.

As the gray line progresses, a flashback occurs. Way back when, when I visit London, the railway and tube clerks all exhibit the same behavior as these postal clerks. Through gritted teeth, they are required to constantly apologize for the lateness of the trains or the inconvenience of the people-processing.

WE APOLOGIZE! is repeated every minute or so, always through gritted teeth, always with some kind of repressed rage. Kind of scary. Just like right here, right now, at the big ol’ gray post office.

I finally get lucky and am faced with the only clerk who voluntarily smiles and converses while taking care of my packages. This is a blessing and I am appreciating it. We even share quips and jokes!

Then, as suddenly as it appears, her smile disappears after the transaction and she braces for the next patron after me. She also braces for the glum disapproval of the other clerk, who is thinking, What’s this good mood stuff all about? Something must be wrong with her. No good deed will remain unpunished.

I escape the gray line, rush to the gray parking lot and drive away, relieved and chuckling.

That wasn’t so bad, was it? I say to myself

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:  https://youtu.be/QQBzh8ecwT8

or read below:

ONE MORE STRING OF PEARLS WEST OF EDEN

The incredible shrinking customer returns to the bookshop this morning.

Leaning forward as she rapidly walks straight ahead, she looks neither right nor left. Speaks not.

As she walks, she lists slightly to one side, steering her frail body toward a favorite category, vintage children’s books.

Maud is her name.

Maud has been entering the shop off and on for years, avidly searching for just the right titles to fill her evening, to fill her bookcase.

She seems to be diminishing in size, so that she is perhaps just under five feet tall these days.

Quickly, she brings two Lucy Maud Montgomery books to the counter and gruffly asks, “How much?”

As usual, I check the prices and report them, at which point she seems disapproving but accepting. Just how she manages to reject and accept simultaneously is a mystery.

She slings her backpack to the floor, digs into a bulging and tattered wallet, issues forth the required cash.

“Would you like a bag?” I ask, since the answer changes with each transaction.

“No,” she says, this day re-packaging her billfold and slipping the volumes into the darkened depths of the pack.

I say something innocuous about what a good writer Lucy Maud was, just to add a cheery period/paragraph to the morning.

She smiles and barks, “Yeah, it’s an easy read.”

I think to myself, I’m an easy Reed, too—–since I process customer interchanges, both boisterous and brisk, with the everlasting intention of leaving myself feeling better.

I hope to get a grin or two out of each book client. When this works, I am happy with my day and my Self. When it fails, I try to determine how things could have gone better.

Maud the incredible shrinking woman slings her backpack aft and teeters forward and sideways toward the door and her next encounter with street life.

I grab a sticky note and jot down a few words about Maud. In my mind, this moment is a wonderful translucent pearl that I stuff into my pocketful of pearls for later examination.

Each time I sit down to record these pearls, I retrieve additional wads of notes, arrange them chronologically, and eventually string them together into something I can report to you, my invisible reader.

I remind myself that I live and work just a few miles west of Eden, Alabama. I always give a Nod to the small town as I pass, a castaway eastbound to find books and pearls and people.

The books and pearls remain constants in my life, but as time passes the incredible shrinking people always seem to grow larger 

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/FROM%20DOWNTOWN%20TO%20DOGTOWN.mp3

or read his story below:

FINDING THE SOLITUDES OF DOGTOWN AND DOWNTOWN

Here’s what happened one Alabama night some years ago.

It still stands out in my Red Clay Diary

 Tonight I find myself atop a mountain in Dogtown, south of Fort Payne,  north of Collinsville, watching a clear cool sky and feeling the wideness of the open spaces around me.

Just east of where I am standing, the red planet Mars appears on the horizon, and to the west the diamond-bright planet Venus is about to be occluded by the trees below.

It is a night to take a deep breath and wonder why you can see so many more stars on this mountain, stars that you can’t see in Downtown Birmingham. Years ago, when Reed Books was located within the Wooster Lofts on First Avenue North, I would climb four flights of stairs above my bookloft at night to gaze at the city–Vulcan would wave from afar, aircraft would whoosh past to land—then leave—the airport, lone walkers would dodge the occasional automobile on the streets below. Above, the moon would moon me, a meteor would give me an instant razz, and I could see a bright star or steady planet cruising on by.

Anyhow, back to this night, where my mind is right now. I’ve come to this mountain, two hours from Birmingham, to speak to a gathering of volunteer chaplains who make sure that hospital patients are not alone spiritually when they don’t want to be.  Inside the restaurant—much warmer than the outside mountain air—I find folks who are relaxed and happy about where they live and what they do, in Dekalb and Cherokee Counties. They are close to Mentone and Chattanooga, not too far from Birmingham, but far enough away to feel like country folks when they need to.

It’s clear to me, a couple of hours later, as I hurtle back towards Downtown Birmingham, that most of us find a way to have some peace and quiet midst the hustle and smoke and sounds of the city. Folks back in Dogtown can go to people-laden places whenever they need a break from solitude…folks in Downtown Birmingham can find solitude when they’re done with crowds. In Downtown, I see loners finding occasional solitude in their idling cars, in pocket parks, within their earpods, behind their closed-lidded eyes, inside a restroom or in a stock room, on a streetside bench, in a quiet loft room, on the back pew of an empty church. I notice people who, even in a crowd, can find solitude for a moment—at a symphony concert, in the corner at a cocktail party, inside a book huddling in an alcove.

So, Dogtown and Downtown are just names we give places. In each place, people can find what they need if they use a bit of imagination.

Back in Birmingham the next day, as I leave work, I walk onto the parking deck adjacent to the century-old building that houses shop. It is nearly dark and the sunset is spectacular in the middle of the city. To the west, I can see First Avenue South running straight toward the sun. To the north, the truncated skyscraper we used to call the Daniel Building shows evidence that some employees haven’t fled yet—perhaps they’re taking in a bit of solitude before fighting the traffic. To the east, Mars is struggling to be seen again, and a solitary aircraft dips towards the landing strip.

I breathe deeply, realizing that, whether it’s Dogtown or Downtown, I can always find a sky and an interlude just when I need it most

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:  https://youtu.be/eqT5ONjFgto

or read his story below:

THE WAITING ROOM OF THE VANITIES

I am right here right now…here in an unaccustomed room sitting atop unaccustomed furniture surrounded by cloned and soul-deprived magazines and sales brochures and neutral wall hangings and lifeless crisscrossed carpet tiles and a genuine artificial potted plant…

How many other waiting rooms have I experienced during this awkwardly extended lifetime? How many more waiting rooms are waiting for me to wait within them? Just what is a waiting room?

I look around.

The unfamiliarity of this cubed space is intentional, I suppose. Was this room’s original designer considering the feelings and fears and hopes and lives of future temporary occupants? Or was the designer merely working quickly within budget and space restrictions to come up with something saleable and boss-acceptable?

What else weighs upon me in this special neutered space?

Well, it is silent. No unidentifiable music piping in, no large-screen-image device screaming for my attention and my wallet.

What else is missing?

There is no clock to remind me whether the system is on time or tardy or suspended. There is no intentional sound, just the hovering hum of air conditioning, the muted mutterings of people in the hallway. Just the sound of my own voices at conflict with one another.

Oh, and there is no mirror. That’s just as well, because whenever I pass by a mirror I am amazed at what I see. Just who is that old dude who is concealing my 22-year-old self?Inside I am young. Outside, there is something else going on—the aging process that does not permit me to cast a vote aye or nay. I am disenfranchised.

Now and again, another waiting room denizen visits, sits, stares at some palmed device, eventually exits.

What’s the good news in this room? There is no lock on the door. I can leave whenever. But I don’t leave whenever because that would mean having to re-start the process of setting up computerized appointments using computerized systems and computerized voices and triggering computerized reminder calls. I’ll just continue waiting, if you please.

I sit here, unaccustomed.

Maybe this is better than I imagine, this waiting room of the vanities. At least I am in-between dramas. Before I entered I was just a preemie. While I’m here I am cocooned and protected from other realities. In just a little while I will be released to the world, sadder but wiser—or happier but wiser.

This place is protective of me and my thoughts and all knowledge of the outer world. Maybe it’s a chapel of meditation and I just now realize it. Just in time to be summoned into the hallway for my next trek toward the unknown

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: 

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/outsideinsocksneatlyfolded.mp3

or read his diary below:

BUTTONED-UP BOOK ‘EM, DANNO! SHIRTS AS EVIDENCE OF CHARACTER

I found this entry from some years back, in the Red Clay Diary today.

Seems like a worthy subject to re-ponder:

This evening, I open the first big bag of wash-dry-fold from an unfamiliar neighborhood laundry and wish for the best.

After all, for decades, the Laundry Ladies at the just-closed Flamingo Cleaners have been taking care of us—the Reed family of 17th Street South. Each week, I gather everything dirty-but-washable into these drawstring bags and toss them over the banister to the foyer below. The resultant THUDS are part of the ritual of the morning. Then, I lug the bags to the car and drop them off on the way to work. At the end of the day, there are few things more satisfying than still-warm gently-sorted-and-folded sweet-smelling garments ready to be tucked away in closets and drawers. The most satisfying part of this ritual is the fact that, in all these decades, I haven’t had to wash a single item of clothing myself!

Back in a previous life, the task of sitting for hours in a laundromat usually fell to me, and I always considered it to be an incredible waste of perfectly good time. I recall as a small child watching my mother literally toil over clothes-washing, having to stir  and scrub them by hand in a tub, rinse them, wring them out, hoist the water-heavy garments onto her shoulders to the backyard, where they were one by one tidily smoothed straight and hung out to dry, later to be brought inside, pressed, sorted, folded and put away.

But, as I say, I got out of having to feed quarters into broken machinery many moons ago, and my mother eventually got some machinery that made her life somewhat easier. I just never got her toil out of my mind and hoped my wife would never have to do what she had to do.

Anyhow, the Laundry Ladies always took care of the task, usually with good humor and silent professionalism. And, unlike Mother, they were paid to do so.

But today is the first day I’ve had to use a new wash-dry-fold facility, and I’m hoping for the best. To protect your clothes from dust and other damaging elements, you may need to install storage cabinets in your closet with the help of a Closet Designer.

As I empty the clothes onto the upstairs master bed, I’m pleasantly surprised. And grateful! That’s because I begin to realize, as I put things away, that the new laundry folder has added personality to the process. My socks, always turned inside-out because I wear them that way, have been methodically matched and turned outside-in, because that’s the way socks should be. My BOOK-EM DANNO shirts are not only folded, but they are buttoned up—something I’ve never experienced. Everything is categorized and ready to use.

This might be evidence of someone who truly loves the job of washing-drying-folding, someone who takes pride in the task, someone who gains some degree of satisfaction from having done well what could be considered an uninteresting and repetitive chore.

So, what’s the difference between this service worker and my previous Laundry Ladies?

Not much, on one level—the Laundry Ladies were very proficient, friendly, poorly paid and overworked, but they kept on keeping on, doing what they could do, and doing it dependably well. The mysterious new laundry worker is equally task-driven and polite, but that extra bit of care, that WILLINGNESS TO DO MORE THAN THE JOB REQUIRES, speaks of an earlier generation, an almost forgotten work ethic that only us geezers with good memories recall.

This makes me wish to do a shout-out of THANKS! to all people who rise above their potentially humdrum jobs. The people who take time to find some joy and satisfaction in the hands they are dealt. The people who tend to do that special one little thing beyond the call of duty and cause an involuntary smile to appear on a customer’s face.

Makes me want to be a better worker myself

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/wBP_IgYPlsM

or read his tale…

INCARCERATING THE PINK AND AQUA-EDGED YELLOW STRIPE RAINBOW

 Just standing here at the edge of my 1906-built home on the big city’s south side, old time lyrics creep into my unfiltered mind, “It’s only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea…”

I look out over the carpenter-gothic and condo-lined street and await the arrival of my true love.

It’s a generational rumble, this little avenue of leftover dreams. The modern structures on one side, the ancient wooden houses on the other, facing off each day and actually getting along, coexisting just fine.

My gaze drifts upward to take in something prettier than phone and cable line criss-crossings and teetering wooden support poles and fractured sidewalks and potholed battlefields and grammatically-challenged signage.

Up, up in the Maxfield Parrish clouds a rainbow fades itself into existence. For a few minutes, that’s all I can see, all I care to see.

Can I see it on your behalf?

This particular rainbow has no specified beginning, an invisible ending way beyond, but in between sports its colors. The three stripes begin on the upper edge with a light rose pink kind of effect. The lower track is aqua, almost transparent. Between is a remarkable lemon-yellow stripe rendering the other colors unable to collide and conflict. No rumble here, this day at least.

The lyrics keep repeating themselves in a Nat King Cole-Ella Fitzgerald amalgam,  ”It’s only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea…”

I find myself smiling without benefit of audience, without any attempt to please anybody else. I’m just smiling at this wonderful, pure sight hovering blissfully out of reach of the day to day toil and disarray of the village, the admixture of life and dream, reality and illusion.

If I capture this mirage, firefly it in a jar, will it die of incarceration? Will it no longer exist because of my interference?

I leave the rainbow alone, it leaves me alone. We regard each other and exist in peace.

And for a few ticks of the celestial timepiece, all is calm, all is bright

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/hIdEDkvcsbg

or read forth, below:

IT’S A MOODY ELEVATOR KIND OF DAY

An oblong thick plastic credit card-sized key grants me entrance to a big-city parking deck behind the bookstore.

Without this key, my work day would be spent inserting handfuls of quarters into disorderly and often malfunctioning parking meters. All this activity to restrain the gleeful meter-monitor person who races to issue overtime penalties to anyone who stays too long downtown.

It is a game I no longer play. I would just as soon pay a monthly fee to the parking deck cartel so that the security of my automobile will be assured.

So, here I am, dodging impatient traffic in order to drive into the deck entrance. I wave the key at an unreachable sensor and something magically causes the creaky wooden blockade arm before me to elevate itself long enough to allow entrance.

I steer the car through six levels of obtusely-stationary vehicles in order to park in a diagonal space on the seventh level.

I gather my jacket and aluminum beverage cup, step onto unpainted concrete, and head for the dreaded elevators.

I stand between two double-doored elevators, punch the slightly askew DOWN button and await my fate.

It is a toss-up as to which elevator will arrive. I listen for metallic pulley sounds and grinding mechanisms as the strains of elevation sound out. I gaze through the adjacent windows at the city below me and scrutinize office and condo windows for signs of life.

To my dismay, it is the left-hand elevator that opens its doors to me. This is the one that recently stopped halfway up, halfway down, stranding a lone passenger till rescuers freed him. This is also the elevator that sometimes opens and closes by itself, sometimes half-opens, then shuts, before I can board it.

Several weeks back, I meet an elevator repair man who is cutting and pasting and oiling the shaft innards to keep them operating. He nervously and apologetically reports that the elevators are old and perhaps past their prime. His assignment is to keep running a hundred or so units around town so that the machinations of commerce and governance keep racing along.

So, today, this morning, I step gingerly through  the open doors and do an about-face. I punch the ONE button and wait to see what adventure will befall me between level seven and level one.

As the doors slide shut, I squint at the posted inspection certificate and note that the elevator has not passed inspection for sixteen months. I wonder whether an elevator loses flavor after its expiration date.

The elevator stops at level six, the doors grind open, no visible being enters, the doors close and the descent resumes. The elevator stops at level five, opens to invisibles or ghosts or spirits, closes again. This continues for each level until Number One pops up.

I hold my breath and await my fate, hoping against hope that the doors will slide apart and allow me to escape the pursuing hounds of imagination

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/s8quNZnyh3g

or read on…

Deep South Tales Both Actual and True

Who isn’t present at last Friday’s family reunion?

I wander among the relatives and semi-relatives scattered about the room, looking deep into eyes that sometimes match my genes, my kinships.

This annual gathering of people whose lives overlap with mine is comforting and glad, poignant and sad, funny and…well, a bit of everything.

Each year, there are more children, each year there are fewer oldtimers, each year, last year’s young’uns have grown a bit older, each year I marvel at the mysteries of birth and death, the rambunctious progression of wrinkles and wry humor, that characterize this family.

Each year, someone present last year is now missing.

Each reunion makes me want to go back and visit in three dimensions the good times of yesteryear.

But this is the only way I know how to visit: I write down my memories in order to keep alive the good people, the good times.

This is one of many memories recorded in my Red Clay Diary:

HOW MANY Z’S IN ZZZZZ?

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ….

I’m lying abed in this small plaster-ceilinged bedroom I share with brother Ronny.

The time is longer ago than you might remember, or maybe even before you were born.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ….

It is just after sunrise. I am slowly drifting back and forth between slumber and wakefulness. Dreams are fading into daydreams. Reality is creeping in to take over.

My ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s are turning into snorts, then into eyes wide open…

In the living room, the Sunday newspaper comic strips await.

The comics are everything on Sunday morning. That’s where I learn what those ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s mean. They are shorthand for Sleeping Soundly.

When a comic strip cartoonist wants me to know that a character is asleep or dozing, a row of ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s informs me. When a cartoon bubble hovering above Little Orphan Annie’s head is dripping tiny closed circles, I know that this is what Annie is thinking, not what she is saying aloud. And so on.

I idly wonder how many Z’s are grammatically proper.

But I’m lying here in my bunk bed, now fully awake but hoping that if I can visualize those ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s floating above my head, I can convince anyone peeking into the room that I am still asleep. Can’t they see the Z’s?

It doesn’t work, this attempt to make palpable a cartoonist’s Morse code. I try to pretend sleep, but older sister Barbara opens the door a crack to call me to breakfast. “I see your eyelids moving. You’re awake!” she grins gleefully. I can never fool Barbara.

I swat away the floating ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s and dangle my feet over the side of the mattress. I’m on the top bunk, so part of becoming fully awake is the jolt to the system that I feel when I leap into the vast space between here and hardwood floor.

Time to pretend I’m awake for another day. Time to do little kid things that little kids do on Sunday mornings.

Time to find the Sunday paper and discover what Dagwood is doing—is he asleep on the couch under ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s? What about The Phantom—does he ever sleep? And Snuffy Smith? I know he knows all about Z’s, as does Pappy Yokum. As does brother Ronny on the bottom bunk. They are my kind of people.

To this day, many decades later, I envy those people, real-lifed and cartooned, who know how to catch a few ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s any time they please. Or at least any time their cartoonist so deems.

Or any time sister Barbara isn’t looking

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed