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.