Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/theartoffloortoceilingimagineering.mp3

or read his story below:

THE ART OF FLOOR-TO-CEILING IMAGINEERING 

Jimmy Three is lying flat on his back in the living room of his family home. He is staring at the hard-plaster ceiling and contemplating the cracks that zigzag here and there, going nowhere in particular. Jimmy Three is just a kid, back here in the 1950′s when this scene is taking place.

Alone in the asbestos-shingled bungalow he shares with two parents, two sisters, two brothers, he is enjoying the silence of the moment and doing what he does best: ruminating and cogitating and fantasizing and thinking real hard.

Right now, Jimmy Three is wondering where his inspirations are buried. Over the years, he has hidden things so that he or somebody might find these things and gleefully re-experience them someday. For instance, there is a note squirreled away between the insulation  and roofing in the back of the house, and he can no longer get to the note. He has no idea what this message to himself says, because it has been so long since he hid it there during construction of the room.

In the back yard is another secreted treasure–a small box with important but now forgotten objects that he wants to dig up. However, he is unable to locate the spot because the secret map to this burial site is also missing.

Jimmy Three blinks and stares harder at the ceiling, massaging ideas and poems and stories in his head but not yet being brave enough to set them down on paper. These compositions will float and flourish for decades until the day comes when he will regurgitate them in the form of columns and books and blasts and blogs and podcasts. Some will remain hidden. Some will inspire others. Some will simply exist.

Finally, life intervenes and motivates Jimmy Three to arise from the floor, dust himself off, grab a snack, pocket a pad of writing paper and a pencil, and leave the house before any family members return. They might not understand the significance of his lying afloor and appearing to be doing not a thing in the world.

Another hidden note: Jimmy Three knows that these few minutes have been busy and activity-filled and reanimating for him. He knows, too, that those in the family who are not imagineers will think him idle.

But he also is aware that there are fellow dreamers among them who will someday blossom and expose their hidden treasures to appreciators, too.

Appreciators who will have not a clue as to how much floor-time goes into molding a work of art into something visible or audible

 © 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/relatiiverelativity.mp3

or read his story below:

RELATIVE RELATIVITY

 DEAR DIARY:

Einstein was right. Everything is relative.

What Einstein failed to go on to say is: Relativity is EVERYTHING. In fact, relativity is EVERYBODY.

We are all related in some manner, a fact at once beguiling and frustrating, at times horrifying to think (did I really come from the same evolutionary roots as that third-world dictator and that European princess?), and at times provocative (I may share wellsprings with Einstein himself or Nelson Mandela, or even Charlie Chaplin).

If we are all kin, most of us don’t like to admit it except when it’s convenient.

Sometimes, the same folks who go on and on about how they’ve traced their roots all the way back to King Henry or the Vikings, are the same folks who don’t like to talk about the fact that if they go far enough back before that, they are also kin to Kunta Kinte, Adolf Hitler, Moses, Rube Goldberg, Henny Youngman and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Within the bowels, we share common ancestry–and you have to believe that, whether you’re an evolutionist or a religionist.

So, if we’re all in the same family, why do we treat cousins and sisters and offspring different from neighbors, foreigners and aliens? Why is our own blood so much more palatable than a stranger’s? Why are my lawn weeds nicer than your lawn weeds?

It’s not only a small world, it’s a world interwoven with genes and bloodlines and ancestries. Unfortunately, it’s also a world of many fences and few gates, a world of barely-suppressed hostility that can become offensive at any given moment, a world of more should-have’s than can-do’s, a world where the meek, though blessed, are often oppressed simply because they do not place aggression at the top of their priority lists.

Where is the good in the world, then, you ask?

Well, it’s like everything else in the universe–the good is there, you simply have to fade the bad stuff out for a while so you can notice it.

An audience laughing at the same humor is sharing a commonality that transcends the petty differences of the moment.

An old man stopping to pat a small child on the head is making a quantum leap in time and without knowing it, is by the same act, massaging the cosmos with a bit of kindness.

A firefighter who suddenly and without thinking risks life and limb to save the life of someone who in normal situations wouldn’t seem worth the extension of a cordial greeting…that firefighter is unconsciously affirming the fragile but extensive thread of hope that cobwebs the world and makes itself available at the strangest times.

It’s out there. You have to either take time to notice it, or act quickly when the kindness urge strikes, so that you won’t have time to figure out why you should not be doing something so wimpy as generating an unconditional act of sweetness

 © 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

                       (adapted from the book Dad’s Tweed Coat, Small Wisdoms Hidden Comforts Unexpected Joys by Jim Reed)

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/ladychatterleysrash.mp3

or read his story below:

LADY CHATTERLEY’S RASH AND OTHER UNWRITTEN SEQUELS

The small girl student walks up to me and hands me her very first personally-authored book.

“Will you sign this for me?” she asks.

I pause for a tick and try to process this, before replying.

You see, I am sitting at a portable table in the hallway of a grammar school somewhere in North Alabama some years ago, a hallway crowded with milling students and teachers and…authors. I am one of five authors being spotlighted today, some famous, some somewhat known to a few readers (my category). We are all guest speakers and honored personalities invited to the school to encourage kids to produce literary works.

For some reason, each child has been assigned the task of writing and illustrating and binding an original book. The informal session going on right now provides the beginning authors a chance to mingle with accomplished authors. As proof of their participation, the students have to get the guest authors to sign their freshly produced works–a reversal of the usual author-signings common in the book hawking world.

“Will you sign my book?”

I look at this expectant child and blurt out, “I’ll be happy to sign the book–but will you allow me to read it first?” She looks startled that any stranger would want to read her work, especially a stranger accustomed to signing his own books for fans. She nods enthusiastically.

I examine the slender volume and begin to read her story, a tale of dragons and princesses and adventures, colorfully illustrated and meticulously designed. I finish, look up at its nervous author, and say, “I enjoyed this very much.” She beams.

I wonder what I can say to her that she can carry with her and perhaps remember years later.

“Have you started writing the sequel?”

Her brow furrows. “What’s a sequel?”

“What happens the next day?” I point at the dragon and princess.

A light switches on inside her eyes. I can actually see it. Her face beams. She almost hops up and down but controls her excitement. “Oh, I know what happens the next day! Can I write about that, too?”

“Yes, you can.”

I sign her book and she skips away, anxious to begin her neverending tale.

I think about all the sequels and sequels of sequels that have been written, are being written, may never be written. And I am happy that I have just met a fellow traveller, one who, like me, knows that no story ever ends.

Which is why I never place a period when I cease my narrative. It always goes forth to the next day and the next and the next, you know

 © 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast: 

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/germmanmanifesto.mp3

or read his story below:

THE GERM MAN MANIFESTO

Thanks to a nurturing upbringing, I have always been aware of germs and their place in my life. This awareness can be troubling. Or a bit silly.

At a local restaurant, I take a men’s room break. At the same time, an aproned server hastily enters a stall, performs his necessary bodily function and rushes out the door. He doesn’t flush. He doesn’t wash.

Now, as I prepare to re-enter the diner, I have to touch the same door knob he has just touched. And me without my surgical gloves. I return to the table, wiping right hand on  jacket in some kind of leap-of-faith hope that the germs will leave my skin, grow bored of the jacket, and magically disappear.

I’m ready to order a meal and look up to find the very same server politely awaiting instructions, pencil and pad in hand. This is the person who will serve my food, the same one who earlier brought in the place settings and coasters and napkins and handed my granddaughter crayons and coloring book. My wife wonders why I’m just sitting here, staring at the waiter’s hands, temporarily unable to speak.

I finally do what I usually do. Rather than cause an unpleasantness that would be the only thing my family remembers about the evening, I take a deep breath, pretend I’ve seen nothing, and place my order. Everybody has a good time, but I can’t help recalling those glory days way back when our favorite restaurant is El Gringo’s on Crestwood Boulevard. El Gringo’s sells a lot of iced tea each day, so a large tray table of pre-filled glasses sits against a wall. When we arrive to dine, a busboy quickly directs the five of us to a table. While we are being seated, I gaze over Liz’s head at the busboy, watching him go to the iced tea cart, stick all four fingers and thumb a couple of inches into each glass, pick the five of them up, and bring them to our table. He does remember to dry his fingers on a filthy cloth hanging from his belt. Ah, another local meal at another local restaurant. Family bliss comes in small doses.

My life with germs is not an easy one, but I do remember some things I’ve been taught, some of which might actually be true.

Germs are everywhere all the time.

Some germs are germier than others.

You can’t get rid of germs.

Germs are inconvenient.

You can see germs. At least in your worst imaginings.

You can get on with daily life by ignoring germs.

You can lower the germ population in certain instances.

Germs can be moved out of one place and chased to another place. The Leaf Blower process.

Germs R Us.

Aside from these thoughts, I find that avoidance is a wonderful coping tool, so my attacks on germs are only spasmodic. I fight the good fight by quickly retrieving a dropped chip from the floor, hoping that a three-second rule applies. When a friend sneezes into his hands and then reaches out to shake mine, I try to smile through it and then head for the Purell. When an uncovered dish lolls about overnight after a party, I quietly dispose of its contents before anybody comes to claim it. And, when in the dental chair, I just close my eyes at the infractions all about me.

Germ warfare is important but largely ineffective unless you pay very, very close attention.

But if you constantly do that, you  won’t have any fun at all

 © 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/searsroebuckdoubledipped.mp3

or read his story below:

THE SEARS ROEBUCK DOUBLE DIPPED

CHOCOLATE COVERED PEANUT CLUSTER RUSH

Very busy day at the bookstore. Arrive home afterward. Grab snack and peruse newspapers. Avoid any article or media blast about disturbing news of the day, which pretty well encompasses any and all news. Succeed at this. Liz arrives home and we discuss her just-completed enjoyable presentation at the Alabama Writers’ Conclave. We decide to skip the Conclave dinner because she is tired and I am agoraphobic. A great match.

After dining and cleaning up, she slips off to her social media and I slip upstairs to don jammies and discard shoes. After staring glumly at part of a streamed melodrama I sneak downstairs to see what’s what in the refrigerator. What’s this? Half of a six-ounce bag of chocolate covered peanuts! I ascend the stairs and begin munching on this delicacy, a pale representation of what chocolate covered peanuts once were.

I’m teleported back to early-teenage time in Tuscaloosa, riding my second-hand thin-tired bicycle over curbs and along railroad tracks on the way home from the old Victorian home housing the public library. I head for Sears, Roebuck and Company down on 15th Street, park the unchained bike (who’s going to bother stealing it?) and head indoors for the Sears candy counter.

You don’t remember how the Sears candy counter is structured because you aren’t around when I am a teen. It is a free-standing island in the middle of the store, a blocked-off area surrounded on four sides by glass display cases filled with every dentist’s dream–tons of sweet confections. The ritual is simple. I slowly encircle the rows of candy displays, gazing carefully at each and every item, imagining the taste and texture and heft of all these wonders, until I return to the spot where I began. Then, invariably, I do the exact thing I’ve done a hundred times before. I approach the counter wherein the double-dipped chocolate covered peanut clusters beckon. 

I wait patiently for the candy counter clerk to notice me, never once removing my eyes from the peanuts, afraid someone will buy them up before I get my shot. The clerk comes over, stares down at me over the scales, and asks, “May I help you?” I try to contain my excitement and say in a steady if sometimes cracking voice, “Yes, I’d like some double dipped chocolate covered peanut clusters, please.” “How much do you want?” she asks. I look at the per-ounce price and quickly count the change in my pockets. “Uh, two dollars’ worth, please.” The clerk opens her  side of the case to access the candy, fills an aluminum scoop with just under the correct amount ordered, and places the peanuts in a white paper bag. Then, she does a most remarkable thing, a thing few clerks know how to do these days. She weighs the bag, notes that it needs just a few more peanuts to rise to the two-dollar mark, scoops those up and bags them, folds the top of the sack, collects my money and hands over the goods.

The  other clerk, who is absent today, is the one no-one wants to deal with. She is the clerk who scoops up too many peanuts at once, bags them, then tilts the bag to empty the correct number down to the two-dollar mark. The first clerk makes me feel I’m getting something extra, the second clerk appears to be taking something back from me.

A life’s lesson I carry with me to this day.

I love going to Fife’s Cafeteria these day in downtown Birmingham for precisely the same reason I used to go to Sears. The servers in the line always add a little something to each serving, as if they’re slipping me an extra treat.

Back in the shop this week, I attempt to treat each customer as if there’s something extra in the book bag. I throw in a bookmark, give a modest discount, add a smile and a “hope you have a great day,” hoping that here and there, a customer will “get it” and appreciate the small attentions I try to pay.

Even if the customer doesn’t notice, I do…and I go home feeling just a wee bit better about the world.

And, now and then, I search in vain for some great double dipped chocolate covered peanut clusters served in a sparkling white paper bag

 © 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/onehundredfortycharacters.mp3

or read his story below:

140 CHARACTERS 100 DEGREES

Stepping into the morning, I hit an all-encompassing wall of 100-degree heat and humidity, SPLAT! just like Wile E. Coyote slamming into a brick wall. Wow!

I catch my breath and wade into the scorching mass like a ghost seeping through a closed door.

How will people behave on a day like this? I wonder. How will this affect their attitudes?

I soon know the answer during my amazing encounters with some 140 characters.

Won’t list all 140 encounters in this story, but will share a few with you.

CHARACTER 1

BEEP! The Roadrunner in the bubba jeep behind me taps his horn in the split second it takes the light to change and my foot to switch from brake to accelerator. My reaction is to remove foot from pedal and slow down a bit, a simple act of aggression exacerbated I suppose by the heat of the day…but eminently satisfying to me and doubly frustrating to the bubba jeep guy. He whizzes past and gets on with the journey, I resume my forward trek and smile a bit.

CHARACTER 2

I’m peering into a chest-high used-book bin at the thrift store to see what’s what, when a longsleeved arm curls around me from behind to grab a volume I’m examining. I turn to see who would do such a thing and just miss observing a different arm snatching a book from the other side of the bin. I sigh, count to eight and a half, and decide not to protest. These are just books and those are just locusts doing what they know how to do. I move on to a section of the store where nobody is hovering. My fun comes from silently–and alone–reading the titles and imagining the contents.

CHARACTER 3

The building I’m about to pass sports a long staircase upon which four orange-hard-hatted men wearing orange vests sit and chat next to four orange traffic cones. They don’t notice the heat of the morning because this is what they experience all day every hot day that occurs. They aren’t whiners like you and me. They are enjoying each other’s company.

CHARACTER 4

I’m at the car radio store standing by while a perspiring clerk lies on his side on the passenger seat of my vehicle, surgically probing for the top of a Flair marker that has leapt into the bowels of my cassette player and clogged the works. He’s a good sport and doesn’t mind the challenge. I’m proud of the player, ordered brand-new from Japan, where it is still manufactured. It gives me pleasure whenever I drive, because I can play all those wonderful old cassettes that have piled up over the years. EUREKA! he shouts as he displays the culprit he has just fished for and caught. He doesn’t want to charge me anything, but I feel it’s worth every cent of the twenty-dollar bill I slip him. He’s a good Samaritan.

CHARACTER 5

That hot evening, we are dining at our favorite Peruvian restaurant, being served by a brusque but efficient waiter who clicks into Polite as he brings the tab, making a little joke and hoping to engage us. We show our appreciation and actually do leave a nice tip.

CHARACTER 6

At the shop earlier in the heat of the day, I assist a customer whose face is remarkable–expressive dark eyes, soft lips, soft smile, pleasant and easy to deal with. As she prepares to leave, a shadow flickers over her countenance for just a second and some distant pain reveals itself. By the time I react, she is gone, like so many others whose sequestered lives remain out of reach. But I remember her face.

Back to the 100 degree day: These are just a few of the 140 characters with whom I engage or disengage. There are so many, so many. I appreciate them all, I wonder about them all. If you like, I’ll take a few at a time and describe them to you now and then. It’s important to record them somewhere, somehow, since daily life will distract them from ever getting around to writing it all down themselves.

Maybe you can help me archive all these lovely sad and happy people

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/dotherightthing.mp3

or read his story below:

DO THE RIGHT THING

Sometimes, I want to halt the traffic in my life and simply Do the Right Thing.

When I’ve had enough of the rambling, sometimes vicious, often hopeful, seldom unconfused thoughts and feelings that rain down upon me each and every day by way of directionless and fearful mass media, social media, over-the-back-fence palaverers, walk-by/drive-by criers and whisperers…I tend to shut down for a time.

Yep, I can only take so much of the ricocheting, emoting, subversive and uplifting chatternoise that has become our way of communicating with each other. Once in a while, I just want to sit quietly with a friend or two, unplug the devices that tell us how to act and purchase, close out the intrusive distractions, and simply have an unagenda’d conversation.

You know–I’d like to have what we used to call a dialogue, a brief period during which no-one talks over someone else’s talk. A moment when no-one shouts a dogma or bullies a subject flow or attempts to “win” a round.

My favorite times in life usually involve peaceful jiffies when I can learn a little more about you and who you are and who you wish to be and who you don’t want to be, a jiffy when you may actually ask me about my innermosts–and really listen up.

Sigh.

In reality, these moments seldom occur in my social life. The best times are still the times when Liz and I quietly share thoughts, feelings, experiences, laughter. I cherish these times above all others.

I suppose all I want in life is something to live up to, something to aspire toward, something that makes me want to get up in the morning…because it’s always possible that this morning will be slightly better than yesterday morning.

I take my inspiration from two works of art. If only I could make them my mantra, my template for getting through each tick tock of the day:

 “Do the right thing.”

–repeatedly spoken by “Da Mayor” (Ossie Davis) in Spike Lee’s film.

and

“Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”

–written by Henry James

Hey, wouldn’t it be a nicer world if I could just spread the gospel of DO THE RIGHT THING and BE KIND?

Do you think we’d get along better if we could espouse this gentle gospel?

Oh, well, I do have peculiar thoughts now and then. Thought I’d share them with you

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/hornswogglerswogglesanother.mp3

or read his story below:

The Hornswoggler Swoggles Another Swashbuckler

I am sitting half-hidden in the tall grass of our back yard in 1952 Tuscaloosa, swatting at flies, clawing at red bugs on bare legs, tying tight a red bandanna to dam the rivulets of sweat pouring down my neck, day-dreaming about swashbucklers and hornswogglers.

I am quiet and vigilant, awaiting the appearance of brother Ronny.

I have a plan.

“Hey,” Ronny grins as he trots over to my nest, short pants, no shirt or shoes, perfectly attired for this hot summer day. Being a younger brother, Ronny is still willing to go along with just about anything his big brother comes up with.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s play like we’re Scaramouche and we’ll sword-fight to the death!”

We’ve just seen the Stewart Granger movie and assume for the moment that we, too, can learn to conquer evil with trusty swords in hand, given the chance.

“You be the bad guy and I’ll be Scaramouche!” I love saying the name—Scaramouche!

Of course, Ronny is almost always relegated to being the bad guy or the sidekick, and for now he doesn’t complain. When we play Tarzan, he’s Boy. When we play Lone Ranger, he’s Tonto. If it’s Roy Rogers, he’s Gabby Hayes.  If it’s Captain Marvel, he’s just Billy Batson.

Today, we can’t remember the name of the evil swordsman in Scaramouche, but that doesn’t much matter. Ronny knows he’ll have the honor of being defeated by Big Brother.

We find two semi-straight sticks of equal length and begin our idea of fierce swordsmanship. Knowing that our all-seeing all-knowing mother will know whether we’ve behaved, we are careful to knock sticks together without knocking heads or busting knuckles. We leap over the splintery hand-made saw horse, roll over a rusty oil drum, pole dance around the swing supports, wallow atop ant beds, all the while pretending to sword fight to the death.

After a while, the heat gets to us and we run to the kitchen for cold Pepsi and crumbly cookies.

Down all the years, I can’t help recalling all the wonderful fictitious sword fights I’ve witnessed on screen, in imagination most vivid. But the one sword fight to which all subsequent sword fights are compared is locked into memory.

Even  back then, we kids of summer know that there is something special about the Scaramouche fight. It is long and fierce. Very long. Very fierce. And daring, too. Between them, the dueling Mel Ferrer and Stewart Granger destroy an entire stage set, slash props, mangle a piano, leap over balconies, swing from velvet ropes…and all this with no musical background. Decades later, I learn to appreciate how dramatically loud silence can be. This sword fight is so ferocious that accentuating music is not needed in the least.

Nowadays, I get to check out my childhood impressions by re-viewing that marvelous battle. And sure enough, it still holds me in thrall.

I love many movie sword fights, including the one between Danny Kaye and Basil Rathbone in The Court Jester and, of course, the great conflict between Inigo Montoya and Westley in The Princess Bride. In all of these battles, the viewer is simply lost in the passion of the moment. We really believe these people are fighting for their lives, or at least their honor!

But the best sword play in all memory is the one between Ronny and me. For at this one special moment, we really are Scaramouche and the Marquis de Maynes. We really are caught up in the most glorious of all battles—the one where imagination and hope win out over red bugs and itchy grass on a hot summer day in the long-ago, far-away land of pre-Buttercup Tuscaloosa

© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook