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Life, actually…

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THE DREAM BORROWERS

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I just borrowed a memory from two late friends.

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The thing about a borrowed memory is that I can’t give it back to the borrowerees.

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Once lent, a vivid memory endures and travels forth, a close copy of the one held dear by its original owner.

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As a borrower of memory, I am obligated to respect, cherish and handle with care its perpetuation, its nourishment. Until I can pass it on to the next borrower.

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Is borrowing the same thing as theft? Am I a thief of memory? Maybe not—I did not mean to borrow, it just came at me, entered my mind, and there it resides.

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The thing about an acquired memory is that it often morphs and mingles with similar memories that I hold dear. The two memories entwine and enrich one another.

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Quick, allow me to give you an explanatory anecdote before you roll your eyes and leave my presence.

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One time years ago my friend Robbie Willmarth gave a remarkable account of an encounter she once had with a work by the poet Carl Sandburg. Her fond memory leapt into my own recollection of an in-person  encounter I, too, had with this remarkable poet. As a precocious teenager, I sat enthralled in the presence of Sandburg as he recited, sang and wove tales on the stage of Foster Auditorium in Tuscaloosa. 

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Then, after the program was over, the audience dissolving, the lights dimming, the press heading out, I got brave enough to descend from the balcony and race toward the stage just to see whether I could shake the hand of this wonderful historian/troubadour/poet. Or at least stand in his presence.

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My buddy, Doug Bleicher, was ahead of me, already chatting with Sandburg, so it seemed safe to walk up, mumble some incoherent expression of adulation, and then try not to wash my right hand for a day or two. I was so excited that to this day I don’t recall exactly what was said, but this thing I do know: Carl Sandburg responded with gentle wit to our comments and questions, smiled and listened intently, and in general made us feel like we were the most important temporary companions in the county.

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Then, as memory-makers will do, Sandburg went on his way to the next town and left behind a permanent image in the minds of both us kids.

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Doug and I compared notes and found that each of us independently loved the poetry of this man, each of us was awe-stricken by our encounter, each of us filed sweet memories away for rainy days…and life went on.

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Today, my memory, the memory of Robbie’s experience, the memory of Doug’s parallel poetic encounter, stays with me and emerges over the years to offer comfort when times are chaotic.

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The long string of memories, borrowed or created, sustains us artists and poets and writers and creators…and links us together with past, present and future, always present, always circling around, seeking new angles and new ways of telling that which must never be forgotten, that which must be willingly lent out to the next excited and alert observer.

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As Carl Sandburg said, “Nothing happens unless first a dream.”

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I pay attention to dreams, since I never know what will happen next

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 © 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Listen to the 4-minute podcast on youtube:  https://youtu.be/i7Abe0yzPZU

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Life, actually…

as it was more decades ago than you can count on one hand…

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UP IN SMOKE

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Oh was it cool to smoke, oh was it was even cooler to smoke Kools, oh it was so cool to

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look cool

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smoke cool

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inhale cool

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exhale cool

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light up cool

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tamp ashes off the tip cool

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extinguish cool

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light one cigarette off the lighted end of another cigarette cool

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pause thoughtfully while tamping the unfiltered tip of an unlighted cigarette against the back of your hand cool.

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Everything about smoking tobacco was oh so cool when I was young.

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Young and clueless cool.

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Somewhere in the shrubbery beside our home on Eastwood Avenue, I tried to learn how to smoke, having snuck some of my Uncle Adron’s free-sample Lucky Strikes and a few wooden matches from our gas stove.

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Luckily, I didn’t know what you did once you lit up, didn’t know that you had to draw air through a cigarette while holding the lighted match to the other end. I lit up and blew, and the danged cigarette just wouldn’t stay lit.

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I didn’t know you had to inhale to appreciate the smoking habit, I kept blowing out and the effort eventually made me sick from secondary smoke and sick from guilt—not guilt of smoking without permission but guilt from having taken the cigarettes undetected.

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Thus, I taught myself my own lesson about smoking—don’t do it till you know how.

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But it was so seductive, watching all those famous people smoking away, watching how suave and graceful they were, lighting up while posturing. While being beautiful and charming and in-charge.

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Watching those sexy women look twice as tough and twice as possible because they dared to smoke in public.

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Smoking was so cool.

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Cigars were tough-guy smokes. Only a real man—whatever that was—could handle those big cigars, could use them to punctuate speech, to mark off territory, to hold bad dudes at bay. And a cigar-smoking woman could look twice as riveting as any mere macho man.

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And pipes were even cooler. You could look thoughtful even when you hadn’t a thought in your head if you knew how to handle a pipe.

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Lighting up, puffing, packing tobacco into the bowl, reaming the bowl, clacking the pipe against an ashtray or the heel of your shoe, taking the pipe apart and carefully cleaning it during a deep conversation, and never having to answer any question immediately—everybody would pause, waiting for your answer, while you prepared that pipe for your ceremonial smoke.

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It wasn’t the taste, the feel, the odor. It was the process of lighting up a cigarette or cigar or pipe, it was the way you moved, it was the kind of smoking paraphernalia you carried, it was the way you accentuated your every action, that made smoking so cool.

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The coolest thing you could do was master the art of nonchalantly lighting up without missing a beat or blinking an eye. It was America’s version of Zen mastery. It was art.

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Threats of death, threats of ill health, threats of being ousted, threats of smelling bad, threats of divorce would never make you stop smoking back then because it was about the coolest thing you could possibly do in public without getting arrested. It was the closest you could possibly get to being somebody worthy of notice.

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It was the thing you did BECAUSE you knew you would never be famous.

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It was a way to strut when you had nothing whatsoever to strut about.

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It was as close to immortality as you could ever hope to be, looking and acting like all those beautiful famous people you looked up to and secretly wished you were

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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TEMPLE BELLS

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This is the way it was one Saturday in my little corner of Down South,

a mere thirty years ago:

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Standing in a stranger’s front yard under a bright sun on an early Saturday morning surrounded by good ol’ boys and poofed-hair women may not be my idea of how to spend an hour or two of increasingly precious spare time. But you know how us booklovers are—we will go anyplace anytime under any circumstances to see whether there is a nice old volume or two worth adopting.

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This is, of course, before the internet, before the smart devices, during olden times of landlines and Yellow Pages and following verbal directions to get where you want to go.

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So here I am, back in days of yore, on somebody’s lawn in the middle of a cluster of middle-aged-ups who are sniffing and poking a Lincoln Town Car that will be auctioned off along with household goods.

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Small wisdoms and unsolicited observations are being passed around like hot potatoes. I have the idea that these are mostly poker-players, what with their stoic expressions and hands-in-deep-pockets attitudes…trying to appear dis-interested and reserved, but watching everything out of the corners of their eyes.

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A faint but persistent tinkling provides our soundtrack, overriding everything so consistently that it is all but unnoticed.

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Finally, I realize that the almost temple-bell-like noise is coming from pockets, where fidgety fingers continuously rattle loose change and car keys and good-luck charms and old tokens.

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The bells will last till after the auction.

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The house on the property is filled with anonymous tire-kickers who have never known its former occupants. And here all these pokers and prodders are, walking about, exhuming previously-loved belongings that no longer belong to anyone, no longer belong to the people who first purchased them with great excitement, with great expectations that life would be slightly changed for the better as a result of each purchase. That life would forever be different and special if this object were possessed and kept nearby.

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People sit on chairs and leave grass stains on old carpets and exhale their stale internal airs, invading the once personal and very private atmosphere that not so long ago thrived in this village.

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Somebody’s past, somebody’s story, is about to be sold to the highest bidder, piece by truncated piece. For a moment I feel like an interloper, an invader, a trespasser. But really I am just a preserver dedicated to finding just the right thing to rescue and adopt and offer a safe home. In memory of absentee family. In honor of all those magical-thinking objects we all cherish and discard, cherish and discard.

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I can never rescue all the books in all the estate sales throughout the planet. And ain’t that about the most interesting way for a bookie like me to paddle though life?

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Cherish is the word I use to describe the feely feelings that arise when I complete my Saturday mission

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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MISTER FIDGET MAKES MY DAY

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Mister Fidget skulks around inside the bookstore, picking up and examining items at random. He is always in motion, asking about this object and that object but never waiting for a complete answer from me.

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He is busy looking for the next thing before ending his perusal of the previous thing.

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Fidget is entertaining and annoying and restless. But he is a customer, and each customer is treated with respect and kindness. Each customer has something to teach me. I try to pay attention while going about the business of keeping the shop afloat.

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As he rambles about, never quite leaving each item at its original site, he talks and chatters and speaks in one continuous sentence. I can’t keep up with him but he does come up with oblique observations.

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“These pants are too tight.” He tugs at his trousers fore and aft. “You can’t get a wallet in and out of them, dammit!”

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He does go on.

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“Maybe they make these pants tight so that nobody can pick your pocket.” This idea might have some validity.

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“Boy, this is not a very good block here.” He refers to the Downtown streets where I ply my trade.

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“I can’t find any good parking places.” I wonder how he got to the shop without finding a parking place.

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“Wow! this bookstore must not have many customers down here, huh?” He is adding to the popular myth that the city is barren, a wasteland left over from the flights of the 1960s. In truth, business has never been better, and the urban township is sort of booming.

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He scattershots through the rows of vinyl records on display. “Wow, these records, some of them are broken, did you know some of these records are broken?”

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He carefully waves a chipped disc into the morning air to prove his point, never considering the fact that I, the little old storekeeper, handled and placed every single record on display myself.

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“Oh, look, here’s a record, it’s part one but there’s no part two, do you have part two?” I do have part two but he’s already on to the next shopping critique.

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“You don’t have as many records as you used to.” He immediately spies the next enormous rack and says, “Oh, look, you’ve got a whole lot of records.”

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Mister Fidget runs about the aisles talking out of earshot, not aware that he is his only listener.

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I go about my chores and help other customers. Eventually, Mister Fidget exits the establishment, promising to actually purchase a book or record when he gets his next check.

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Some store owners express annoyance at such folk, but not I. He is just as important as the next browser. That’s because he takes something valuable with him—he will tell others about his adventure. Others will tell others. Eventually new shoppers will appear, having heard something nice about this wonderful old museum of fond memories.

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Every fidgeter who comes and goes carries a message to the village at large. That’s why I do my utmost to engage with everybody, be they sightseers, tire-kickers, comparison-shoppers, curiosity seekers, explorers, readers, non-readers, tag-alongs, collectors, decorators, bargain hunters, wheelers and dealers, touchy-feelies, nostalgia ramblers.

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How they feel about the way they were treated at Reed Books will lodge in fond memory.

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And maybe, just maybe, they will mention us to others who care deeply about kindness and sweet reminiscence

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/hairtodaygonetomorrow.mp3

or read his story below:

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW. 

I miss my hair.

I don’t miss barbers.

Yep, one day many, many moons ago, I had a full head of hair. Now, though, I still have lots of hair, it’s just that it’s everywhere but atop my head.

I have alarmingly fast-growing hair in my ears, my nose, on my face, on my back, on my chest, and, well, just about all over. And its rate of growth is not full-moon dependent.

Nature has a sense of humor—most of us start out bald and toothless, and we end up…dead.

Now, I know lots of guys who still go to the barbershop, or even the hair stylist, long after their heads are virtually bald. Guys with a little fallen halo of hair rimming half the head from ear to ear, still go and get it trimmed. I guess they’re holding on to every shred of dignity they can.

I don’t blame men who have enormous comb-overs. Others laugh at them, but I laugh at the laughers, who will begin losing hair long before they’re prepared to. I don’t even mind guys with ridiculously obvious toupees, since they, too, are living in the same fantasy world occupied by large-beehived women and three-strand-combover men.

So, does not having any hair mean you’ll never again go into a barbershop or hair salon? I asked one hair stylist in the Big City that question and gave her the challenge.

We brainstormed together.

If you are baldheaded, what can you get at a hair styling place?

1.  You can get your beard shaped and styled.

2.  If your baldness extends to the face, you can ask for a trim–of your nose hairs and eyebrows and ear hairs and that weird hair growing out of the top of your beauty mark.

3.  You can get a therapeutic massage and stop worrying about baldness for a few minutes.

4.  You can just have your bald pate buffed and shined or powdered or perfumed. Flaunt it! 

5.  Maybe the most fun you as a baldheaded man can have is to bring family—kids, grandkids, cousins and spouse or friend—to the hair place and sit there and thumb through the pages of beautifully coiffed models in the magazines, and just watch and enjoy the banter  and fun.

Full-head-of-hair guys, beware: an experience like this could make you want to shave your head and join the rest of us sexy devils.

Incidentally, I haven’t been to a barber since 1985, nor have I had a professional hair cut since then. But if I do start going to hair stylists/designers, I’ll let you know. Well, actually, you’ll know because I’ll smell funny for a few hours. What I really liked about hair salon places is that, unlike barbers in my day, they didn’t discuss politics and sports and hunting and fishing and a thousand other things I have no interest in. They did gossip, but gossip is more like entertainment—more interesting than watching all that internet detritus. 

By the time you leave the joint, you look better than you really are.

What more could anybody ask?

Just asking

© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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THE GOOD TIMES BEFORE YESTERDAY

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The double-clasped wooden treasure box is practically invisible. It is invisible because it is in plain sight. I see it so often I no longer see it.

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But once every handful of years, the double-clasped wooden treasure box beckons, calls attention to itself, dares me to unclasp and lift the lid.

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Here I am this morning, doing just that.

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I already know what is inside the box, but gazing directly at the objects within refreshes my memory, teases me with snippets of childhood adventures.

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There, right on top of the box’s other contents, is a stack of Topps trading cards, squirreled away when I was eleven.

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No, these are not sports trading cards. They are trading cards designed for those of us who were useless on the playing fields of competition. These cards were made for us, the invisible unathletic unpopular clumsy-but-smart kids who maneuvered  through life by finding our own pleasures.

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My calisthenics included re-reading and memorizing the historical and biographical information on the back of each Topps Look ‘n See card.

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Back then, they were called bubble gum cards, packaged with a red cellophane decoder, a modest slab of pink barely-chewable gum, and a beautifully painted portrait of our heroes of the day, one per card per chaw per history lesson.

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Here are some of them right in front of me. Jules Verne, Sitting Bull, Jesse James, Cleopatra, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Washington Carver…and on and on. At the age of eleven I knew something about each of these and dozens more, long before we studied them in school.

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I could act smarter than I was, which was helpful to an otherwise unrenowned sub-teen who at the very least needed to spout off smart thoughts designed to impress others when they were not obsessively watching sports, participating in sports, and thumbing through their Topps sports cards.

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At least I knew who H.G. Wells and Mahatma Gandhi were, even if you didn’t.

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Cheap thrills for what we now call a Nerd.

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And another thing—these famous characters of history were on equal footing in my imagination. Francis Scott Key and Jefferson Davis and Ponce de Leon are worthy of attention, at least for 30 seconds each.

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Ironically, they rest inside the wooden box as compatriots. At least they no longer disagree or wage war or gripe.

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Oh, if you are worried that my childhood deprived me of the need to adore famous sports figures, just relax. There is one sportsman in the Topps collection, just one.

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Babe Ruth.

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In my eleven-year-old world Babe Ruth was worthy of attention. Not because of his considerable prowess, but because there was something magical about him. In the imaginations of us kids, Babe Ruth was mythological, the greatest icon of all. I have no idea why…he just was.

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There you have it. The confessions of a Topps Look ‘n See non-sports bubble gum trading card kid. A kid who has grown from wimpy sub-teen to become wimpy octogenarian.

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An overgrown kid who still dreams of picking up a wooden stick, pointing to a certain part of a crowd-filled stadium, and whapping a homer right on target

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 © Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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TO TELL THE TOOTH

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THSHTH! THSHTH!

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Let me get this as right as I can…it’s difficult to spell the sound that my father used to make whenever he was caught without a toothpick.

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You’ll just have to get me to make that sound for you next time we meet, because THSHTH! is as close as I can come to reproducing it. That sound occurs when you suck air between two adjacent teeth in your mouth, but only when that space between those teeth has a food particle that needs to be cleared away.

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When my father made the THSHTH! sound, we knew he was feeling satisfied, that he was sated from a good home-cooked meal. He’d be driving along on the way to visit my Uncle Pat McGee in Peterson, Alabama, and I’d be in the front seat. In the rear seat would be my brother Tim. Every time my father made the THSHTH! sound, Tim would loudly imitate it.

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To this day, I don’t know whether Dad was so used to making the sound that he didn’t know he was being mocked, or whether he was the most tolerant man in the universe. Any ordinary person might have pulled off the side of the road and popped Tim one, but Dad just refused to acknowledge Tim’s noises.

.

This, of course, just egged Tim on. He’d do additional things in the back seat, such as imitate the expressions and comments that our neighbor Edgar Beatty would come out with. He mimicked phrases that Uncle Adron Herrin used—in exact imitation, by the way. I never was good at imitations, so to this day I marvel at Tim’s uncanny ability to create humor out of just about anything he finds funny or scary.

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All through the years, I stop short when anybody around me makes anything like that THSHTH! noise—and, of course, lots of people do.

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Everybody seems to have their little sounds and oral punctuations that unconsciously pop out. Hums, sighs, whistles, grunts, tooth-clicking, neck-cricking, tsking, snorting, groaning, hacking, swallowing loudly, lip-popping, gurgling, sneezing, throat-clearing, sinus-blowing, whispering, muttering, and on and on.

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Wouldn’t it be horribly wonderful if we could get a group of people together, willing to reproduce their own personally-developed sounds, and perform some sort of symphony? A noisy pantomime representing all the daily little ejections of delight and frustration that emanate from us, all the little and big wordless pronouncements…we could perform them in such a way that the listener will be able to hear and appreciate—and even understand—the import and usefulness of these silly tiny things we utter.

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Those THSHTH! sounds my father made had great meaning and significance in our little neighborhood, and we the family could no more have done without them than without food.

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We silently knew those sounds were the assurances we received each day that for a few ticks in time, the head of the family was satisfied and happy with the moment, and, thus, so were we

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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AN ARMORY OF HAND-MADE QUILTS

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A childhood memory…

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I am as safe and snug as any kid could ever be.

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I know I am safe and secure because my body weighs twice as much as normal at this moment.

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My body is so heavy because it is covered with massively layered hand-made quilts and coverlets and sheets and blankets. I am immobile beneath these sweet-smelling shields, lying atop a padded mattress in the small bedroom of youth.

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The night is icy cold, but I am safe. That’s about all that matters at the moment.

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I have been lovingly hugged and tucked in, a Woody Woodpecker night light secures the perimeter, a Treasure Island comic book hides beneath the mattress next to a camouflage-green Boy Scout flashlight. In case of insomnia, be prepared.

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I feel cozy and burrowed. I take for granted the care and nurturing of family. I assume tonight is going to spawn forever nights like this. I presume immortality.

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This cocooned moment makes me feel nothing bad can possibly happen. It’s as though the universe is wrapped around me, making its limits clear. There is no way I can fall out of bed, blow away in a storm, no way I can become untethered.

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Now and then, throughout life, I recall this momentary feeling. If only I could carry this assuredness, this bravery, with me. I could strut with confidence, brush aside doubts and demons, pass along this bluster to others, become some kind of kindly example.

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I hold fast to memories like this because sometimes they are the only grab bars I can depend on.

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I need to be prepared for days when I forget how safe I felt that night beneath the gentle armor of love and quilting

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 © Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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ONLY ONE PERCHANCE PER DREAM, PLEASE

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How would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar?

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Long, long ago we Down South village playmates used to dream about doing things like star-swinging and moonbeam-toting.

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Dreams were our main source of entertainment. We daydreamed, night dreamed, imagined the impossible, explored the corners of the universe without moving an inch.

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Grownups respected our outrageous imaginations. They couldn’t ground us for thinking and dreaming, so they let us run wild inside.

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After all, they were kids like us just a couple of decades earlier.

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Grownups even understood that dreams could become nightmares at times. They were there to comfort us in the feverish wee hours of the morning.

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One nightmare:

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Cold steel-blue flames are swooping over a field across the street from our home, the field we play in each day.

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But in this nervous dream the fire does not produce heat. I am in the field, running through those cold steel-blue flames, trying to escape. But escape from what? Escape to where? How will I know when I’m safe from the flames? Since the flames are harmless, why am I running from them? Should I stop and embrace the flames, respect the flames, learn to live within the flames?

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I am panicky. I scream.

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I awaken to the humid world into which I was delivered just a few years ago.

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Cool hands check my brow. Large loving adults soothe me and tuck me in.

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My unfettered imagination is once again safely anchored, allowing me time to recuperate and prepare for capturing future moonbeams in jars.

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The moonbeams become fireflies, so I release them back to their world after a while. After all, they were here long before me. They will be here long after I myself become a dream.

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Maybe by then I’ll learn how to swing on a star

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Listen:  https://youtu.be/pHvB7Wde1g8

Life, actually…

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TO BE YOUNG  AND SMALL AND SWEET

AND DANCING ON AIR ONCE MORE

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The petite bookstore visitor pauses and stares and vibrates before a tall stack of previous-century volumes that await shelving.

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She delicately touches textured spines, at the same time swaying slightly to the gentle jazz emanating from an old record player behind the books.

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She does not notice whether she’s keeping time with the books or the music. They both seem the same to her.

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She dances in-place, unnoticed by surrounding elsewhere-entranced browsers. She is noticed only by the shop owner who glances up from his work now and then to see whether she is remaining in the moment.

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A glimpse later and she’s gone, absorbed by the aisles of paginated lives once lived, lives now ambered within time capsules.

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Another customer leans against tall shelving, intensely examining each and every page of a title she is considering. Yet another peruser lies afloor on his side, closely thumbing through bottom rows of old brittle 78rpm recordings, recordings he must and will own before exiting onto sunny streets.

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Visitors arrive and wonder and leave, some alone, others in clusters, still others in a daze. Some know they’ve experienced a living distant past. Some are clueless but marveling at what they have experienced. Some are along for the ride, not sure what they just missed.

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The shop owner plies his trade with a silent smile, grateful for this small life among dreamers and their books. He wishes each purchase a long and respected existence, he wishes each purchaser a long and respected existence.

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And later, when he closes up for the day, he will retire to his ancient home to write down his memories, dreams, reflections…and will dare to share some of them with you

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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