Listen to Jim’s audio podcast (3 minutes)

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/tinklingattheneighborhooddiner.mp3

or read his story below…

TINKLING AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD DINER

Here I go again, digging down into piles of forgotten red clay diary entries from almost thirty years ago. HERE’S ONE: Looks like I jotted this down just about the time cellphones were beginning to take over the daily lives of us somnambulists. Well, we were somnambulists up until the time all of us became drones in an enormous humming hive of portable electronic devices. See if this stirs a memory or two…

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

I turn my head right and left to see where this ringy-rattly sound is coming from.

It is not a sound to be ignored. It requires action. Maybe.

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

My racing brain tries to determine whether a fire needs putting out, whether a door needs answering, whether a phone should be answered…

Suddenly, Billybobjimmyjack, the guy at the next booth, answers his cellphone.

We’re in the neighborhood diner, having breakfast.

I’m here in the diner to gain some meditative equilibrium in preparation for the daily doings at work. I have to assume that Billybobjimmyjack does not come here for the same purpose, since his breakfast is hardly meditative. Or quiet.

“SHELLO!”

Billybobjimmyjack mushes through his mouthful. He’s talking to the phone. “I’M EATIN’ BREAKFAST!” he says resonantly for the whole room to hear. “I’LL TALK TO YOU LATER,” he says, and disconnects, slamming the phone on the table.

I sink philosophically back into the op-ed page of the daily wrapper and resume enjoying my ham-and-eggs-and-grits breakfast.

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

Billybobjimmyjack says “HELLO,” since his mouth is temporarily bereft of southern penicillin (grits) and his voice is aboom once again.

“YEAH, I’M EATIN’ BREAKFAST! I’LL CALL YOU BACK.”

Slam.

Billybobjimmyjack is from a generation that reasons you have to shout into a phone because the person at the other end of the exchange is so far away.

This goes on a total of four times, each jangling of the phone jangling my nerves and causing my grits to go cold. Grits, as any gritslover knows, are no damned good if they are cold.

Don’t knock this bit of wisdom if you’ve never had grits. And when you do eat them, make sure you start off properly. They must be served steaming hot with a big puddle of butter in the center and unreasonably thick layers of salt and pepper atop. Go ahead, try it. If you like it you can add other stuff to taste, such as garlic and cheese.

Back to Billybobjimmyjack. Yes, we must bring closure to this anecdote.

Why did he bother to bring his phone into the diner, display it in plain view next to the catsup and pepper sauce and toothpick holder, if he didn’t intend to talk to anyone while eating?

Now he’s got to return four phone calls after he gets into his car, and you know what that will do to his digestive tract. Four incoming, four outgoing…double the pleasure, double the stress, a stomach full of cold grits.

Next time I spy Billybobjimmyjack at the diner, I plan to present him with a little gift of Pepto-Bismol. Or maybe I’ll just leave it on his windshield wiper outside and run like the dickens.

That way, I’ll be safe and he’ll find relief that can never come from receiving four and returning four totally necessary but annoying grits-chilling calls even before his workday begins

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/feelinggoodallunder.mp3

or read his stuff below…

FEELING GOOD ALL UNDER

 A 20-year-ago note just tumbled from the Red Clay Diary. Haven’t thought about this for a long, long time…so let’s see how these thoughts hold up and ring true…

Once a week, the laundry freshly done and most things in their place, I pick out the newest pair of underpants and slide them on. As the week progresses or regresses, I put on a fresh pair each day (yes, I do take off the used pair before doing so) and try to face the world with undergirdings bolstering a flagging confidence.

You know what happens next, of course. By the end of the week and through the weekend, I run out of the newest pairs and start digging down into the drawer for older, slightly ragged shorts until, at last, by Monday I am starting the week off with underwear that is holy but not righteous, as my mother used to say.

The pair I’m wearing now is the most tattered I own, since laundry is a day late.

Now just suppose that this is all metaphoric, and just suppose that the state of my underwear is roughly equivalent to my state of mind and level of energy?

What would happen if I began the week wearing the raggedest underwear and progressively turned to newer pairs as the week waned? Would my attitude be thus affected, would I be saving my high-self-esteem underwear for the most worn-down and wearisome part of the week—thus giving me an extra boost to make it crawling through Saturday night toward the Day of Rest?

Maybe, if this works, I will no longer find myself sitting in my ragged underwear on my favorite equally ragged easy-chair on Sunday afternoon, staring into space and dozing, trying to rev up my juices for the week ahead.

The secret of life-energy may be in here somewhere.

I mean, don’t we all still believe in magic, and isn’t that why we keep on getting up in the morning and trying to tackle each day anew with the idea that there’s just got to be something better about this dawn?

Without this magic-potion kind of thinking, we’re just another bunch of trembling primitives waiting to  be run over by life, and taken to the emergency room with—horror of horrors—ragged underwear

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/jottingdowntheimaginaryinvisibles.mp3

or read his diary here:

JOTTING DOWN THE IMAGINARY INVISIBLES

 Underneath a scraggly neighborhood tree, the tree that drops small red berries, berries impossible to eat but just perfect for squeezing and squirting red streaks across face and body during playtime war games, I sit. I sit here beneath the branches and leaves and whittle a bit with my Hopalong Cassidy penknife…whittle a small loose branch…whittle nothing in particular…whittle away, watching the wood decrease in size…whittle and whittle, leaving notches here and there as token memories of this childhood day that is passing so rapidly, so rapidly.

The notches on the shrinking wood represent things of utmost importance in my thus-far short life, way back here in the early times of youthful existence.

This notch next to my left thumb represents the recent departure of my two best friends, Monk and Deebie. You were unable to see them because they were visible only to me. We had great times together but now they exist as a notch and a deep memory.

A longer notch honors my baby brother, Ronny, who is at last old enough to be my daily playmate and fellow conspirator. Ronny will show up soon and sit next to me beneath the red berry tree. He will search for four-leaf clovers while my mind meanders notch by notch.

Many years later, when Ronny and I are ancient grownup children living far apart, we will reminisce and fondly cherish these days when there is for a moment nothing more important than juicy berries and pocket knives and shards of wood and patches of shade and four-leaf clovers.

As we age and mellow, our memories of childhood will become more vivid, more detailed, more nuanced. And we will come to realize that we were lucky, so lucky, to have been children protected by parents and family and neighbors and relatives…protected just enough so that for a short and precious time, we could safely deploy our vivid imaginations, gently express our best intentions, take time to smell the Johnson grass and red dirt, spend aimless hours observing spiders and ants and worms and crickets and frogs as they wended their way through the quiet and unpolluted landscape.

Nowadays, instead of whittling my memories, I jot them down in this Red Clay Diary, where they will exist until someone finds them and reads them or discards them. That’s the way it goes, this stuffing bottles full of notes and tossing them into the cosmos. They might survive. They might be lost. They might evaporate. But, so what? The greatest pleasure has already been experienced, the pleasure of re-living good times in memory ever fresh, the pleasure of taking a moment to relish the fact that, among the chaos of daily living through the years, there were and are good things, things worth grasping and mulling over and clinging to…and passing along to you, the next whittler

(c) Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/bornbeneaththepapermillmist.mp3

or read his tale…

Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa…they are forever linked in memory by the fact that both places mean Home to me. Here’s a page that slipped from my Red Clay Diary this morning…an entry from five years back…