Category Archives: Uncategorized

BARNEY FIFE BECOMES WYATT EARP RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES

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LISTEN TO JIM: https://youtu.be/6W2RlgQ9tDU

OR READ ON…

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Life, actually…

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BARNEY FIFE BECOMES WYATT EARP RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES

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The behatted security guard stands stolid at his post, at full attention, totally focused on mission. He is there at the corner each morning for all passersby to ponder.

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In his hand is a Starbucks product, something to hold on to besides his weapon, which is neatly side-strapped and loaded for action. His dark eyeglasses perfectly match the starched and pressed khaki uniform and perfectly perched Smoky Bear hat.

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He is one notch braver than Sheriff Andy, one degree below freewheeling Dirty Harry, firmly entrenched in his stoic protector image, embedded in his role as Defender of the Bank.

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The Writer who passes by each day is like most folks in his reaction to the officer.

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Seeing him each day, perception changes in an orderly fashion.

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Here’s the order.

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1.  At first, he looks silly and out of place. In a neighborhood known for its eclectic populace—tattoo parlor right across the street, walls and alleys of graffiti everywhere, a beautiful and poetic water fountain nearby hosting panhandlers and the homeless as well as smiling tourists and over-the-mountaineers who are here to eat high and then maybe get high later, bored teenagers looking for what they wish they knew they were looking for, intellectual occupiers, new-age dreamers, clueless pedestrians, fearful drive-bys on their way someplace else, worldly shop-owners, vacuous police officers, bright and alert CAP officers, city workers…they are all intermingling and drifting past this neatly pressed officer of the law.

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2.  As you see him each day, each week, each month, he begins to look different. His belt-overhanging gut begins to seem appropriate to his loyalty to the corner, his hat is suddenly perceived as just the right hat with the just the right tilt, just the right fit, just the right symbol of dormant authority. His coffee cup is a compromise between doughnuts and diner hangout, his uniform looks like it belongs there, his demeanor again rises just above Andy, but now just below a modern-day Wyatt Earp.

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3.  After a while, this corner-protector becomes a symbol of stability and gentility, a throwback to the weaving chaos of Five Points South. The protector may be a mere bank employee whose job is to symbolize safety and dependability, but his presence is now morphed and iconic, what we expect  to see every day, a touchstone of reality in a Jello based world.

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We could use a few more street-based protectors around the rampant city—you know, officers who actually walk  the beat, merchants who dare to step outside their shops, blinking at the sun and showing us they are part of the ‘hood, elected city officials who actually dare to spend their wages inside the city instead of escaping to the shopping mall ‘burbs each night.

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I’m present here in the city, so is the protector, so are the people both enfranchised and disenfranchised. We want you to brave the city streets, too—and get to know these passing spirits as real and necessary beings.

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Y’all give it a try, you hear

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed 

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT BEING ALIVE

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or read on…
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Life, actually…
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THINGS I LIKE ABOUT BEING ALIVE
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1. I like meeting new characters and curmudgeons and wits and dullards every day…fascinating, inspiring, frightening, boring–you never know who’ll turn up next.
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2. I like popcorn and marshmallows and olives and Ruffles. Can’t get enough.
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3. I like taking off my shoes at day’s end. It’s like skinnydipping.
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4. I like watching Liz edit and do art and laugh and talk animatedly with friends and family. She turns everything into high art.
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5. I like watching myself grow older. It’s unbelievably funny and entertaining.
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6. I like watching bureaucrats and clerks mindlessly following rules. They are clueless as to how amusing they are.
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7. I like watching extremists rant, be they right-wing, left-wing, atheist, agnostic, religionist, radical, liberal. They have no idea that they are all trapped in the same dead-end compound, blindly following their self-righteous cul de sac logic.
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8. I like being pleasantly distracted from reality, through books, film, theatre, excited conversation, intimacy. This always beats facing the universal truths.
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9. I like it that we are all equal in the way we exist—we start out living and wind up not living. Nothing at all can be done about it, so we’re in the same leaky boat. No amount of politics and wishing and beliefs can trump this dead-on fact.
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10. I like it that you humored my rant by reading this to the very end. You are now my unintentional friend
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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

IF ONLY FOREVER LASTED A MOMENT, IF ONLY A MOMENT LASTED FOREVER

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Listen: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/ifonlyamomentlasted.mp3

or read on….

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Life, actually…

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IF ONLY FOREVER LASTED A MOMENT,

IF ONLY A MOMENT LASTED FOREVER

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Things I have learned that don’t make common sense but seem true all the same:

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1. There’s no such thing as a moment that lasts for just a moment.

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It’s been seventy years since I last rolled myself around the back yard inside an empty oil drum, but that moment plays itself back to me whenever I recall the good times of being a child who had nothing to worry about but mosquito bites, Orange Crush colas and the next playmate’s visit. That moment has lasted nearly a lifetime.

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2.  Time never proceeds at an even pace.

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Waiting in a soundproofed dentist’s office while frowning people disappear through a doorway and later come hobbling out, transmogrified, is a time-altering experience. Ten minutes seems like ten  hours. But one sweet first and only kiss from a girlfriend you’ll never see again occurs in an instant, and you wish it had lasted an hour. In green memory, it’s still going on.

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3.  If you lose your car keys, it will only happen when you’re late for something really important.

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The more frantically you search, the longer the keys stay lost. It’s only later, when you don’t need them at all, that you find them sitting in plain view, just five inches from where you’re used to seeing them.

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4.  When you’re old, you still refer to old people as old people, as if you’re the exception.

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Even in her 80′s, my mother hated to hang out with “those old people,” because she never took a nap in her life and didn’t understand why anybody would…there was so much to do that could only be done while conscious. I’m always shocked when I find that that old person over there is actually ten years younger than me!

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5.  I’ll always be twenty years old.

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No matter what age I attain, I never feel that I’m over twenty. When I glimpse myself in the mirror, I mutter, “What alien being has thrown my body away and replaced it with this Halloween costume?” Holy Moly! Nature is some jokester.

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 6.  I’ll never get it all said.

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I’ve been writing at least one personal column or story a week for 45 years now, not to mention all the stories and columns I wrote during earlier decades when I had to write what my bosses required. When I began writing solely what I wanted to write, I assumed I would write myself out, that all my thoughts and stories would be told, that there would be nothing more to say. But each time I sit at the keyboard, apply pencil to pad, ink some thought on a wayward napkin, I am amazed that, once again, something gets said. What’s this all about?

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7. Even if I don’t think it’s important, you just might…and vice versa.  

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Writing down thoughts and feelings and inspirations—if done honestly and spontaneously—just might mean something to somebody who reads them…so it’s important that the writers of words refrain from making judgements about what is written. You and I are not competent to determine what is important and what is unimportant, so we should get out of the way of what we write and allow other readers and other generations to conduct the critiques. We are merely taking dictation from our innards. Let it happen!

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That’s all I have to say at this moment, but beware of the next moment, and the next

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

IT IS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, AND ME WITHOUT MY UMBRELLA AND FLASHLIGHT AND ROADMAP

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Listen to Jim here:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/itisadarkandstormynight.mp3

or read on…

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Life, actually…

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A loving memory of my Mom and my family…

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IT IS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, AND ME WITHOUT MY UMBRELLA AND FLASHLIGHT AND ROADMAP

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Here’s the way it works whenever someone is driving my mother anywhere.

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Say we are cruising along, looking for 10th Avenue, Mother in the passenger seat, giving instructions to Dad.

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Just after we whiz past 10th Avenue without seeing it, Mother yells, “Turn there!”

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“Wait, was that the street?” my Father says, looking at the road dwindling in the rearview mirror.

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“Yes, I told you it was the road–why didn’t you turn?” Mother frets.

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“Because you didn’t tell us to turn till we passed it,” all us back-seat passenger kids exclaim in unison.

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Mother doesn’t get it. Why can’t the car obey orders and just materialize on 10th Avenue? After all, it’s just an instrument piloted by a human.

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My father, ever stoic and patient, ignores all this and looks for a convenient u-turn opportunity. We kids groan, because we know our mother’s habits oh so well.

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For one thing, mother has never driven a car, so she has no feel for how to navigate. It just never makes sense to her that the car can’t read her mind, perhaps like the family mule did when she was a kid in the 19-teens of the 20th Century. The mule knew the way, but our father does not.

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Another complicating factor in this scenario is the fact that mother always has trouble with the concept of Right and Left. If you tell her to look to her right, she has to stop and ponder—do you mean to her left facing you, or to her left from your point of view? You know how that works. If somebody has a particle of food on the right cheek, you get their attention and point knowingly to your right cheek. But, since the person is facing you, it is not clear whether you are acting as a mirror image—in which case it is apparent that you mean the left cheek—or whether you mean the right cheek, in which case a temporary dyslexia kicks in and the food-particle partner is momentarily confused, thus quickly moves to wipe both cheeks.

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So, once Dad u-turns and heads back to 10th Avenue, he asks mother, “Which way do we turn?” Instead of saying right or left, mother points to the left from her lap—only thing is, Dad can’t see this, since he’s trying to stay on the road and avoid death. Mother doesn’t understand why he can’t look over at her and search for her hand motion.

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Frustrated, Dad says, “Do we turn right or left?” Mother is confused and this time just points dramatically so that she can be seen.

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We eventually get where we’re going, but Mom pouts because she has the vague feeling we’re all teasing her.

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The sad ending to this story is that some of us kids inherit her inability to give or take travel instructions. Four of us to this day can’t find our way out of a dark and stormy night, and one kid—Ronny—beats the odds and learns how to find his way without having to depend upon us bumper-car meanderers.

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After decades of trying to learn directions, I come to accept my limitations and turn them into field trips. Now I don’t mind not knowing how to get there, I just drive around till something looks familiar, enjoying the surprises along the way and in the process having experiences both scary and funny.

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Want to go for a ride?

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It will be an adventure, I guarantee

© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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https://youtu.be/WNfVZ-IVuJE

 

BEING PRIVY TO THE PRIVILEGED PRIVACY OF THE PRIVY

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Life, actually…

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BEING PRIVY TO THE PRIVILEGED PRIVACY OF THE PRIVY

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I was brought up in a two-bedroom asbestos-shingled bungalow housing two parents and four brothers and sisters, and me.

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Sounds crowded, but we didn’t know it.

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My younger younger brother, Tim, slept in the den (where books and television and dining room and family room mingled), my older younger brother, Ronny, slept on the bottom bunk and I on the top bunk of our own bedroom, older sister Barbara slept in a room that was once our paneled-in front porch, and younger sister Rosi occupied Barbara’s room, then our bedroom, once we elder kids up and moved away.

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Our parents had their own bedroom.

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So, we made do. And it all seemed perfectly natural.

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But the one sacred room in the house was our sole bathroom.

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It was the primp room, the reading room, the telephone booth (our single phone cord reached from the hallway into the bathroom)…the only place any member of the family could disappear into for a little privacy.

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The primary challenge was timing.

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In order to escape the merry chaos of seven people and assorted visiting pets and friends and neighbors and relatives was to find the bathroom vacant and maximize your private time. That’s why the bathroom always housed books and magazines and notepads. It was the only place you didn’t risk having somebody look over your shoulder.

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All spaces were small, in that little home on Eastwood Avenue in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. You learned to get a lot done in a tiny area…and to this day, I tend to work within a few square feet, no matter how much space is at my disposal. I surround myself with books and diaries and papers and magazines and keepsakes wherever I am.

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I even write and edit and record my voice in small spaces—it just doesn’t feel right, sitting in the middle of a large, vacant room with plenty of stretch space. It’s not quite as extreme as hunching over your food, prisoner-like, guarding your plate on three sides, but it is the way I’ve survived all these years.

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Five out of the seven of us Reeds are what you call introverts. For instance, I take my privacy with me wherever I go. Even in a crowded room, you’ll often find me in a corner looking at books or examining artifacts or talking with just one person at a time.  Two of us introvert Reeds are performers, so sometimes you’ll see us entertaining large groups of people and mistake us for extroverts. Not so. We’re merely performers, actors. I am comfortable in front of a crowd when they’re all paying attention, when they have brought me in to entertain. It’s exhilarating. But, in the true tradition of introversion, it’s also exhausting.

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After a performance, I re-charge by being alone and quiet.

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All these years, I’ve been grateful for learning at the age of 13 that I was an actor, performer, public speaker at heart. This skill enables an otherwise shy person to excite crowds and classrooms—easy to do, so long as I know that I can ride away afterward, saying, as the Lone Ranger used to comment to his companion, “Our job is done here. Let’s go!”

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It also allows me to run a very public bookstore and love it. I can perform for each customer, one on one or in groups, playing the part of  kindly old book dealer. Then, I can go home to my quietness and re-charge for the next day.
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Because of who I am, because of how I was raised, I have the best of both worlds. I’m able to be alone anywhere anytime, whether or not I am with people…and I’m able to switch on, enjoy, joke with and entertain whenever I feel like it.

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I get my jollies, then ride off into the sunset. Or hide out in the privy

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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The Last Christmas Tree in Pinellas County

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Hear Liz Reed’s Christmas memory: https://youtu.be/dTgwJ163jdM

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Life, actually…

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THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE IN PINELLAS COUNTY

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It was the year we remodeled the house and because the contractors worked until the last possible minute, we waited until Christmas Eve to buy a tree. Not usually a problem. But the year before, merchants had over-bought, and this year, they over-compensated.

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Our father fared forth in high hopes of finding the perfect tree. First he went to the lots in our hometown, then in the next town, then on down the road a piece, then nearly to the county line. He finally found a tree, at this point settling for any tree remotely shaped like Christmas. As he was paying for the last Christmas tree in Pinellas County, a distraught man came running into the nursery. With tears in his eyes, he explained he was visiting from Michigan, his little girl was three years old and this would be the first Christmas she’d remember and there wasn’t a tree anywhere to be found.

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“Here,” Daddy said as he handed over the last Christmas tree in Pinellas County. “Merry Christmas.” The grateful visitor bustled the tree into his car, shouting his gratitude and wishing Daddy, his family, the nursery worker and anyone within earshot a very happy holiday indeed.

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Now what to do? Daddy turned back to the nurseryman and scratched his head. All the cut trees were gone, all the burlap-balled living trees were gone. “Well,” said the nurseryman, “How about a Podocarpus?” And so Daddy bought a small, green sort-of-conical-shaped tree in a ten gallon can. The can was bigger than the tree. We decorated it with one strand of lights and selected the smallest ornaments. We wrapped the can in red foil paper and set our tree in the middle of the dining room table. After Christmas, we planted the tree at 513 Scotland Street where it still grows, some 45 years later.

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When I think back on all the Christmas trees in all the years, that’s the tree I remember best.

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© 2023 A.D. by Liz Reed

liz@lizreed.com

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https://youtu.be/dTgwJ163jdM

 

ANGEL LITE

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Hear this on youtube:

or read transcript below:
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Life, actually…

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I share this true-and-actual story every decade or so, just in case you weren’t there when it happened…

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ANGEL LITE

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HER STORY:
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I’m walking along the sidewalk near the St. Vincent’s Hospital
parking deck and I just plain topple over something. I don’t know
exactly what’s happening, but all of a sudden I’m flat on my back
and my head is cut and hurting and my eyes are closed because
I’m dizzy. I keep squinting, and I’m afraid to look around because
I don’t know whether I’m dead or dreaming, or what.
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I hear this deep voice saying, “Just lie still, you’re going to be
all right.” I want to see who is talking, so I open up and everything
looks dark red and I think maybe I’m blind.
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“I can’t see,” I say to the voice. I think maybe I really am dead.
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The deep voice says, “You will be fine. Just be calm. Just be calm.”
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I try to take a deep breath and hold on. I feel a warm hand touching
my forehead and soothing me.
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It isn’t long before I wake up in the emergency room and learn that
I really will be all right. The nurses have cleaned the blood out of my
eyes and I’m just fine.
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I’ll always wonder how my deep voice angel knew how to comfort
me at just the right moment. I wonder if I’ll ever need him again.
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HIS STORY:
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I’m walking along, near the St.Vincent’s Hospital emergency room
near Christmastime, absentmindedly trailing behind a large woman
who is in a hurry. Suddenly, she trips over a partially off-center manhole
cover and falls flat to the ground, her head gushing blood. Her eyes are
closed, and I lean over to see whether she’s conscious.
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She moves and squints, but the blood from her cut fills her
eyes so that she probably can’t see. I don’t want to cause further
damage, so I figure the best thing to do is stick by her till somebody
comes from the emergency room.
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I sit down beside her so that she will know that she’s not alone out
here. I lean close to her ear and quietly speak so that she won’t be
startled. “Just lie still, you’re going to be all right.”
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She turns toward me and says, “I can’t see.”
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All I can think to do is reassure her whether or not I know she’s
going to be fine. “You will be fine. Just be calm. Just be calm.”
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She responds and seems calmer. I remember the comforting healing
power of my father’s large hand when he touched my forehead so
many years ago, hovering over my sickbed and worrying. I reach
over and my hand becomes my father’s hand and warmly touches
her forehead.
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She lies quietly, almost smiling.
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Within minutes two casually-moving ER employees show up with
a wheelchair and escort the woman away. Even though her eyes
are still closed, I feel she’s going to be taken care of.
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I walk toward my car and go about my life.
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And I often wonder what this unknown woman thinks about when
she remembers her Christmas blindness near a hospital parking
deck. Does she wonder who I was? Does she know that I gave
the only Christmas gift I knew how to give
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(c) Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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THE HEAVENS DECLARE THEMSELVES

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Life, actually…
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THE HEAVENS DECLARE THEMSELVES
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When young, I used to lie nights on the roof of my parents’ home and listen to the stars.
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You can hear stars, you know. It just takes some patience.
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All you need in order to listen to the stars late at night on a roof is a ladder, a quilt or blanket, a notepad, a pencil, maybe some binoculars or a small telescope, perhaps a penlight, possibly some long sleeves and pants to deter the biting and stinging critters.
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If you can’t find all these objects, you will discover that you don’t need them at all.
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All you have to do is find a way to the roof and hope against hope that ambient human-made lights won’t occlude your view.
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Just lie flat on your back face-up, cradle your head in your hands, and spread yourself open to the immediately viewable universe.
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Don’t expect to be overwhelmed at first. It takes a couple of dozen minutes for your eyes to adjust to the night.
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Then, hold on to the sky and traverse the heavens with ears and eyes and all operating senses.
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There will be color. You will see every fine shade of color you can imagine, colors you never knew were there all along.
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If you lie still long enough, you’ll see meteors—tiny instant streaks of literal stardust that etch the view. Now and then a lone and steady aircraft will arc from horizon to horizon. On really lucky nights, you may glimpse an earthling-crafted satellite scurrying above to the nearest available rabbit hole.
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During special times, you can spot a comet floating solid against the turning sky.
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Sometimes the Moon grins at you, its mystic reflection of the Sun often so bright you can’t see the surrounding sister suns. Once the Moon has gone away, on another night, the points of light will reappear, even though they never went away at all.
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If you’re fortunate, an hour or two of this ancient practice of staring up will set everything in life in proportion, make daily annoyances seem petty and time-consuming, make you humble and grateful all at once—humbled by the incredible expansiveness of it all, grateful that you bothered to stare somewhere besides at the consistently pervasive abuse of the spirit caused by activities of daily living on the small planet.
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Once your eyes begin accepting the handiwork of the heavens, you’ll begin to hear the stars. They will speak to you, tell you stories, impart their philosophies and ideas, cause you to grin ear to ear, make you shed a tear in wonder…and maybe, if you are among the fortunate few who are not afraid of words, you will want to start taking dictation, becoming the scribe of the night, passing forward your wonder and wizened knowledge.
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Maybe you will write down something so ancient and perfect that some reader somewhere will be inspired to sneak outside on a clear evening and play hooky to life…
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On a roof under the dome
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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.
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SOMEWHERE IN TIME A LITTLE BOOKSHOP BECKONS

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Life, actually…

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SOMEWHERE IN TIME A LITTLE BOOKSHOP BECKONS

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My little shop of fond memories awakens all the senses

of those browsers who are open to the experience.

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Listen: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/somewhereintime.mp3

or Read On…

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The FRAGRANCE of the books, the documents, the letters and diaries and postcards and posters and scratch-and-sniff paper blends with the SMELL of seasoned wood, old Bakelite, hot Christmas lights, ancient tobacco-soaked bindings…

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The remembered TASTE of metallic coins and antique Pez and fresh MoonPies and acrid fingertips licked in order to turn to the next chapter mixes it up with cane sugar memories…

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The crackling SOUND of old envelopes being opened and volumes sliding along dusty shelves and floors creaking beneath the soles of quiet booklovers and the clicketyclack of keyboard keys researching the genealogies of antiquarian tomes and the music from the old Victrola scratching its way into your vinyl memoirs is everchanging in this eclectic and confusing time capsule…

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The SIGHT of artifacts overlapping 500 years of generations and leather leaning against vellum leaning against pulp paper leaning against anguished illustrations leaning against conflicting, ever-recycled fads and fashions and styles astounds and entertains the imaginations…

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The TOUCH remembers everything…what your tongue and fingers remember from childhood–back when you tasted and touched all within reach, storing the information for later…

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A young couple drifts through the store, smiling at that, thumbing through this, ingesting first one thing, then another. The woman sneaks away from her partner and leans over the counter with a conspiratorial smile, asking, “What music is that?” playing through the speakers. I smile back, because I know what has happened, “The score from the film SOMEWHERE IN TIME.” She nods knowingly and almost floats over to her companion and hugs him tight.

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This music has that effect on people. John Barry’s soundtrack is so romantically evocative and sad and nostalgic that those in the know  always recognize it.

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As a matter of fact, every item in the store meets this SOMEWHERE IN TIME criterion.

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If you’re alive and alert, each object will gently jolt you, guiding you to the Past or the Future or a parallel Present.

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Your bliss awaits you

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©  Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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THE ONLY FATHER OF ALL MY DAYS

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Hear Jim’s 5-minute memoir:

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Life, actually…
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THE ONLY FATHER OF ALL MY DAYS
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Most of us don’t get a chance to select our given names, mainly because, as infants, we can’t articulate the words needed to make a suggestion for a good name.
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So, we live with what’s given us.
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My name is James Thomas Reed, III, which means that my father and paternal grandfather had the same name. It just kind of trickled down to me. My grandfather was called Jim, my father was called Tommy, and I am Jim.
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My grandfather built a house in the tiny coal mining town West Blocton, Alabama, around the turn of the century. On Easter Sunday in the year 1909, my father, Tommy, was born in that house. Since there were seven or so brothers and sisters ahead of Tommy, grandfather Jim placed the infant in an Easter basket and announced to his brood that the Easter Bunny had delivered this pink, noisy package.

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Back then, kids believed that sort of thing.

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Now, to know my father, you’d have to know the people he admired, since men in his generation weren’t much for sitting around telling you about themselves. No, you just had to look about and pay attention to the men whose lives they emulated.

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In my father’s case, I can remember who some of his heroes, both literary and real, were:

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Sergeant Alvin York, who never accepted a dime in trade for the heroism he’d shown for his country in World War I.

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Preacher Josiah Dozier Grey and Uncle Famous Prill, the heroes of Joe David Brown’s Birmingham novel/movie, Stars in My Crown, men who never wavered from belief in family and neighbors and principles. They were forerunners of Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson and other strong Southern heroes of fiction and non-fiction.

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Harry Truman, who dispensed with nonsense and tried to do the right thing, even when it was not popular. He was in a long line of no-nonsense leaders, such as John L. Lewis and Eric Hoffer, people who thought for themselves and never followed a posse or a trend.

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Jesus Christ, who, like my father, was a carpenter, and a principled man.

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And so on.

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Now, it’s important to understand this one thing about my father—to look at him, to be around him, you’d never know he was a hero. He was a working-class, blue-collar, unassuming person you’d probably not notice on the street, unless you noted that he limped from an old coal mining injury received when he tried to save another man’s life. It was his very invisibility that made him a true hero, because he did the kind of thing that nobody gets credit for: he loved unconditionally and without reward. That’s right. He was a practitioner of unconditional love for family, the kind of love that seeks no return, no attention.

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You would have embarrassed Tommy Reed if you had tried to thank him for his acts of kindness, because you were not supposed to notice. He gave money in secret to relatives in need. He grimaced and bore silently the abuse of those who forgot to appreciate or thank him. And he never announced his good deeds. You just had to catch him now and then in an act of kindness.

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His heroes were all men who didn’t need adulation.

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What my father did need was a hard day’s work at an honest job, a few moments of privacy after a good meal, time to read a book or watch television with a child or grandchild on his lap, and an occasional hug from his 50-year wife, my mother.

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You could do worse than have a father like Preacher Grey and Joel McCrea, Uncle Famous and Juano Hernandez, Gregory Peck and Atticus Finch, Brock Peters and Tom Robinson, Eric Hoffer, John L. Lewis, Harry Truman, Gary Cooper and Sergeant York, and Jesus.

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Do they make ‘em like that any more? You bet they do, but you won’t know about it for a while, because they don’t have press agents. What they do have is the appreciation that takes years to grow and make itself known, the appreciation we come to have after we, too, have been called upon to commit an occasional act of unrewarded kindness.

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Take another look at your father. Who are his silent heroes? Who are yours

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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