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LIFE, ACTUALLY

VALLEY OF THE TRAINS

No matter where I go in this urban village, railroad tracks crisscross my path. Wherever I am, there is soon to be a train rumbling along this way or that way. So many laid-steel pathways are bisecting my travels that I no longer pay much attention to them.

But the trains cannot be ignored. They have been around so long that just a lone, low-pitched whistle can trigger a memory.

Here in the Valley, each train’s passing is echoed. Each foghorn blast bounces off foothills and echoes somewhere in my head.

Lying abed in the wee hours, I can hear the dinosaur howl that startles memory and imagination. I close my eyes and imagine that the southbound-westbound engines are pulling their mysterious graffiti decorated boxcars through Jefferson County toward Tuscaloosa and Meridian and New Orleans and beyond.

I recall a long-ago youth who imagined that he could hop a freight and take off to climes unknown and adventures unpredicted and have the time of his life.

So, the trains and tracks are always present, permanent leftovers from a time when the valley bustled with iron and coal and steelmaking and smokestacks a-billowing.

As a grown-up, I am annoyed when a slow-moving behemoth causes me to pause in my self-important journey. But, as the Youth still inside me mutters, “Yes, but imagine what’s in those linked cars, guess what kinds of people are staring at me as I stare back at their passing faces. Marvel at the lives of engineers and porters and maintainers who keep the monster revved up and running.”

I smile and enjoy the moment, roll down my window to take in the clanging and howling and friction squeal of metal against metal. I watch the precariously stacked top-heavy vehicles roll along, balancing the tightwire. I hope against hope that the next wreck never occurs.

Later, I pause and park on a bridge, gaze down at the tracks and trains below, puzzle over signs and symbols and switchings galore, and pretend that perhaps one of these days I will all-aboard and begin a journey unlike any other journey, not knowing where I am headed or where I will wind up.

It would be nice to take a deep meditative breath and appreciate the ride

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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LIFE, ACTUALLY

FEELING GOOD ALL UNDER

Every Tuesday morning, the laundry freshly done and most things in their place, I pick out the newest pair of undershorts in the drawer 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 strong and white 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 Ma used to say.

The pair I am wearing now is the most tattered I own, since the 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 one Tuesday morning 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 on Sunday?

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 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 eaten or run over, and taken to the emergency room with—horror of horrors—ragged underwear

(an entry from Jim’s Red Clay Diary, first published in his 1998 book, DAD’S TWEED COAT Small Wisdoms, Hidden Comforts, Unexpected Joys)

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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The daily journey from sunrise to sunrise is filled with

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/LZ-MCZ3Swcg

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HALF A LIFETIME AWAY IN SEVENTH HEAVEN

Eldest grand-daughter Jessica is somewhere adrift in her thirties, but in the pages of my Red Clay Diary, she is at the moment a couple of decades younger. We are getting ready to prepare dinner together.

Here are my notes. 

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, observing Jessica. She’s 13 years old these days, and 13-year-olds must be watched and carefully considered, since time passes so fast and before you know it a 13-year-old will be dozens of years older, and you won’t have any idea where the time went, where the moment went, where that 13-year-old got off to.

Jessica is sitting at the table in front of four soup bowls, or maybe they’re salad bowls, only they don’t contain soup or salad. Into one bowl she has crumbled up a bunch of Ritz Crackers, another bowl contains milk, another is filled with flour and the fourth holds several eggs she has whisked together into a sunshiny blend. She’s had me cut up a lot of de-boned chicken breasts into nugget-sized hunks–the only way to do it, she insists.

Over on the stove, the wok awaits usage, since Jessica instructs me not to turn the heat on till she’s through doing what she’s doing at the table, which is: each hunk of chicken must be dipped one at a time into all four bowls, until the hunk looks kind of flaky and golden and quite raw. The process takes a while, but that’s OK because we’re chatting a little bit and she’s got the TV turned up high so she can watch and listen to one of her favorite shows–Seventh Heaven, or something like that.

Earlier, we’ve gone to Bruno’s Supermarket and bought everything on Jessica’s list: Chocolate chip mint ice cream, corn oil, pre-packaged salad (Jessica likes it because she says it doesn’t have to be washed and it’s already cut up. I wash it thoroughly, just in case somebody nicknamed Booger has not practiced good hygiene the day he packs the plastic bag.), frozen lima beans for microwave zapping, and whatever else Jessica has decreed for the ideal meal at home.

Process is important to Jessica. Everything must be done a specified way, a specific way, or the meal will be ruined. She’s a particularly finicky eater, so finding a meal that she’ll actually take seriously is tricky. She’d rather not eat at all than eat something she’s never tried and has made a firm decision against.

Anyhow, we get this meal cooked to Jessica’s satisfaction, and we even clean up the kitchen so that there will be no trace of the havoc we’ve caused in her father’s absence.

The deep-fried chicken nuggets are good–we’ve cooked about four times as much as we can eat. And we’re both somewhat satisfied with ourselves. She gets what she wants–a meal just like her Aunt Vikki cooks. I get what I want–a nice meal at home, not prepared by strangers, prepared with love and camaraderie. And I get the company of my grand-daughter.

We settle in to wait for her father’s return, watching this TV show she loves, Seventh Heaven,  and the night is quite all right, as nights on earth or in Seventh Heaven sometimes are

© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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LITTLE BIRDIES DO WHAT THEY CAN DO

An old wood frame home like ours, built in 1906, is an echo chamber. Each movement, each settling, each creaking stair, each dropped fork, is heard throughout the structure. Like a living being, this old house keeps us aware of what’s going on both inside and just outside, through sound and vibration.

Tonight, spasmodic fluttering within the downstairs fireplace indicates we have a visitor trapped behind a cast iron shield. I freeze in place, making sure the noise is not imagined. A second flutter is all that’s required…and there it is!

“I think we have an unwilling guest in the fireplace…probably dropped down the chimney,” I tell Liz. Her brow furrows with concern and she helps me verify the shuffling.

We’ve done this before. We drift into action. Liz retrieves a small blanket, I find a soft rubber-stoppered reacher we use to retrieve wandering objects.

We brush aside first concerns—fear of a panicked bird flying into our faces, fear that in the process of capture and release we might harm the critter, fear that a freed animal just might hole up someplace obscure and never be found. Things like that.

But, as age and experience kick in, we re-enter reality and know that we simply have to face this challenge and do what we can do.

I groan as I pull back the fireplace covering inch by inch, Liz stands ready with blanket, I clutch the reacher, the theory being that if I can capture the bird long-distance I won’t risk hurting it or being pecked,

Another inch and a large totally soot-black bird zooms past us and heads for the suddenly white sky above. Unfortunately, the sky is actually the high ceiling and little birdie bounces from room to room, confused that the heavens now have plaster limits.

Finally, as we follow this displaced creature, our hearts beating as fast as little birdie’s, it comes to rest on the kitchen floor just long enough to have a tossed blanket restrict its flight.

Liz gently holds the fluttering body through the blanket, takes it to the front yard next to the bird bath, and releases it to its homeland—the great urban outdoors.

“The bird didn’t move, but maybe it just needs to rest,” Liz says. We grin at each other, concerned about the future of little birdie, relieved that we can go to bed knowing that we at least tried.

Next morning, Liz reports the bird has disappeared, so we try to imagine its birdly existence has been guaranteed.

I drive to work, and a tune plays itself in my head:

“Little birdie, why you worry like you do?
Don’t you worry, you just do what you can do.”

It’s a love song by Vince Guaraldi, about a small yellow un-blackened bird named Woodstock. When trouble arises, don’t panic, just do what you can do, he seems to say.

Bye-bye, blackened bird.

You and Liz and I survived the evening.

We three just do what we can do

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

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