Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/book_people.mp3 or read on…

BOOK PEOPLE, PEOPLE BOOKS

 Closing Time falls on the City and creeps into the haunted bookshop.

As the Security Guard at Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories, I roam the aisles

and crannies now and then, looking high and low for books in need of attention.

Just under a high ledge, near the large poster of  Martin Luther King Jr., a copy  of 

Up From Slavery slants  too much—if you leave it  in that position for long, you’ll

get a warped  sense of history—so I straighten it.

Across from Dr. King, on a high shelf, Sir Walter Scott lolls about, his volumes

fairly bursting at the seams with conflict, violence, passion and mystery. He stays
high up  because his leather bindings are fragile.

A few feet away from Dr. King and Sir Walter grins Fannie Flagg, just waiting

to be howled at, her stories of too-real people too funny to believe—unless you

live Down Here. Wonder if she’s kin to the Sweet Potato Queen? The Queen’s

poster and books are on the far side of the store, as are the Far Side books.

Three books in the Alabama section have been rudely displaced, their spines

turned toward the backs of the shelves, making it annoying to have to turn them

outward to see their titles. I just sigh and become the Lone Rearranger.

I move Judith Krantz out of the Philosophy section, where someone has

abandoned her, and I make sure Philosophy is visible before the customer

can locate the nearby Equestrian section. (I always put Descartes before the horse.)

The old Life Magazines with cover photos sporting the faces of Marilyn Monroe

and Charles Manson and Winston Churchill and Tony Curtis are re-stacked neatly

so that I at least can find them again.

The Mystery-Thriller shelves are author-alphabetized these days, broken only by

a section devoted to Bondage (books and other material related to James Bond).

Louisa Mae Alcott and Anais Nin are kept separate, as are the Hardy Boys and

Dracula, Ronald Reagan and Karl Marx, Daffy Duck and Jerry Lewis. What

could go wrong if they all partied when I’m not around?

Anyhow, I, the Security Guard, do a little dusting, shelve a few more orphans,

pack something up to take home and read, dampen the 40 lights, secure the

door, and head for my own little literary nest, giving the enormous variety of

personalities and doctrines and misspent lives and productive thoughts and

humorous outlooks a chance to breathe on their own, for at least a series

of moments in time

© Jim Reed 2011 A.D.

www.jimreedbooks.com

MR. ZESTY PANTS RIDES AGAIN

Q&A for Reed Books’ owner, Jim Reed

Q: Reed Books will soon begin its 41st year of operation. Looking back, why did you create this business?

A: I had no choice. My previous career had me stalled out and burned out. It was time to do something good for a change.

Q: I sense that you do not consider Reed Books to be a business.

A: You sensed correctly. This job is literally a calling for me, as corny as that might sound. I feel I’m providing a public service to the community and to the world at large.

Q: How so?

A: I am rescuing orphans and foster children  (books and artifacts) from certain perdition, and giving them new life. I adopt them, clean them up, put them in a safe place and house them comfortably until new adoptive parents come along to find and purchase them. Somebody’s got to do it, so it may as well be me. I could have become a priest or an activist or a true believer, but this, it turns out, is what I know how to do best.

Q: You must have a lot of energy to spare. I notice that you also write books and columns and stories about your life in Alabama.

A: I don’t know whether it’s called energy, or just a continuing and compelling need to tell my story, my stories—just in case somebody’s paying attention. All my writings are about my life and the lives of those around me, and my mixed feelings about these lives.

Q: Where do these stories show up?

A: I do a “blast” and a facebook entry and a tweet each week, for anybody who wishes to receive it. I write a  blog release a podcast for fans. I publish a book now and then when it seems the best way to communicate to a particular audience; and I speak to any group of people who will have me, about my excitements—my love of writing and collecting and communicating. That does sound like a lot of activity, doesn’t it?

Q: It’s hard to keep up with…so let’s focus on your love of Downtown Birmingham and your simultaneous love of Reed Books and the Museum of Fond Memories. Where does that come from?

A: I’m not sure I can answer that question in a traditional way. I write poetic prose because I see things poetically. So, for what it’s worth, here’s the gist of it: I am the center of my Universe. Each of us is the center of our own personal Universe. Therefore, Downtown Birmingham is the center of the Universe, because that’s where I spend most of my time.

Now, stay with me: In order to survive in my personal Universe, I have to take care of it, nurture it and respect it. I do this because my Universe is Me and I am It. I’m passionate about this Universe and everything that it contains—customers, friends, fellow Downtown denizens, panhandlers, city workers, the streets and avenues, the traffic, the chaos, the laughable politics of it all. This is my world and it is most entertaining!

Q: So you disagree with those who have given up on Birmingham, those who tell us to turn out the lights and leave it to its own fate?

A: Of course I disagree with this. That would be like giving up on yourself, your Universe. I’m disdainful of those who criticize without celebrating the beauty of the city and its people, when we could all be standing together and protecting this gorgeous creation, this Magic City of real people.

Q: For someone who has never visited Reed Books, exactly what is it that you sell?

A: We sell memories, and we sell the objects that evoke those memories.

Q: Can you give some examples?

A: When you see our display of elementary school readers, the moment you spot the ones you had as a child, you will be transported back into time. For instance, we carry original Dick and Jane (and Sally) readers, Blue Back Spellers, McGuffey Readers, Elson Readers, Landmark series books, Childhood of Famous Americans books, and so on.

Q: What about non-school books that grown-up children still love?

A: Sure! We have original books starring Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Trixie Belden and Five Little Peppers and Bobbsey Twins and Boxcar Children and Uncle Wiggily and the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland and Tom Swift and the Happy Hollister, and on and on and on.

Q: I thought those books had disappeared forever.

A: That’s part of the fun of being Reed Books. Everything you thought your Mother had thrown away, we carry! If you believe it’s out of date, it’s here—because we believe that nothing is ever out of date. It’s at the shop, waiting for you to re-discover it.

Q: You can’t possibly carry everything that’s no longer popular!

A: Try us! We have new books and old books—some dated as recently as 2020, some

dated as far back as 1579. And the beautiful thing is, we’ve been in business for so long that we can obtain any old book that’s not on our shelves at the moment. We know where all the other old-time bookdealers are, and they provide us with loads of goodies. We live in the past and love it!

Q: OK, so you really do have every book known to humankind, or you can obtain it by request. But what about all the non-book items in the store? Why do you carry them?

A: Everything in the store serves as a memory-stimulator, a fantasy-evoker.

When you find an old dial telephone, you are immediately reminded of old times

and old reading material that surrounded that phone. When you see a Roy Rogers

comic book or a photograph of Birmingham’s old train terminal building, you get the

urge to go back in time and regain your old teddy bear or your copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses or The Little Engine That Could or Goodnight Moon. All these objects serve as time machines, and Reed Books is a safe haven you can use to travel back and forth in time.

Q: I understand remembering the past, but how do you wax nostalgic about the future?

A: We have great science fiction and fantasy fiction and adventure fiction, much of which takes place in the future—authors such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein and Shirley Jackson will escort you to alternate futures, utopias and dystopias…the kind you read about when you were young.

Q: I think I get it. You’re saying you’ve invented a shop that can take you anywhere your imagination, your memory, allows you to go?

A: I’ve been tempted to place an arched sign over the doorway that reads

“Abandon hopelessness all ye who enter here.” Or maybe, “Sanctuary!”

Q: Do you consider yourself to be a retiree?

A: Land O’ Goshen! I’m not retired, nor will I ever retire willingly. I’ll keep going till they drag me off to the assisted living center or the morgue. I’m from a workaholic family–my father kept on working, career after career, and I can’t see myself sitting at home and watching daytime television. I haven’t found time to retire. Besides, I have to make a living!

Q: What else is in Reed Books’ future?

A: I’ve always wanted to do a Dead Writers signing, since most of the writers we sell lived long ago. I haven’t gotten any replies to my e-mails, though.

Q: What’s the most exciting item in the store?

A: The latest artifact I acquired is the most exciting one. Each acquisition gives me a new rush and teaches me something I didn’t know.

Q: Why would I want to purchase an old book or a used one, when I can obtain a freshly-printed one at a chain store?

A: I actually don’t know why you would want to do that. An early printing of a book has gravitas, its pages have absorbed something of its previous owners, it now possesses

character and lovely battle scars. When you hold a used book, you are communicating with the past regrets and future fears of its owners, their joys and sorrows, their lives, for goodness sake. And you’re not really a green advocate, an environmentalist, until you’ve learned to pass your book on to its next readers.

Trashing or throwing a book away instead of bequeathing it to a new reader is a sin. Period

(c) 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

Twelve days till Christmas. On the 12th day, I remember one of my favorite gifts–a Mandrake the Magician magic set! Here’s my memory of that precious event: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/audio/christmas/1/track12.asx

The winter streets of Birmingham tantalize me. 

Why? Because each person I meet on these streets 

lives a unique life, each person I meet carries 

baggage that I can’t see through, since I’m busy 

carrying my own. 

There are hundreds of individual stories presented 

to me each week at the Museum of Fond Memories and 

Reed Books. Each is special in its own way, sometimes 

joyful, sometimes sad, always mysterious.

Pick a day--for instance, Wednesday:

I arrive at the bookstore two hours before opening time, 

to catch up on newly acquisitioned books, do a little 

straightening up, get the heating system going, becalm 

and brace myself for the day, jumpstart the monthly 

bill-paying. A shaggy street person is waiting at the 

door, staring at the posted shop hours but not seeing 

them. “We open at 10:30,” I say, before realizing he’s 

a regular customer. He says, “I don’t have my watch, so 

I don’t know what time it is…can I pick up that book you 

got for me?” Of course. I usher him into the darkened cave 

and shuffle through the Hold Shelves to find his special 

order, trying to ignore the strong fragrance of newly-smoked 

marijuana emanating from his clothing. I assist him, accept 

his payment, and am now alone in the store. I am happy for 

his patronage but happy, too, that he is gone.

Now, I can get some things done. 

As the marijuana smell dissipates, I become aware of cigarette 

smoke billowing into the shop around the edges of the door. I 

stopped smoking forty years ago, but each day I’m inhaling the 

secondary smoke of  the 3rd Avenue North Smoking Society—the 

employees of adjacent offices and stores who stand in the alcove 

of  Reed Books, lustily inhaling as much as they can on their 

frequent breaks. I seem to be their smoking court, and no amount 

of pleasant hints can get through to them the fact that their smoke 

chokes me and aggravates my allergies. I don’t want to become the 

old guy who tells everybody to get off his lawn, so I never blatantly 

ask them to go elsewhere. I try to justify my wimpishness by reminding 

myself that these are pleasant folks who at least make the entrance 

to the store look busy, and who might come in handy as observers and 

diffident security guards, should anything go wrong on the street.

I guess what quietly bugs me is the fact that, no matter how many times 

I invite them to enter the store and look around at the merchandise and 

the special monthly exhibits, not one of them does. This leads me to 

believe that smokers are not readers or collectors. They are just…smokers.

Later in the morning, when the doors are unlocked, the $2 sales racks are 

on the street, and I am ready for the day, customers and browsers enter, 

talk, enjoy, search, walk out smiling—and leave me smiling, too.

Late in the day, a very large, loud-baritoned man enters with a short, 

obese boy in tow. The baritone laughs broadly, saying, “I want a big doll 

with big t---s…that’s what I want for Christmas!” He laughs at his own 

remark and becomes bigger than the store as he comments on each and every 

item he sees. He reeks of whiskey and is enjoying his high, while the boy 

wanders silently about, trying to avoid him. At one point, the baritone 

starts dancing to the Taj Mahal music that’s playing, chuckling loudly and 

trying to engage the boy in a frisky dance. The boy blushes deeply and averts 

his eyes. Eventually, the baritone leaves, wishing me and the world a Merry 

Christmas and promising to return someday with money in his pockets. I quietly 

slip the boy a free Dum Dum and he seems grateful.

I love my job, my independence, my lack of bosses. I love my books and my 

artifacts and am glad each time someone makes a purchase and goes away happy. 

But at the same time, in a parallel portion of my mind, I’m a little saddened 

at the unfulfilled lives I occasionally see around me. I try to at least act 

better than I am by being patient with these lone wanderers of the City streets.

And I hope that each of them finds a shard of happiness mid the hundredfold 

opportunities for gloom in their daily lives

© Jim Reed 2010 A.D.

Since Christmas comes but once a day at Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories, it’s difficult for me to differentiate between the holiday season and every other season here in Mr. Reed’s Neighborhood.

Each day, something special enters my shop and begs for adoption. For instance, I just acquired a WWII bomber flight manual and a Darth Vader life-size standup.

I just sold a copy of Gary Larson’s favorite book, Mr. Bear Squash-You-All-Flat, and a Popeye coloring book.

I just placed on display the original Roumanian movie poster for To Kill a Mockingbird, plus a photograph of Marilyn Monroe in a pink bathing suit.

Next to my elbow is an original paperback edition of Catcher in the Rye, next to an LP recording of Fess Parker as Davy Crockett.

I could go on. In any five-foot radius within the shop, you’ll find overlapping time zones, modern and ancient icons, heavy tomes and hilarious spoofs, dead-serious diatribes and light-hearted commentaries on the world.

They all exist side-by-side, spanning a 500-year period, ready to entertain, enthrall, excite and amuse.

If you would like to visit the Center of the Universe, if you are brave enough to experience an environment free of mass-marketing and cookie-cutter merchandise, if you like to own one-of-a-kind treasures, then take a chance.

Enter Here

(c) Jim Reed 2010 A.D.

www.jimreedbooks.com

Here’s is a story I publish every Thanksgiving, just

to remind myself and you that everything that really

matters is right before us, all the time. Here ‘tis:

THANKSGIVING:

THE HAPPIEST SAD DAY OF THE YEAR

The saddest thing I ever saw: a small, elderly woman dining alone at Morrison’s Cafeteria, on Thanksgiving Day.

Oh there are many other sadnesses you can find if you look hard enough, in this variegated world of ours, but a diner alone on Thanksgiving Day makes you feel really fortunate, guilty, smug, relieved, tearful, grateful…it brings you up short and makes you time-travel to the pockets of joy and cheer you experienced in earlier days.

Crepe paper. Lots of crepe paper. And construction paper. Bunches of different-colored construction paper. In my childhood home in Tuscaloosa, my Thanksgiving Mother always made sure we creative and restless kids had all the cardboard, scratch paper, partly-used tablets, corrugated surfaces, unused napkins, backs of cancelled checks, rough brown paper from disassembled grocery bags, backs of advertising letters and flyers…anything at all that we could use to make things. Yes, dear 21^st-Century young’uns, we kids back then made things from scraps.

We could cut up all we wanted, and cut up we did.

We cut out rough rectangular sheets from stiff black wrapping paper and glued the edges together to make Pilgrim hats. Old belt buckles were tied to our shoelaces—we never could get it straight, whether the Pilgrims were Quakers, or vice versa, or neither. But it always seemed important to put buckles on our shoes and sandals, wear tubular hats and funny white paper collars, and craft weird-looking guns that flared out like trombones at one end. More fun than being a Pilgrim/Quaker was being an Indian—a true blue Native American, replete with bare chest, feathers shed by neighborhood doves, bows made of crooked twigs and kite string, arrows dulled at the tip by rubber stoppers and corks, and loads of Mother’s discarded rouge and powder and lipstick and mashed cranberries smeared here and there on face and body, to make us feel like the Indians we momentarily were.

Sister Barbara and Mother would find some long autumnal-hued dresses for the occasion, but they were seldom seen outside the kitchen for hours on end, while the eight-course dinner was under construction.

There was always an accordion-fold crepe paper turkey centerpiece on display, hastily bought on sale at S.H. Kress, just after last year’s Thanksgiving season. It looked nothing like my Aunt Mattie’s turkeys in her West Blocton front yard. And for some reason, we ate cranberry products on that day and that day only. Nobody ever thought about cranberries the other 364 days! And those lucky turkeys were lucky because nobody ever thought of eating them except at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They were home free the rest of the year!

Now, back into the time machine of just a few years ago.

It is Thanksgiving Day. My wife and son and granddaughter are all out of the country. Other family and relatives are either dead or gone, or just plain tied up with their own lives in other states, doing things other than having Thanksgiving Dinner with me.

My brother, Tim, my friends Tim Baer and Don Henderson and I decide that we will have to spend Thanksgiving Dinner together, since each of us is bereft of wife or playmate or relative, this particular holiday this particular year.

So, we wind up at Morrison’s Cafeteria, eating alone together, going through the line and picking out steamed-particle-board turkey, canned cranberries, thin gravy, boxed mashed potatoes and some bakery goods whose source cannot easily be determined.

But we laugh at our situation and each other, tell jokes, cut up a bit, and thank our lucky stars that this one Thanksgiving Dinner is surely just a fluke. We’ll be trying that much harder, next year, to not get blind-sided by the best holiday of the year, Thanksgiving being the only holiday you don’t have to give gifts or reciprocate gifts or strain to find the correct gifts.

On Thanksgiving holidays ever since, I make sure I’m with family and friends, and now and then I try to set a place at the table of my mind, for any little old lady or lone friend who might want to join us, for the second saddest thing I’ve ever seen is a happy family lustily enjoying a Thanksgiving feast together and forgetting for a moment about all those lone diners in all the cafeterias of the world who could use a glance and a smile

© 2010 A.D. by Jim Reed

www.jimreedbooks.com

We're sitting here, slap in the middle of the time between Veterans Day 

and Thanksgiving Day. This period always reminds me of the time

Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers to you) said, "The older I get, the more 

convinced I am that the space between people who are trying 

their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.”

So, I guess we’re resting on hallowed ground during a hallowed 

period.

In case you missed Veterans Day, I may as well put in my less-

than-two-cents worth of opinion.

To me, Veterans Day is a day to remember that countless men and 

women throughout the world have lost their lives, their limbs, their 

minds, in defense of something ethereal and ever-changing. 

Something called peace. The people—the soldiers and freedom 

fighters—often lost everything of value in their lives, just because 

they wanted to keep what is precious, knowing that, should they 

themselves be exterminated, their efforts just might have been 

worth it to somebody else coming along, somebody else who is out 

of harm’s way because of them.

There are all sorts of soldiers and freedom fighters: some wind up 

being martyred, some wind up limping home to hold self and 

family together, some simply disappear. 

Is it worth it, this relentless chase for freedom and peace, when we 

know full well that each peacetime is temporary, each quiet 

moment of love and understanding could vanish in the next 

conflagration?

There are two kinds of people in the world—those who look for 

trouble and conflict, and those who try to avoid or undo trouble 

and conflict. We’ll be watching both kinds of people in the news 

between now and Thanksgiving—people who will fight just to 

win, and people who will fight in hopes of bringing joy and 

understanding to the world. Watch closely those factions in the 

Middle East, in Myanmar, in Washington D.C., in Afghanistan, in 

the nervous streets and alleys of your own neighborhood.

Fred Rogers said something else that I often think about: 

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my

mother would always say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will

always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in

times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am

always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—

so many caring people in this world.”

Don’t despair, my children—no matter how much the news of the

times seems destructive and hopeless, look out for the

helpers…and do a little helping yourself.

Even if the meek won’t inherit the earth, we can at least contest the

will

© 2010 A.D. by Jim Reed

www.jimreedbooks.com

A BOOK TOO FAR

Some days, the gentle addiction drives me. Seldom do I drive It.

     But today, Sunday, is too beautiful a day to merely go to the

supermarket and purchase vittles. The day would be just a little

more perfect should I happen to pass by a flea market on the way

to the store, and look for something old and resonant and nostalgic

and comforting.

This gentle addiction has driven me for six decades or more.

Taking a wide turn and ending up at the former Fair Park monthly

flea market, I stick my toe into the old moldy atmosphere, attempting

to ignore the nearby ghastly brick and glass structure that is replacing

the park’s raceway/state fair stands, imagining that, in a couple of

decades, the new building will be as run-down and unkempt as the

previous one. The City has a way of building brand-new well-financed

venues, then ignoring them for years.

I suppose the reason that the monthly flea market survives is that it is

being ignored, too. Worst thing you could do would be to race around

tidying up the place, putting in a/c and heat, painting it, lighting it, cleaning

the restrooms for a change. If that happened, the market would have all the

charm of a K-Mart, and I would have to drive further afield to find

something authentic-feeling.

But today, I am lucky. The flea market is open for business, a few old-time

dealers still lug their wares inside, an occasional entrepreneur attempts to

hustle you with new things you could get cheaper at Dollar Tree, and here

and there, if you look real hard and know what you’re looking for, you can

spot a treasure.

Here’s the LP/tomato man who always tries to sell old recordings, comic

books, paper ephemera, printer paper, toys, movies, and—tomatoes. I buy

the last of his tomatoes, then spot a few books he’s got on display and is

about to re-box for the long trip home. Hmm…this has a “buzz” to it, the

look of a book published before acidic, self-destructing paper was

mass-marketed. I weigh it in my hands, its dark embossed cover looking

a little weary. The book falls open to the all-important title page, and here’s

what I see: REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY

TRANSMITTING A REPORT FROM THE REGISTER OF THE

TREASURY OF THE COMMERCE AND NAVIGATON OF THE

UNITED STATES FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1857. Published

under act of Congress of September 16, 1857, in Washington, D.C.

645 pages not counting index, pages filled with charts and graphs and

data that somebody could just not live without, back then. A nice little

item to trigger your imagination, pop you into your time machine, and

make you wonder about the printing process, the computerless hours

of research and massaging of information, the typesetting done the

hard way—by hand, and backwards! Proofreading was still in vogue

back then, so you find few mistakes within.

Well, at least this is a real book, assembled by author and editor and

proofreader and printer, and distributed to those few people who could

understand such things. The book has its own fragrance, its own ambience,

its own story, a story recorded 150-plus years ago and alive today in my

very own hands!

I told you it is a gentle addiction, didn’t I?

The book will enter the store tomorrow and join its bookish family on

my shelves, waiting for the astute collector to discover it among all the

other solitudes in my little universe

           © 2010 A.D. by Jim Reed

           www.jimreedbooks.com

THIS WEEK’S HALLOWEEN-RECOMMENDED BOOK IS ONE

YOU CAN’T PUT DOWN, PROVIDED YOU REALLY, REALLY READ IT STRAIGHT THROUGH…

IF YOU ALLOW THE STORY TO CARRY YOU ALONG…

IF YOU SUSPEND ALL JUDGEMENT TILL THE LAST PAGE,

YOU’LL HAVE QUITE A RIDE.

You’ll never find this bestseller on the New York Times bestseller list, but it’s a book that will stay with you the rest of your life…a book that hasn’t been out of print for two centuries.

In keeping with the month of Halloween, this is one to scare you:

Once you’ve read the scariest books ever written, Halloween is never over, and you are never the same.

NOW READ THIS:

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe  

 (“…my only way to go about an attempt for an escape was, if possible, to get a savage into my possession…”)

     This is a 200-year-old novel, based on a true story, about a man totally isolated from other human beings. The theme is universal: how would you survive if you had only your wits, if you had no-one else to rely on?

     And how would you deal with the solitary confinement of a desert island, never knowing whether you’d be rescued, whether you’d be eaten alive, whether you’d be taken by a virus or an accident?

     And, what would happen if you got your wish, only to be surrounded by cannibals whose only mission is to have you for dinner—literally?

     Hey, give it a try. It’s worth the effort

READ AND CRINGE!

© 2010 A.D. by Jim Reed

www.jimreedbooks.com