How to torture a roomful of balanced and unbalanced executives:

Carefully, slowly, meticulously disassemble one styrofoam cup.

They can’t arrest you for disassembling one styrofoam cup, but you can exact revenge on just about anybody you wish to annoy, through the simple act of using the weapon at hand.

Way back when, way back Then…I worked in a mythic kingdom named ExecutiveLand. It was in ExecutiveLand that I learned the finest forms of guerilla warfare…a type of warfare that can bring strong grownups to their knees. I learned this fine skill from another executive, Hamp Swann. Now, Hamp Swann was a true scientist, an engineer who really knew things, as opposed to executives like me, who knew very little but pretended to know a whole lot.

Hamp and I used to have to attend these regular management meetings called the AEC (administrative executive committee) at ExecutiveLand. These were really boring meetings, because they consisted of a group of leaders telling each other how carefully they planned and executed things that always succeeded–whether or not they really succeeded, and whether or not they actually spent any time planning them.

Kind of like cabinet meetings.

Anyhow, most of us who had very little power would find ways to survive these meetings–we’d look alert but would be largely brain-inert, since we didn’t really care what went on. We were the realists–we knew that no matter how many meetings were held, the chief executive officers of ExecutiveLand never varied from their actions (They would tell us we were conducting participatory administrative activities, but invariably they’d wind up doing exactly what they intended to do before receiving our input…they’d do this because they could.)!

Anyhow, we juniors would play little games with one another to keep from falling asleep or bursting into tears or jumping across the large meeting table to strangle somebody. This was our therapy.

Hamp Swann didn’t play these games because he was a truly independent thinker and did not need our ideas to figure out what the right thing to do was. One day, Hamp, looking intensely interested in the goings-on of the meeting, began dismantling a styrofoam coffee cup. There are many ways to accomplish this task, but Hamp’s method was simple: he started at the rim of the empty cup and slowly separated the foam into one continuous strip, the way you’d peel an apple. This is a very noisy procedure, particularly noisy in a solemn room of solemn senior executives who hope that all the juniors are acting solemn and hanging on to their every word in silent adulation.

Screeckkk…screeckkk…screeckk…the styrofoam noise slowly infiltrated the subconscious and unconscious people in the room. At first, the screeckkk wasn’t noticed, because all the seniors were so self-involved and all the juniors were trying to stay awake, but eventually, the screeckkk started making people uncomfortable. Hamp was dismantling the cup absent-mindedly, so he didn’t even know it was making a sound, plus it was in his lap, so nobody knew where the sound was coming from.

Screeckkk…screeckkk…screeckkk. Now, people were looking around for the source, each person still not knowing whether anybody else was hearing the same thing. One executive adjusted his hearing aid, just in case it was static. Another shifted in his chair to see whether it needed oiling, yet another looked nervously at the ceiling insulation to see if an insect or rodent had been self-invited.

Then, there were the other juniors like me. I found this event to be the most entertaining one I’d experienced in years, so I started yearning for popcorn, since I can’t watch a movie without something buttery and salty and crunchy in my mouth.

I won’t tell you the ending of this story–you’ll just have to ask me. All I know is, the Great Styrofoam Cup Dismantling Caper has stayed in my memory for decades, and nothing, but nothing, about the intended content of that solemn meeting lingers.

I dream of the day when somebody will stage a production of styrofoam cup dismantlings…a wonderfully chaotic symphony orchestrating the simultaneous screeckkk…screeckkk…screeckkks produced by hordes of cups large and small, each tuned to its own cacophony, its own joyfully annoying disruptive sounds

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/hardwarehitch.mp3

or read it below…

HARDWARE HITCH

Hitching up his trousers by grabbing his belt up front to cover a lower layer of belly fold, he struts into the hardware store as if a potbellied stove were still radiant, as if a cracker barrel still dropped crumbs onto an oil-soaked concrete floor, as if laughter and storytelling were still saturating the air.

Faint fragrances of topsoil and fertilizer and WD-40 and unfinished lumber and old rubber flanges remind him of the odor of Lifebuoy soap and metal filings from key-makng machines that used to dominate hardware stores more years ago than he dares to count.

His Daddy and his Daddy’s Daddy hitched their pants up, too, way back when, in search of nomadic waist lines.

But this new hardware store no longer attracts hitching-up men because the potbellied stove and cracker barrel have been moved aside to accommodate central air and heat, more display space, additional stock turnover, busier and less-connected customers.

Gossip and news and palavering are unknown here, so the store proprietors don’t have any idea what’s going on in the surrounding neighborhood.

Instead of sharing eye-to-eye anecdotes about neighbors and common issues and genealogies, the proprietors and customers now obtain their gossip and news on talk shows and via social media.

Chatter and noise caulk the previous silences but tell the pants-hitcher nothing about life-saturated happenings…the newborn baby down the street,  the latest success of a nearby friend, oh so important life-changes and twists of fate that overlie daily flesh-and-bone existence.

Former cracker barrel potbellied men still come into the store and hitch up their pants, but they are methodically processed by clerks whose eyes glaze past them, into the virtual-cloud mist 

Jim Reed (c) 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/icehotasphaltsummerday.mp3

or read his memory below:

ICY HOT ASPHALT SUMMER DAY

Way, way back, on an Alabama summer day…

 Hot concrete under tender bare feet makes you dance…first one foot down while the other foot’s up, then the other foot down while one foot’s up. 

The only relief comes when you hop onto the cool prickly grass next to the concrete sidewalk, let the green blades slide up between your toes and press against your soles, sigh a loud sigh of relief, pause a moment, then dance right back onto the concrete sidewalk, because that’s the only way you’re going to get to the asphalt road. 

Once on the asphalt road, you start dancing again, because asphalt is dark and more heat-absorbent than concrete, only the texture is different and the tarry pebbles make hash marks on your feet when you finally find a bit of shade to stand under where the asphalt is cooler, or at least lukewarm.

The reason you’re standing here on the ridged asphalt is because you can hear the milk truck coming and you have to be right there on the asphalt in just the right place in order not to miss the milkman’s rushed schedule.

Finally, you see the milkman and his vehicle lumbering stickshifty along, creaking to an idling halt while he emerges, lifts a metal tray of thick-walled bottles filled with Perry Creamery’s pasteurized homogenized milk, trots up the sidewalk, not even aware that it’s hot because he has on these thick-soled military shoes made of hard leather, stitched tightly to harder leather.

He clanks the new bottles down on my front porch, picks up the waiting empty bottles, and heads back to the milk truck. 

By this time, out of nowhere, several summertime barefoot kids about my age have gathered around the back of the truck, dancing on the hot asphalt and waiting for the treat of the morning: free crushed ice.

The milkman dips his large hands into the trunkful of finely shaved ice supporting the fresh milk bottles, and breaks off hand-sized hunks, doling them out to each streetkid.

We immediately scatter to the hot morning air, sucking our chunks of ice, biting into them and getting the only cool surge of the day, since none of us lives in an air-conditioned home. 

Maybe we remember to say “Thank you” to the milkman, maybe sometimes we forget, but we are grateful for this assumed and taken-for-granted small free favor granted us each time the milkman and his freshly produced pasteurized homogenized milk comes our way. 

It’s another ritual in our tiny neighborhood, one of many rituals that serve to hold us all together and make us feel somewhat secure, ignorant of what lies ahead way beyond the hot-asphalt smalltown mornings of our very precious and very fleeting childhood

Jim Reed (c) 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast (3 minutes)

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/tinklingattheneighborhooddiner.mp3

or read his story below…

TINKLING AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD DINER

Here I go again, digging down into piles of forgotten red clay diary entries from almost thirty years ago. HERE’S ONE: Looks like I jotted this down just about the time cellphones were beginning to take over the daily lives of us somnambulists. Well, we were somnambulists up until the time all of us became drones in an enormous humming hive of portable electronic devices. See if this stirs a memory or two…

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

I turn my head right and left to see where this ringy-rattly sound is coming from.

It is not a sound to be ignored. It requires action. Maybe.

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

My racing brain tries to determine whether a fire needs putting out, whether a door needs answering, whether a phone should be answered…

Suddenly, Billybobjimmyjack, the guy at the next booth, answers his cellphone.

We’re in the neighborhood diner, having breakfast.

I’m here in the diner to gain some meditative equilibrium in preparation for the daily doings at work. I have to assume that Billybobjimmyjack does not come here for the same purpose, since his breakfast is hardly meditative. Or quiet.

“SHELLO!”

Billybobjimmyjack mushes through his mouthful. He’s talking to the phone. “I’M EATIN’ BREAKFAST!” he says resonantly for the whole room to hear. “I’LL TALK TO YOU LATER,” he says, and disconnects, slamming the phone on the table.

I sink philosophically back into the op-ed page of the daily wrapper and resume enjoying my ham-and-eggs-and-grits breakfast.

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

Billybobjimmyjack says “HELLO,” since his mouth is temporarily bereft of southern penicillin (grits) and his voice is aboom once again.

“YEAH, I’M EATIN’ BREAKFAST! I’LL CALL YOU BACK.”

Slam.

Billybobjimmyjack is from a generation that reasons you have to shout into a phone because the person at the other end of the exchange is so far away.

This goes on a total of four times, each jangling of the phone jangling my nerves and causing my grits to go cold. Grits, as any gritslover knows, are no damned good if they are cold.

Don’t knock this bit of wisdom if you’ve never had grits. And when you do eat them, make sure you start off properly. They must be served steaming hot with a big puddle of butter in the center and unreasonably thick layers of salt and pepper atop. Go ahead, try it. If you like it you can add other stuff to taste, such as garlic and cheese.

Back to Billybobjimmyjack. Yes, we must bring closure to this anecdote.

Why did he bother to bring his phone into the diner, display it in plain view next to the catsup and pepper sauce and toothpick holder, if he didn’t intend to talk to anyone while eating?

Now he’s got to return four phone calls after he gets into his car, and you know what that will do to his digestive tract. Four incoming, four outgoing…double the pleasure, double the stress, a stomach full of cold grits.

Next time I spy Billybobjimmyjack at the diner, I plan to present him with a little gift of Pepto-Bismol. Or maybe I’ll just leave it on his windshield wiper outside and run like the dickens.

That way, I’ll be safe and he’ll find relief that can never come from receiving four and returning four totally necessary but annoying grits-chilling calls even before his workday begins

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/feelinggoodallunder.mp3

or read his stuff below…

FEELING GOOD ALL UNDER

 A 20-year-ago note just tumbled from the Red Clay Diary. Haven’t thought about this for a long, long time…so let’s see how these thoughts hold up and ring true…

Once a week, the laundry freshly done and most things in their place, I pick out the newest pair of underpants 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 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 my mother used to say.

The pair I’m wearing now is the most tattered I own, since 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 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?

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 on 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 run over by life, and taken to the emergency room with—horror of horrors—ragged underwear

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/jottingdowntheimaginaryinvisibles.mp3

or read his diary here:

JOTTING DOWN THE IMAGINARY INVISIBLES

 Underneath a scraggly neighborhood tree, the tree that drops small red berries, berries impossible to eat but just perfect for squeezing and squirting red streaks across face and body during playtime war games, I sit. I sit here beneath the branches and leaves and whittle a bit with my Hopalong Cassidy penknife…whittle a small loose branch…whittle nothing in particular…whittle away, watching the wood decrease in size…whittle and whittle, leaving notches here and there as token memories of this childhood day that is passing so rapidly, so rapidly.

The notches on the shrinking wood represent things of utmost importance in my thus-far short life, way back here in the early times of youthful existence.

This notch next to my left thumb represents the recent departure of my two best friends, Monk and Deebie. You were unable to see them because they were visible only to me. We had great times together but now they exist as a notch and a deep memory.

A longer notch honors my baby brother, Ronny, who is at last old enough to be my daily playmate and fellow conspirator. Ronny will show up soon and sit next to me beneath the red berry tree. He will search for four-leaf clovers while my mind meanders notch by notch.

Many years later, when Ronny and I are ancient grownup children living far apart, we will reminisce and fondly cherish these days when there is for a moment nothing more important than juicy berries and pocket knives and shards of wood and patches of shade and four-leaf clovers.

As we age and mellow, our memories of childhood will become more vivid, more detailed, more nuanced. And we will come to realize that we were lucky, so lucky, to have been children protected by parents and family and neighbors and relatives…protected just enough so that for a short and precious time, we could safely deploy our vivid imaginations, gently express our best intentions, take time to smell the Johnson grass and red dirt, spend aimless hours observing spiders and ants and worms and crickets and frogs as they wended their way through the quiet and unpolluted landscape.

Nowadays, instead of whittling my memories, I jot them down in this Red Clay Diary, where they will exist until someone finds them and reads them or discards them. That’s the way it goes, this stuffing bottles full of notes and tossing them into the cosmos. They might survive. They might be lost. They might evaporate. But, so what? The greatest pleasure has already been experienced, the pleasure of re-living good times in memory ever fresh, the pleasure of taking a moment to relish the fact that, among the chaos of daily living through the years, there were and are good things, things worth grasping and mulling over and clinging to…and passing along to you, the next whittler

(c) Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/bornbeneaththepapermillmist.mp3

or read his tale…

Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa…they are forever linked in memory by the fact that both places mean Home to me. Here’s a page that slipped from my Red Clay Diary this morning…an entry from five years back…

Listen to Jim’s podcasts:

https://redclaydiary.com/mp3/anothermorningoncatfishrow.mp3

or read his thoughts below:

It is a better life than I deserve, this career as a bookshop owner. Just thumbing through the ol’ Red Clay Diary, I resurrect a fond memory from eight years ago, when I was barely younger…

ANOTHER MORNING ON CATFISH ROW

I’m plugging in the neon “open” sign in the bookshop window, preparing to begin the day’s business.

As I struggle putting the $2-book-and-record rack out on the sidewalk, I see Rhonda, just across the street at Goodyear Shoe Hospital. Her red hair glows in the sun as she swishes her broom and spreads leaves and dust over the curb.

When was the last time I saw a banker sweeping up in front of a bank?

There is Melissa next door at Sojourns hauling her A-frame sign and balancing it on the walkway, her smile adding to the sunlight.

When was the last time I saw an attorney putting up a sign in front of an office?

I pick up the many cigarette butts in front of my shop, left there by my customers and employees of the Massey Building.

When was the last time I saw a smoker dispose of a cigarette in the enormous City trash can on the sidewalk?

I politely brush off a salesman who wants to examine my phone service records and credit card terminals to give me a “better” deal.

When was the last time one of these salespeople actually took time to shop at the store? Do they realize that I’ll give the time of day to any sales rep who will try to learn a little about my business and actually take a moment to see through my eyes. Think of the income they are missing!

A self-published author wants me to sell her new book in the store. When I show her my own latest book, she sniffs at it, puts it down and continues her sales pitch.

Will she ever understand why I turn her down?

The publisher of a small “literary” journal wants me to purchase copies for the shop but doesn’t bother to open the Birmingham Arts Journal I proudly show him.

Has he ever heard of tit for tat?

I go about opening up and operating my sidewalk shop in much the same way each day, pretty much repeating my motions—with variations. Since some kind of civilization began, I suppose the rituals have been similar—we bazaar vendors have our routines, routines that keep us grounded, routines our customers come to expect of us.

And we also always deal with non-customers who want a favor given without giving a favor.

Much of each day is spent providing free advice and consultation to people who want to know the “value” of a book or those who want me to research and find an obscure title, which I gladly do free of charge—then turn me down, saying, “Oh now that you’ve helped me find it, I’ll just go online and order it myself.” No kidding!

Much of my social life is spent listening to folks promising me that they will someday visit Reed Books—they’ve heard so much about it, you know—but who, year after year, never come in.

I just chuckle and go about my business.

What sustains me during all this rejection?

You do. You sustain me.

You are the customer who shops and enjoys and purchases. You are the customer who returns to the shop, bringing friends and family. You are the customer who gives me thumbs-up reports on social media.

You are the customer who “gets” it—you get the fact that I’m here providing a service that only 60 years of experience can provide.

You are the customer who remembers to thank me for Being Here, just after I thank you for Shopping Here.

You are the customer who appreciates the fact that I’m still in business.

You are my sustenance.

Time to sweep up, tidy up, rearrange loose books, prepare for one long delightful day of meeting and enjoying customers new and old, customers oblivious and sensitive, customers knowledgeable and in search of knowledge, customers who swim and tread their way through the generations of authors and editors and illustrators who generously donate their creative lives to us for the sheer rush of it all

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s blog:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/monkanddeebiesaveanotherchild.mp3

or read his tale below:

MONK AND DEEBIE SAVE ANOTHER CHILD

Monk and Deebie were my imaginary friends when I was a child.

I use the term “imaginary friends” as shorthand so you’ll know approximately what I’m talking about.

The truth is, Monk and Deebie were in no way imaginary. As any adult who ever had such companions will tell you, imaginary friends are very real, very solid, very three-dimensional and quite alive.

If you’ve ever had the privilege of living close to an imaginary friend, you know what I’m talking about. If you have never for a moment enjoyed the presence of an imaginary friend, then I can’t imagine how you got through childhood’s enormous obstacles in one piece.

Monk and Deebie lived with me in a world all their own, a world exactly contiguous to yours and mine.

This is not exactly a parallel universe, because both the universe of Monk and Deebie and the universe of you and me exist simultaneously in the same place. And, yes, two worlds can and do exist in the same location at the same moment, as any child can tell you.

Monk and Deebie were a fully adult couple, a middle-aged husband and wife who lived peacefully and with comfortable dignity in a small home that I could occupy at any time. They often joined my family for meals, and I often joined them in their home for meals and camaraderie.

Being the luckiest child alive, I was granted the most gentle and understanding real-life family you can imagine. My mother and father and sister took my childhood seriously. They never made fun of Monk and Deebie. They accepted me and my only friends. They set places at our little garage apartment kitchen table for this couple they could only see through my eyes.

My family and Monk and Deebie nurtured and supported me. As I said, I was the luckiest child alive.

The great thing about Monk and Deebie was they were exactly my size, even though they were grownups.

Monk always wore a nicely-tailored brown, double-breasted suit and tie and smoked a large cigar. Deebie was neatly attired in a 1940′s Sunday school dress complete with apron for working around their little kitchen.

One day, Monk and Deebie disappeared.

As a child full of energy and imagination and challenges at hand, I did not know they had packed up and moved on to support the next three-year-old shy kid who needed them. Later, I imagined that Monk and Deebie traveled around, helping one kid till things looked safe and stable, then leaving to help another…

Ever since childhood, now and then, I think about Monk and Deebie, my very first personal friends, friends who never let me down, never criticized me. Friends who to this day accept me the way I was and the way I am.

To this day, I am certain that if they ever decide to re-appear and visit me they will still be accepting and loving and as comfortably situated in my heart as they always were in their tiny living room when I was three of age.

I’ve discussed the concept of imaginary friends with adults who had them around when they were kids, and I’ve noticed that their imaginary friends were every bit as important to them as mine were to me. I don’t understand any of this at all. But you know, I’m not sure I want to understand or probe too deeply.

After all, what if Monk and Deebie return and find that I no longer believe in them?

What an embarrassment that would be.

Here’s hoping that you and Monk and Deebie are comfortable having a fine time remembering the good and disenfranchising the bad and just generally having a happy thought intrude itself on your existence once in a while in this real and imaginary life

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/aninstanceofhypnoticmetalballoons.mp3

or read his story below:

AN INSTANCE OF HYPNOTIC METAL BALLOONS

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