Listen to Jim’s podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/macysghostclerksinvade.mp3

or read his transcript below: 

Here is a five-years-ago page from my Deep South Red Clay Diary. It seems worthy of re-visitation. Maybe you, like me, hate to go shopping for new clothing. On the other hand, if you are a happy shopaholic, you probably at least know somebody as grumpy as I, hopelessly unstylish and fashionably unconscious. 

Ghost Clerks Invade the Aching Feet Treatment Center

I used to be an unreconstructed creature of habit, but now that I am of a certain advanced age, a new realization has come upon me.

Now my habits have habits.

And speaking of habits, even the clothes I don each day look something like nuns’ habits—-dark blazer over dark shirt above dark trousers anchored by dark shoes. I don’t have a particularly wise and witty reason for wearing black all the time. It just seems easier to match everything, easier to minimize my blobby girth. I don’t have to expend energy and time figuring out what I will wear today.

Anyhow, eventually even I—the guy who pays no attention to clothing—realize that my jacket is looking frayed and feeling poorly. So I make the long-dreaded trek to Macy’s to see whether the chain still carries a clone of the coat I’ve worn to a frazzle.

My fantasy is simple: I won’t even have to try on anything. I’ll just walk briskly to the Men’s Department, show the lining label to a clerk, and say, “I’d like to order two more of these, please.”

But you know and I know that nothing is ever as simple as it is. Everything is more complicated than it is. Everything costs more than it does.

I enter Macy’s and suddenly feel as if I’m in a haunted-house movie. Well-dressed clerks are scattered about, each maintaining a post in a specific department, each customerless, each staring straight ahead with pleasantness frozen on their faces just in case a supervisor wanders by for a pleasant-expression inspection.

What daydreams may come to these clerks, what soreness of foot and aching of back syndromes do they endure?

After a lifetime of encountering clerks from every walk of life, after decades of chatting with them and listening carefully to what they say aloud to one another, I have learned this: No matter how pleasant or dismissive or distracted they look, each one is glancing at the clock in anticipation of the next recess, the lunch break, the shift-ending hour. Each is hoping to be somewhere else as soon as possible.

The male clerk destined to assist me is pleasant, business-like, and robotic. I’ve never yet had a salesperson say, “Gee, that looks like crap on you. Don’t buy it—people will laugh.”

The clerk knows this silent truth, I know this to be so, thus I have to make my own judgement about whether I should purchase this jacket or that jacket. I’m always fortunate when Liz is able to accompany me and provide some feedback. Left up to me, I would buy the first thing I see (and I often do that), just to escape Robotics Land.

I make a selection, in the process learning that men’s clothing departments no longer offer alterations. I have to take my three-inches-too-long-sleeved blazer to another store that specializes in tailoring. The entire process takes an hour, not counting the return visit I will make to pick up the altered item.

See? As Liz Reed always says, “Everything takes longer than it does.”

In my 3 a.m. wide-awake insomniac meanderings, I add to my TO DO LIST: Send each Macy’s clerk a gift packet containing Epsom Salts, dark chocolate, aspirin and a thank-you note reading, “Be of good cheer. We’ve all been there, and you will get through this.”

The clerks won’t know what the heck that means, but at least I’ll feel better

© Jim Reed 2021 A.D.

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DODGING THOSE GERMY GERMS

The book browser leans forward, just inches from my face, and tells me all about the books he would love to find in the shop. Normally an enthusiastic exchange like this is pleasurable. But today it is frightening.

I suddenly realize that each time he speaks, he lowers his COVID mask so that I can hear him clearly. Each time he pauses to listen, he returns the mask to its secure position. I back away and hide behind a poster, as if I have something important to do. I have not yet learned how to diplomatically suggest that he keep his face covered. He is oblivious to the problem.

Another browser likes to tell delightful stories, but I have no idea what he’s saying because my attention is riveted. As he speaks, his mask slowly descends, revealing lower nose, then nostrils, then upper lip, then entire mouth, until nothing is safe but his double chin. He is unaware.

One customer walks briskly in, completely maskless, so focused that she only later realizes what she’s done. Embarressed, she covers face with hand and quickly gropes for a mask.

As time goes by, I become braver and more outspoken. I call attention to my concern by saying things like:

“Oops. Did you forget your mask?”

“Uh…if you don’t have a mask, we have a supply behind the counter.”

“I’m trying to avoid endangering my family, so that’s why I wear this mask.”

Most of the time, people respond without being asked, simply by noticing that I’m all masked up. Often, they apologize.

At the beginning of this pandemic, a rough-hewn family of seven enters the shop, no sign of masks.  This time, I just stay behind the counter, since no-one else is present. It is obvious that they are not there to buy books–just need to wander about, then leave. They don’t seem to be from around here. My cowardly behavior makes me vow never to remain silent again.

But on the other hand, I never want to be that old guy who yells, “Put on your mask!” or “Get off my lawn!”

Times are different now. I can see those danged COVID germs scattering themselves everywhere. Ducking doesn’t help. Wishing is useless. Posting notices creates a negative atmosphere. So, I just pleasantly and firmly–sometimes with humor–help folks cover up. Some, I have to instruct, since they don’t know that a bare nose is part of the problem.

Way back in the 1940s and 50s, when Nature and I were learning to negotiate the terms of my future life, I heard about germs at school and at home. For a while I thought that I could actually see the critters. So, when washing up, I pretended I was sending them to germ heaven, down the drain to a land they would understand.

Maybe staying ahead of germs is what got me from way back then to right now.

Or maybe I’m just plain lucky.

Mainly, I don’t want to be part of a preventable problem to others, so my life as a masked bookdealer is becoming a thing now.

It could be that masks will be all the fashion rage for years to come

© 2021 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/yUpXQVBTcuA

or read the transcript below:

THE SECRET LIFE OF OLD BOOKS

The seventy-year-old greeting card spins itself out of an old book I am opening. It falls gracefully to the floor of the shop. I bend to pick it up, forgetting for a moment the volume from which it escapes.

It’s a pink and lavender card all prettied up with a sleeping kitten, a vase of spring flowers, and spritely accents. It reads, HAPPY BIRTHDAY Daughter DEAR.

I can’t help but open this evocative little keepsake. My interest in the book wanes. What could possibly be inside this personally-addressed communique?

The printed verse is  perfect for the time in which it materializes. “Just as you’ve fulfilled our dreams, And made them all come true, We hope your future, Daughter, dear, Will do the same for you!”

Clearly signed in ink, “Love Mother (over).”

“Over” means that seventy years ago people actually wrote extended notes inside cards, on the blank page you find by unfolding it completely.

Here, in bold cursive script, is this particular message:

“Dear Virginia! Sugar I didn’t forget your Birthday but it is kinda hard for me to do things that I need to get around to. I am sending a Xmas pkg. I hope you want open it I dont know your new address but hope you get it O.K. I know you all are enjoying your new home. I hope you all have a merry Xmas. Write to me–I love you–Mother.”

I re-fold the card to its original form. I regard it as a tiny treasure long forgotten and squirreled away within the pages of a forgotten novel. I wonder what happened to the well-loved daughter who received it. I hope that her remaining friends and family recall her and her mom fondly. I hope somebody someday finds this cheerful little love note inside this old book. I hope it will endure as a marker.

As I acquire books of olde for my library, for my bookshop, I am careful to fan all pages for notes and keepsakes and notations and secret messages.

I should be satisfied enough with simply preserving and enjoying each book that finds its way to me. But in the process of examination and cherishing, what lies within becomes important, too.

Judging each book by its cover hardly even begins the treasure hunt that awaits me

© 2021 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary on youtube: https://youtu.be/GjUhMuK-ldc

or read the actual diary below:

MEAGER GRUEL VS HIGH MORAL FIBER CEREAL

Sometimes I think that who I am today is a result of all those thousands of childhood breakfasts that boosted all those thousands of childhood mornings.

“Rise and shine, rise and shine!” That’s my mom peeking through the morning bedroom door at zombielike me aslumber on the top bunk. Brother Ronny below me wriggles awake, younger and more eager to embrace the morning.

I drop to the cool hardwood floor, dodging sunlight until my eyes adjust to the brightness of yet another day.

Ronny darts to the bathroom first while I search dresser drawers for clean trousers. I rub my eyes awake and head for the kitchen, the metallic creak of the hallway floor furnace grating croaking a Hello! Ouch! to bare feet.

The tiny kitchen already exudes the fragrances of the day, since Dad has already risen with the sun, broken his fast, and headed off to work, tin lunchbox atow.

Mom’s singsong voice creates the best part of the morning, “Let a little sunshine in, let a little sunshine in…open wide the windows, open wide the doors, and let a little sunshine in!”

Two cereal boxes beckon from the dining room table. Raisin Bran and Wheaties initiate my education at the moment. Perry’s Pride Homogenized Pasteurized milk bottles bring  dried flakes to life. The wrinkled raisins puff up, and reading and eating begin.

I take in the super-sports-hero blurbs before me, simultaneously searching for sugar cubes. Buttered grits are making their way to plastic place mats while sister Barbara joins the three of us with a pan of sinfully luring bacon.

Crunch and munch and slurp are accompanied by toasted light bread, and apple jelly is sure to follow.

Eating breakfast is just not eating breakfast without all those informative ads.

I avidly read milk bottle, jelly jar label, margarine wrapper, place mat inspirational slogan. Marveling over mysterious phrases, making a note to look up words seen for the first time, I am informing myself in the comfort of a loving home, learning my lessons without stern teacher overlords, getting excited just by bouncing about inside my own young imagination.

The kitchen table textbooks shamelessly promote themselves, making even federally-mandated contents disclosure an adventure.

Today, as an adult in these times, I still wonder why some people see mealtime as a meager gruel ordeal while others equate high fiber breakfast fare with high moral fiber.

As a writer of words, as a storyteller of tales, I have learned never to assume that what I am thinking or feeling or fearing or enjoying is beyond important enough to share. Each moment from childhood to geezerhood seems too precious to squander.

The fun I experience while sharing my tiny anecdotes with you is worth expressing. I hope that you are encouraged to make sure the split seconds of your life are cherished while the cherishing is still worth cherishing.

And I wish you many high moral fiber mornings

© 2021 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s podcast:  https://youtu.be/e9KrmDJ5uvE

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JUST THE WRONG WORD AT JUST THE RIGHT TIME

I am idly scrawling, penknife-sharpened number-two pencil tightly clutched.

Even at this early age—a few generations back in time— I am an aimless writer of words. I note things I notice in this long-ago childhood southern village.

Even though my home back then is a modest bungalow, my parents tightly budgeted and careful about things like providing ample food and shelter for us kids, I am never in need of paper and pencil.

My masterly thoughts pour forth onto the backs of discarded family utility bills, advertising flyers, cancelled household checks, envelopes, whatever is handy. I live in a home where filling time with doodling and drawing and composing and reading is approved behavior.

Words and phrases are appearing on the page beneath my hunched-over frame. “I declare.” “I swan!” “I swanee.” “Sho’nuff.”

I like these words because they explain themselves, no dictionary needed. When Aunt Ann laughingly says “I declare!” it is clear that she is expressing amazement at something she just heard. Amazement and maybe a bit of disapproval.

When Uncle Brandon says “I swanee!” I know he’s basically substituting a phrase for something more colorful. Because he is around us little ones, his generation does not allow him to use profanity. He saves that for hunting trips with his buddies.

Every time Uncle Pat shouts “Sho’nuff!” I suppose that he is stifling a more dramatic phrase.

I make notes to verify all this someday when I become a full-grown scholar.

When someone says “Yikes!” it is immediately clear that amazement and humor are being conjoined.

When Mother says, “This ain’t the way you do that!” with a smile on her face, she is purposely using slang to make a point. She corrects us when we say ain’t, because she wants us to understand that her hero, Will Rogers, only used this word to elicit chuckles. In his newspaper columns, he employed both correct and incorrect expressions to make a point…and to let us know he knew better.

So, just sitting here bent over scraps of paper, getting ready to re-sharpen a number two pencil, I have already, this early in the day, learned a few things:

Different expressions, different dialects, can be tailored for appropriate audiences.

Surprisingly ungrammatical words become grammatical for a moment, mainly for effect.

A sense of humor can be used to teach harmless lessons, to gain attention, to force an unexpected laugh.

Some decades upon decades later, when I am setting down these thoughts for you, I smile at myself and realize that the world is still open for examination and subject to kindly criticisms and gentle corrections.

I may not be a world-famous writer, but my satisfaction comes from the momentary break in the day I bring to readers who could certainly use it in times like these.

I declare, it ain’t so bad, is it

© 2021 A.D. by Jim Reed