Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/s8quNZnyh3g

or read on…

Deep South Tales Both Actual and True

Who isn’t present at last Friday’s family reunion?

I wander among the relatives and semi-relatives scattered about the room, looking deep into eyes that sometimes match my genes, my kinships.

This annual gathering of people whose lives overlap with mine is comforting and glad, poignant and sad, funny and…well, a bit of everything.

Each year, there are more children, each year there are fewer oldtimers, each year, last year’s young’uns have grown a bit older, each year I marvel at the mysteries of birth and death, the rambunctious progression of wrinkles and wry humor, that characterize this family.

Each year, someone present last year is now missing.

Each reunion makes me want to go back and visit in three dimensions the good times of yesteryear.

But this is the only way I know how to visit: I write down my memories in order to keep alive the good people, the good times.

This is one of many memories recorded in my Red Clay Diary:

HOW MANY Z’S IN ZZZZZ?

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ….

I’m lying abed in this small plaster-ceilinged bedroom I share with brother Ronny.

The time is longer ago than you might remember, or maybe even before you were born.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ….

It is just after sunrise. I am slowly drifting back and forth between slumber and wakefulness. Dreams are fading into daydreams. Reality is creeping in to take over.

My ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s are turning into snorts, then into eyes wide open…

In the living room, the Sunday newspaper comic strips await.

The comics are everything on Sunday morning. That’s where I learn what those ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s mean. They are shorthand for Sleeping Soundly.

When a comic strip cartoonist wants me to know that a character is asleep or dozing, a row of ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s informs me. When a cartoon bubble hovering above Little Orphan Annie’s head is dripping tiny closed circles, I know that this is what Annie is thinking, not what she is saying aloud. And so on.

I idly wonder how many Z’s are grammatically proper.

But I’m lying here in my bunk bed, now fully awake but hoping that if I can visualize those ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s floating above my head, I can convince anyone peeking into the room that I am still asleep. Can’t they see the Z’s?

It doesn’t work, this attempt to make palpable a cartoonist’s Morse code. I try to pretend sleep, but older sister Barbara opens the door a crack to call me to breakfast. “I see your eyelids moving. You’re awake!” she grins gleefully. I can never fool Barbara.

I swat away the floating ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s and dangle my feet over the side of the mattress. I’m on the top bunk, so part of becoming fully awake is the jolt to the system that I feel when I leap into the vast space between here and hardwood floor.

Time to pretend I’m awake for another day. Time to do little kid things that little kids do on Sunday mornings.

Time to find the Sunday paper and discover what Dagwood is doing—is he asleep on the couch under ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s? What about The Phantom—does he ever sleep? And Snuffy Smith? I know he knows all about Z’s, as does Pappy Yokum. As does brother Ronny on the bottom bunk. They are my kind of people.

To this day, many decades later, I envy those people, real-lifed and cartooned, who know how to catch a few ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s any time they please. Or at least any time their cartoonist so deems.

Or any time sister Barbara isn’t looking

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/0zTgM_tAog0

or read his words below:

EXCAVATING HOPE FROM THE RUINS OF FALLEN DREAMS

A scrawny pedestrian hikes the wilds of the chaos city.

He leans into the warmed-over breeze, backpack causing him to chug forward at slug pace.

He holds a very long unopened umbrella in his left hand, ever ready to draw it from ragged scabbard with right hand, should foe or prey appear.

Like a bow hunter, he darts his vision side to side, up and down, wary of feral surroundings in the downtown traffic.

As he passes by the old book store, I the proprietor observe him and wonder whether he’s ever read a book voluntarily, whether he has ever found pleasure in writing or ingesting inscribed paper thoughts. The scrawny man sideglances and acknowledges me, but maintains his errant pace.

Setting out the OPEN sign for morning customers, I look at the sky above old towers and wonder what else the day will bring.

Before I can re-enter the shop, another figure hobbles by, this time a ragtag woman walking gingerly in tiny steps as if her feet are bound, her heels forcing her to tread carefully. She, too, acknowledges me but sallies forth. Her elsewhere destination is everything.

I retreat to the security of my shop and await door chimes that will announce visitors.

Next to enter are curiosity shoppers who troll the stacks in wonder, pulling volumes both ancient and modern, touching them, experiencing the weight and textures that virtual hand-held devices don’t deliver.

It is as if the shoppers are re-discovering three-dimensional reality in stark contrast to the flat screen images dominating most waking moments.

Other browsers soon arrive, some finding comfort in the existence of books loved in childhood, others gawking and appreciating near-forgotten long-lost storybooks.

Researchers and scholars and wanderers fill the day and weave past passers-by on the way to coffee across the street, on their way to fair trade objects from afar at the shop next door. On their way with book in hand to unearth what else is worth seeing in the excavated ruins of the city.

The day is filled with stories told loudly by some, stories held close and monosyllabic by others, stories in the process of being created, stories spilling over and mingling with stories lying in wait within the books.

The scrawny hunter and the hobbled woman people my thoughts. In imagination unfettered, they mingle with my customers and enjoy their company. In imagination most hopeful, these explorers and warriors find peace and camaraderie with one another.

The stragglers of the city streets are my family, the browsers my foster children, the friends and strangers alike my motivators.

At end of day, I close shop and make journey homeward, part of me in need of rest and recoup, another part of me wondering with high expectation what tomorrow will bring, what Tomorrow People will be like, what adventures I will have with these real and imaginary wisps

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

WEBSITE

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/iu6MNvxvxSg

or read on…

THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT

Children of the Deep South Soil, this is a special report from one Village Elder.

See whether you can immerse yourself in these flashes of long ago joys. See whether you will be inspired to file away and cherish your own lifetime extension of happy treasures.

Everything I say is true and actual.

Driving west from Birmingham, I pass by a ramshackle breezeway home where one wizened whittler quietly shapes his lap sculpture on porch steps, pausing only a moment to look at me and wave a smile before I disappear into the red bug ladybug mist. 

Further on, the West Blocton exit illuminates vivid times where deep inside I still play on Rose Lane, birthplace of my father. The family house is gone now, but part of me is still running around the backyard, next in line to use the outhouse.

Tuscaloosa approaches, and there I am suddenly standing barefoot on clay, recalling times when kinfolk still lived in a breezeway dogtrot house on the North River. I can still taste crystal water dipped from the front yard well, feel its coolness, experience the nurturing of people genetically connected to me.

Good times and fond memories during my time here on Planet Three bounce all over the place.

On the way to T Town, there is the Brookwood exit, where the hope and play of childhood remembers me as a tad adventuring into the woods of Peterson. Nearby homes of grandparents and cousins are my tether, guaranteeing I won’t be lost for long during tiny explorations.

The Birmingham to Tuscaloosa Breezeway Dogtrot memory machine is merrily out of control.

Somewhere hereabouts is Hurricane Creek, where water moccasins and giggly girlfriends play side by side during weekend picnics. Not too far away is Lock 13, a marvel of technology and noise and clanking metals.

All these places intermingle in my childhood playground, and it’s good to call on them when I need to escape the computerized and politicized world for a bit.

Sometimes I recall them, sometimes they recall me right back.

If you can imagine my extensive and erratic Alabama lifespan as a plot of land, you could measure it from Cuba on the Mississippi border to western Jefferson County, from north Birmingham and Northport to Montevallo just south of here.

My forays outside this region are instructive, but there is never any place anything like sweet home Deep South Alabama.

And home is where I still dip into the past to dredge up washboard roads, fossils jutting from chalky riverbanks, sputtering swimmers at play, rolled-down windows, stick shift roadsters, long rope swings, barbed wire fences, pines and scraggly bushes, teetering tree houses, corrugated tin roofs, makeshift bows and arrows, wandering hobos, haunting train whistles, arrowheads here and there, infinitely observable ant beds, penny candy, sparklers and fireflies in the dusk, mysterious attics and damp basements, whispery gossip and tall tales, pet frogs, yodeling playmates, bubblegum cards, and always and forever the homebase, the center of the known universe, my family, my bunk bed, my endless dreams at the end of hard play days.

You children of the Deep South soil, cherish what time you have, pay attention to the tales of elders, protect the young’uns, and hold fast to your fond memories. They might come in handy here and there, now and then

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed