Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary at https://youtu.be/sSRe5w8d2ro

or read his transcript below:

BUTTERBEAN POKER MEMORIES OF GOOD TIMES PAST

I’ve had some good times during an incredibly long life in the Deep South. Now and then one of those times pops up and makes me smile, makes me yearn to spend another happy Sunday afternoon with all those long-gone friends and family from the past. If you also love playing casino games like slot gacor, you may consider visiting an online casino. You can also visit online casinos like 크레이지 파친코 to enjoy an exciting casino experience from the comfort of your own home. Experience how thrilling it is to play at 4dbeli.co/buy-4d-online. For a convenient and secure payment option while playing, you can check out https://bonusetu.com/muchbetter-kasinot/ to discover casinos supporting MuchBetter transactions.

Here’s a page from the Red Clay Diary.

Far ago and long away, I dreamed a dream one day.

The time is far, far ago, but it is ever fresh in memory.

It is Sunday afternoon in this village, when getting together with kinfolk and outlaws and in-laws is so much fun. Now this may not be you young’uns’ idea of partying, but it was everything we knew to do, in order to have a good time. Here are some snapshots.:

Dried butterbeans under a tree in Uncle Pat and Aunt Elizabeth McGee’s sideyard. No, we don’t eat the dried butterbeans except one time, and once is enough. What my uncles do with the butterbeans is use them instead of chips, to sit on the ground and play poker. The summertime buggy and humid heat is barely noticed, because the Games and the Slow Roast are the thing. Two games go on simultaneously. The poker game—in which all the winner gets is a bunch of dried beans—and the baseball game on the radio. You see, back in these times recalled, nobody has portable radios, so the Big Game emanates from one of the old cars in the family. An uncle pulls his vehicle near the Game and leaves the door open so we can all hear the big plays, the excited crowd, the crisp snap of wood against hide, the terse shouts of the umpire. Today, sports fans can even place bets on their favorite reams or players online through gaming platforms like neospin.

The Slow Roast is right next to the game—big hunks of barbeque turning over an open-pit fire, smoking up the woods and forcing all humans who care about eating to salivate involuntarily.

This is Division of Labor stuff. The men are in charge of staying up all night, tending the fire, biding their time with poker and baseball, and trying their best to set sedentary examples of good behavior for dozens of run-amok kids. The women do everything else.

Mind you, this is the post-economic-depression era when all men work hard at hard-time jobs, when Sundays with family are their only respite, when for a few hours they can pretend to be hotshot gamblers and master chefs and wizened tribal chiefs.

Meanwhile, cousins and playmates are free to roam wild in Uncle Pat’s nearby woods, chase after and be chased by spiders and snakes, attract red bugs and ticks, laugh out loud and wrestle, play their own baseball game in the nearby cornfield, and in general let out all the energy that has been pent up during the week.

The women organize food and wrangle kids and socialize and gossip and knit and darn and set tables and wash dishes and collect detritus that the men later dispose of. Both men and women share in the arduous task of making gallons of ice cream on the spot, emptying ice and salt into buckets while older kids take turns cranking and cranking and cranking, their only motivation being the sweet taste of fresh peaches absorbed into the creamiest ice cream you can ever imagine.

Everybody knows their responsibilities in these olden days, nobody hides from helping out, everyone comes to each other’s rescue when a bruise appears, all accidents are tended to in gentle good humor, all conflicts mediated and peacefully settled, all passions channeled for the good of the one-day communion.

At the end of the long day, each family sits wearily and happily in automobiles, waiting while relatives lean over open driver windows and say 45-minute lingering goodbyes to each other. Nobody wants to leave the scene, everybody has to, and, regardless of how tired and spent and scraped and bloated and bug-bit, we can’t help but think about the next reunion when we’ll do it all again.

Yep, far ago and long away, I dream a dream, a dream that still seems true when I look at the results of those strong and handsome adult relatives who set such powerful examples for us kids. The truth is in watching those kids today, now elderly kinfolk with their own kids and kids of kids, each year once more holding a reunion and passing down the generations a rich appreciation of tribe and family and genetics and mutual support.

Right now, because of the pandemic, the reunions are on hold. I miss them all the more.

When we finally do get to draw close and resume these happy events, there will be much hugging and cherishing and storytelling, as we catch up and attempt to make good all the fun times missed

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/

or read the transcript below:

LITTLE JOURNEYS INTERSECTION BY INTERSECTION

The high-up traffic signal before me dangles in the wind. My car automatically obeys, comes to an idling stop, giving me time to glance around and see what’s to see this sunny day.

Out the left driver’s window a greyhaired man sits atop a decorative brick barricade on the street corner. Twenty feet away towers a cold glass and steel medical facility. The greyhaired man is wearing hospital slippers and an open-backed green hospital smock, his legs bare from the knees down. He sits alone in puzzled silence, suspended somewhere between co-pay instructions and the healing arts and a someday hospice.

Ahead of me, the widescreen windshield exposes static buildings and passing pedestrians, pedestrians focused on their journeys and oblivious to the solitary greyhaired man.

Out the right-hand passenger window I see static faces of people who wait…wait for a bus, wait for an Uber, wait for a lift. One face animatedly converses with an invisible phone pal, another face squints against the sun to see the traffic light, yet another face looks up to his package-toting mom and squeezes tight her free hand. Another face stares dreamily at nothing much.

In the rear view mirror a driver peers at her reflection and adjusts makeup.

The signal clicks and changes color and grants permission to my car to proceed.

All the lives I’ve just borne witness to are whisked away as I continue my journey to the next stop and the next up-close views of this dazzling and diverse and sometimes delightful Deep South village

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary broadcast/podcast: https://youtu.be/IZyFEUI2L-I

or read the transcript below:

THE HIDDEN WORLD OF THE UPSIDE-DOWN ROCKING CHAIR

Thirteen vertical wooden bars. That’s all it takes to imprison me today.

Today I am four years old, way back in time, in the living room of my family’s small bungalow in long-ago Deep South Alabama.

This is a time when a gigantic world war is winding down. Soon my military uncles will be wending their way homeward from Europe, carrying purple hearts and small souvenirs, sporting battle scars, telling riveting stories to us adoring civilian kids.

While we wait for the world to calm down and get going again, we summer children just play and entertain ourselves, as if nothing strange is happening in the rest of the world.

That’s why I am behind bars, waiting for older sister Barbara to discharge me from jail and proceed to play cops and robbers and cowboys and Tarzan again.

The jail is actually an old curved-wood rocking chair with thirteen posts that, when turned upside-down, makes a great cage for small tykes to crawl into. I peer through the spaces between the posts and await my fate.

Mother used to rock us kids to sleep in this chair, but since we no longer require infant care, the chair is a perfect time machine.

Later, after we’ve tired of conflict games, the inverted rocking chair becomes a teller cage. I’m the banker dispensing change and old cancelled checks between the posts. Barbara is the pretend grown woman who is extracting pennies and nickels from Mother’s old purse. We try our best to imitate adults and make smart monetary decisions.

Our Aunt Gladys is postmistress of the tiny nearby town of Peterson. When we visit, we see her reassuring face through metal bars as she takes care of postal patrons. She is framed by green combination-lock mail boxes.

With this knowledge in mind, the upside-down rocker becomes a postal cage with one kid playing Aunt Gladys, the other pretending to purchase used stamps to place upon discarded postcards and envelopes. Play money consists of checker pieces, butterbeans, bus tokens and whatever else seems to be negotiable.

When break time occurs, I sip my lemoned sugared iced tea and, turning the chair rightside-up, sit and rock myself into daydreams. The chair’s creaks and moans are music to my ears. They become sound effects to accompany Dr. Frankenstein’s loping monster.

After sundown, after we’ve had all the firefly-catching, mosquito-bite-scratching, banana-popsicle-munching fun we can stand for one day, I retire to my small bedroom, listen to the cricket chorus through open windows, snuggle beneath handmade quilts, and soon nightdream about heroic soldiers and brave jungle natives and squeaky  pedal cars and Santa in his faraway workshop, carefully handcrafting my next Christmas surprise.

The forlorn rocking chair sits in the darkened living room, awaiting the attention it craves.

And, today, many decades later, the rickety old chair still rests in mellow retirement at my faraway Deep South home. The chair is too fragile to rock infants in, but too precious to send away to strangers. I smile each time I pass by, recalling how sweet and innocent we kids were, how sweetness and innocence still abide somewhere deep, deep inside me

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

ANTICIPATING 364 UNBIRTHDAYS

What do I get each time another birthday rolls around?

What is my reward? Where is my gift?

More to the point, what makes me think I have a reward coming my way, each time another 365 days pass me by?

What is so significant about our birthdays, mine and your’n? (Don’t let “your’n” throw you—-it’s just one of those middle English words that a bookie nerd like me finds swimming among the silt in my brain.)

Speaking of silt, how many hundreds of songs and poems and stories are indelibly branded into my memory?

This is definitely one of them:

MARCH HARE:

A very merry unbirthday to me

MAD HATTER:

To who?

MARCH HARE:

To me

MAD HATTER:

Oh you!

MARCH HARE:

A very merry unbirthday to you

MAD HATTER:

Who me?

MARCH HARE:

Yes, you!

MAD HATTER:

Oh, me!

MARCH HARE:

Let’s all congratulate us with another cup of tea

A very merry unbirthday to you!

MAD HATTER:

Now, statistics prove, prove that you’ve one birthday

MARCH HARE:

Imagine, just one birthday every year

MAD HATTER:

Ah, but there are three hundred and sixty four unbirthdays!

MARCH HARE:

Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer

BOTH:

A very merry unbirthday to you, to you

ALICE:

To me?

MAD HATTER:

To you!

BOTH:

A very merry unbirthday

ALICE:

For me?

MARCH HARE:

For you!

MAD HATTER:

Now blow the candle out my dear

And make your wish come true

BOTH:

A merry merry unbirthday to you!

***

Now, why is it that I can’t remember where I placed my Diet Coke five minutes ago, but I can recall hundreds of songs and poems and stories like this from my ever present childhood?

Don’t strain yourself—I don’t really need to know the answer to this question. I just want to ruminate and contemplate and masticate…eating my breakfast and thinking useless but entertaining thoughts all the while.

Go ahead and laugh at me. It’s a life I’m stuck with.

And during the best of my times, I celebrate at least 364 times a year.

Quick! Let’s appreciate and savor our unbirthdays with gusto, now and then distracting ourselves with the delusion that all is right with the world.

We do deserve a break from all this now and then, don’t you think?

Lewis Carroll and Jack Kerouac and Aldous Huxley and Steve Martin all know the value of self-delusion. Each has a different way of celebrating silliness.

My way is to share random thoughts and allow you to find your own significance or distraction as a result.

Couldn’t hurt.

Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary on youtube.com:  https://youtu.be/roOBnOvn1fo

or read the transcript below:

THAT COOL BREEZE  JUST WAITING TO POUNCE

It’s early morning summertime down South, and already the stilled air presses down and holds static the heavy-laden humidity.

The big box parking lot is empty except for four vehicles that have settled themselves beneath the precious shade of two trees.  For the rest of the day, others of their kind will have to suffer the sun’s direct heat. The cars claim their ten-degree-lower bonuses.

Everywhere I go on days like this, I realize how pampered I am by the phenomenon of air conditioning.

I enter a super-cooled establishment and, just as soon as sweat evaporates and mood is sublime, I exit through automated doors, bumping into a wall of oppression fed by dark asphalt and fumes from cruising combustion engines.

It’s as if the AC of yester-minute never existed.

Just how did I survive back in the days when there was no artificial coolness?

The answer flows down like a healing breeze, and I return to childhood:

We get along bit by bit in these olden times.

A block of ice awaiting an ice pick is fun to sit on for a moment.

Attic fans keep some form of breathing easier.

A vanilla  ice cream cone or banana popsicle can save a life.

The milk man delivers hunks of crushed ice to begging kids dancing barefoot on concrete.

One watermelon slice jump-starts me.

Dancing in a mud puddle is a great distraction.

Peddling tricycle and bicycle turns me into the breeze itself.

Shade, any shade anywhere, can help.

A swimming hole trip is a miraculous gift.

Just one fire hydrant released by testing firefighters will freshen the day.

An out-of-control kid aiming a hosepipe stream will boost my adrenalin.

Just two playmates fanning each other with comic books can make a difference.

Screened-in porches hold back mosquitoes and invite occasional breezes.

And best of all—an exciting adventure book takes my mind to places where heat does not overtake, when imagination makes fevered brow a thing of the past.

Back in these days, we just do without air conditioning, making each moment of relief so special, causing  every instance of coolness to be so meaningful.

Back to the present:

Pampered by air conditioning, I go about my day, taking full advantage of modern conveniences—and paying dearly for them.

But, having lived in the way back, in times of simple pleasures, I know that, even today, should all modern amenities shut down, I still know how to cool myself as needed.

Because I’ve been there and done that

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

Hear today’s episode of Jim Reed’s Red Clay diary podcast:

https://youtu.be/af92-7Bk56I

or read his transcript below:

THE BIG FUNERAL HOME CHURCH FAN RECALL

My memory is subject to recall right now, ready for re-inspection and re-animation.

In just a jiffy I am back in childhood, sitting on a hardwood church pew, listening to a droning preacher, frantically breezing myself with the funeral-home cardboard fan in my small hand. These are the days before air conditioning.

With the non-fanning hand I dutifully open a dogeared hymnal and turn to a clergy-specified page. Adults around me begin intoning the first line of an old gospel song. Every individual in the church is singing in a different key, but the atonal chanting seems perfectly natural because the singers are so earnest and loud and impassioned.

Why do I pay so much attention to times long past, times like this? Why not just sink comfortably into today’s virtual world of image and rhetoric and feel-good self-absorption? I could be touching a screen and hearing the same song in-tune and perfect from a far-away choir.

I don’t have a good answer to that question. I just know that each and every fond memory, when re-examined, helps me catch on to things I missed the first time. Helps me realize how I got from way back then to just now. Helps me face the day refreshed, appreciative of what came before, bracing for what is to be.

So, in a new jiffy, I am once again way back in time, recalling life in a world that is smaller than the world is now, perhaps more important than the world is now.

This time, the church service is over, the funereal fan is placed on the pew, the congregation is quietly queueing toward the front door. The chief sermonizer is stationed there in order to shake each and every hand, including the hand of a small boy like me. Brother Nichols smiles warmly, looks me in the eye, tells me wordlessly that I am real and present and accounted for…sends me on my way feeling cared for.

I relish the times that grownups are simply complimentary and social. Much more than the times they are directive and instructive and punitive and disapproving.

To this day, whenever someone actually pays kindly attention to me, I get that same feeling, a feeling that people can do so much for each other whenever they pause a tiny moment to realize me, to acknowledge my worth. Even when I may not deserve it.

One more jiffy from the past: I’m heading for the family car in the church parking lot, anticipating freshly prepared Sunday dinner at home and playful competition among siblings for a drumstick and a slice of lemon meringue pie. Not only are these the days before air conditioning, these are the days before carry-out and take-home and pre-prepared meals.

Before long, we are safely home in our tiny dining room, laughing and gossiping and chatting, not at all aware of what air conditioning and perfect internet choirs and machine-packaged vittles will take away from us

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/-t87lTj-H7o

or read his transcript below:

ALWAYS HAVE AN ESCAPE PLAN

I am high above a hardwood theatre stage on a catwalk, stepping gingerly on aluminum slats, trying not to look down. Some thirty or so feet down is where I’ll be performing in a few days.

When I reach a point above Center Stage, I drop the coil of thick rope from my shoulder to toe level. This is where my work begins.

I test the stability of the metal to which I will affix one end of the rope. I grin, thinking that what I am doing now is the equivalent of a jumper packing his own parachute, trusting no-one.

Once I double and triple-knot the rope, I shove the other end between the slats and allow it to fall full-length to the performance floor below. I now have a swinging vine that even Tarzan would find safe. I hope.

I make my way down ladder rungs till I’m on the stage. I walk toward the rope, glancing out at the empty theatre seats which will soon be filled with audience, an audience watching me swinging from the rope.

I pull a twelve-foot ladder over, lift the the wrought-iron chandelier stage prop, and ascend. A second round of double and triple-knotting the rope, and suddenly the chandelier is a swinging part of the set.

One more test. I grab hold of the chandelier, wrap my legs over its top, and swing loose, hoping against hope that the entire contraption will hold fast. Knowing, in my extreme youth and foolishness, that should it snap, I will fall a dozen feet to the stage, landing on  my spine and perhaps taking a sharp right toward permanent injury.

It works.

I transfer my shaking body to the ladder and make my way to the floor, knowing that I’ve done something that nobody else would be trusted to do. I can now play the scene as if I’m light as air, as accomplished as a trapeze artist.

Weeks later, when the comedy plays before a live audience, I swing upon the chandelier high above the actors who are pretending to be fighting among themselves. I alone am safe from harm, as if I impulsively jumped high up and grabbed a wrought-iron fixture to escape the melee.

All the audience knows is that something funny and seemingly spontaneous has happened. And that’s show biz.

In later years, when Q says to Bond, “Always have an escape plan,” I’ll recall how I backtimed a stunt, turning it into an escape hatch, while never allowing anyone to see me sweat and strain.

To this day, whenever I paint myself into a corner, I stomp on the feeling of panic and say to myself, “There’s always a way out.”

It’s just up to me to find it

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcasts:  https://youtu.be/jYi1myLSbvg

or read the transcript below:

THE CASE OF THE NOISY TELL-TALE CELLOPHANE PACKAGE 

Six-year-old Jimmy Three peeks through the inch-opened air lock to see if the coast is clear.

Actually, there is no coast nearby, it’s just Jimmy Three’s comic book/movie/adventure novel term, a term that sounds infinitely more dramatic than, “Jimmy Three peeks through the inch-opened door of his bedroom to see whether anybody is in the hallway.”

The coast, er, hallway, is clear. No-one stirs. Not even a mouse.

Looks like the enemy, er, Mom and Sister, are elsewhere right now, Mom in the backyard garden, Sis reading a movie magazine in her room.

Jimmy Three stretches his legs to step over the floor furnace, the grating of which always produces creaking audio evidence of the presence of the invaders, er, six-year-old boys.

He arrives at the doorless kitchen entrance and scans the horizon, er, cabinets and walls, to see if the Resistance is nearby. So far, he has the tiny area to himself.

Jimmy Three spies the prize on a top shelf, the prize he must noiselessly approach if there is any possibility of gaining it.

He drags a step stool slowly, making sure the metal contraption makes minimal audible creaks, and stops below the Grail, er, the cookie package, then begins to slowly ascend three steps till he’s within reaching distance.

The other enemy awaits, this enemy being the packaging. It’s one thing to sneak past alien lines and approach a target, it’s quite another thing to figure out how to muffle the sound of Cellophane.

Cellophane is a great invention. It keeps the bag’s interior fresh and crisp, it clearly displays what’s inside, neatly rowed and beckoning. But it is very, very noisy.

Jimmy Three reaches up and carefully lifts the Grail so as to minimize that unmistakable crackling that seems inevitable. He pauses to see whether Mom or Sister are about. So far, so good.

Resting the cookies on a lower surface, Jimmy Three begins the safe cracking, er, the attempted package invasion. He turns his ear toward the sealed opening and meticulously employs fingers of both hands in trying to pull apart, in silence, the stubborn cellulose material.

Cracksnapple! He pulls too hard and the package announces to the world that a theft is in progress in the small village. He cringes, squeezes shut his eyes, waiting for any sound from policing agents, er, family.

“What are you doing?” Jimmy jumps a few inches but manages to keep his balance on the stool. Sister Barbara is standing there, hands on hips, movie magazine hugged between elbow and chest. Jimmy Three sputters and does not have an effective reply to voice. After all, the evidence is clear. What he is doing is unmistakable.

He holds his breath for Sis’s usual reaction to his infractions—a shout-out to Mom.

There is only silence, Sis frozen in contemplation of the situation, Jimmy Three frozen and waiting for incarceration or worse.

“Well, are you going to share?” Sis finally says. Jimmy Three sputters again, hands over the cookies. Then, he resumes breathing, not a moment too soon.

Together, the two siblings silently conspire, each retrieving two cookies. Jimmy Three sort of reseals the package and returns it to its nesting place, Barbara munches as she returns to her room, the step stool is replaced with the sure knowledge that at least one  enemy will never know that infiltration has occurred.

Jimmy Three returns to his comic book, the part where Billy Batson yells SHAZAM! whenever a crisis must be tamped down.

Jimmy Three knows that he will never have the resources that Billy has, but at least he has two cookies to save his day

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast

or read the transcript below:

HENRY THE FROG AWAITS AN EVENING BREEZE

A patch of shade and a momentary breeze. Obtaining these phenomena both at the same time is my only goal, my only quest at this very moment.

This very moment being a Summer morning some uncountable decades ago in the Deep South village of childhood.

I’m sitting on wooden steps leading to the Reed Family’s back door, scratching at the latest red bug bite on a bare knee. August heat is upon the yard, chasing away Henry the Frog (he’ll reappear in the cool of the evening). Other critters are doing the best they can under the circumstances. Even the nearby anthill is quiet. I guess the ants are in their underland fanning each other with tiny leaves.

I scan the close horizon for signs of things to notice. Yep, even at this memorable age I am an Observer taking note of life a giblet at a time.

I watch and listen.

Next-door grownups are chatting, oblivious to listeners-in.

The wife pauses after a burst of enthusiastic holding forth to check on husbandly reaction, to see whether he understands her meanings, to determine what his response might be. I stare and observe like a small anthropologist.

The husband wants to couch his words in non-confrontive ways. He’d prefer not to talk at all, but even at this age, I am aware that sometimes one has to do what one has to do to maintain harmony.

The husband pauses during his raised-car-hood mechanical fiddling, takes a deep breath, instructs his mouth to smile and his eyes to become alert.

The wife repeats her lively rant, this time in a less aggressive manner, once she realizes that the husband is actually paying attention.

The back-and-forth ends pleasantly. The wife returns to her tiny vegetable garden, the husband dives under the hood, the ambient temperature lowers a couple of degrees.

And today, this very day, this right now moment, I am all grown up, grown old and withered, and am suddenly recalling an aha! moment from early youth.

The aged Me smiles in sweet recollection. The tiny young red-bugged Me broods like the little professor that I am, the little professor that I will always be.

Old Me and long-ago Me sit quietly on the back steps and enjoy each other’s presence.

Then, we each go our separate ways, ready for the adventures we will surely experience on these parallel overheated days. We await the relief of evening and the reappearance of Henry the Frog and his pals, the fireflies and mosquitoes that will outlive us all

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

Listen to Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast:

https://redclaydiary.com/mp3/tapdancingonshagcarpeting.mp3

or read his story below:

TAP DANCING ON SHAG CARPETING

“You have heard the sound of two hands clapping, but have you heard the sound of three hands clapping?”

Thoughts like this slither into my mind during the short periods between customers at the bookstore.

“She was aged to imperfection.”

You know, inexplicable thoughts like this—the kinds of thoughts that seem important at the time but ultimately are tossed into the napkin-note sticky-note file for later contemplation.

“You can only observe one-tenth of an iceberg lettuce salad.”

Where did that one come from?

The front door chimes and I am lifted from my navel contemplation. I arise from behind the counter and smile to the customer, “Good morning! How can I help you today?”

A woman of indeterminate age frowns, holds up a shiny book by two fingers, as if it is contaminated and ready for recycling. “I want to return this book for a refund,” she announces.

My policy is ironclad. I always refund, no questions asked. Or at least no questions required. But just for future reference, I say, “OK. Is there anything wrong with the book?”

She sneers, looks into the air—not at me—and says, “I just don’t like the way it ended. I want my money back.”

I am at a loss for words. I look for words, but they seem to have fallen out of my head and rolled under something, out of sight.

“Er, sorry,” I sputter. I determine that this particular customer has made up her mind and is well beyond literary conversation or conversion. I also determine that she will probably never return. I think, too, that she has read very few books in her life and has no idea how a real bookstore operates. I am happy to refund her money in hopes that she will soon disappear and be replaced by appreciative browsers.

She stuffs the refund into her copious purse and grumbles to herself all the way to the door, her experiment with reading over and done with.

I re-shelve the book, return to my storely duties and my lone thoughts.

“She is as pure as the driven sludge.”

Where did that thought come from?

I wonder whether there are other would-be customers like her. Maybe, to paraphrase my Brother, Tim, she is part of a That Customer franchise, people who haunt old bookstores with unlikely demands, then dematerialize.

“I’m looking for a book by GO-eeth,” one customer says. It takes a while to decipher Goethe from his request. I gladly provide him with Goethe.

“I’m looking for poem,” a gruff character states. When I lead him to the poetry section, he stares blankly, arms limp, as if I’ve invited him to tap dance on shag carpeting.

“No, I’m looking for POEM,” he repeats. It takes some time to figure out that he is searching for pornography, or PORN, as it is called these days. Dang, we are fresh out of porn, I say to myself.

I gently let him down and he leaves—again, someone who will never return.

Some folks seem to be searching for Manifest Density. If there is no such thing, there ought to be.

Me, I’m just drifting with my thoughts on a normal day at the least normal bookstore you’ll ever visit, the most enjoyable bookstore you will ever visit, a bookstore stripped bare of unsavory endings and GO-eeth and porn

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.