Life, actually…

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RUNNING HOT AND COLD

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When life runs hot, I run cold.

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One good way to survive these oven days is to slip into some cool thoughts.

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Many years ago, my daughter Margaret and I figured out how to manage

our un-air-conditioned home in mid summer. We dug up some old Christmas music LPs and cassettes and pretended it was snowing.

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It got us through.

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So, here is a freezing frozen memory of our Deep South village, not that many Januarys ago…

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Dear Red Clay Diary,

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Last week seems like a week ago. Wait—it actually was a week ago.

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Remember how uncharacteristically cold it was in this Deep South city? How blindsided we all were when the Sunny South became a deep freeze? When short sleeves and toeless shoes suddenly seemed precisely the wrong things to wear?

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Here are crumpled notes I found in my pockets, once the temperature rose a bit:

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The cold day surrounding us tells its own story, while we attempt to survive being within the belly of this icy beast.

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Babies’ rosy cheeks become chapped.

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Out-of-shape adults walk the Tim Conway walk to avoid sprains and breaks.

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A woman sheds tears and wrings her hands out of fear that she won’t make it home to warmth and safety.

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Helpers appear magically out of nowhere, making themselves available to those of us who feel helpless.

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The snow cushions sounds and makes the world seem tranquil amid the chaos.

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Some stranded drivers decide to remain calm. Others panic. Others curse.

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Others just take notes for later stories.

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The Southern tradition of going barefoot suddenly seems a laughable concept.

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Visiting snowbird tourists wonder at The Sunny South they are seeing.

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Heroes abound: hospital and nursing home workers, firefighters, self-sacrificing motorists, teachers and school staff, good neighbors, police officers, 911 and Crisis Center operators, little kids rescuing little birds, city street workers.

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Caring instantly trumps Selfishness.

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What lessons did we learn from the Great Disruption?

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1. It doesn’t take much to bring out the best in some of us.

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2. It’s nice to know that people can be kind when given the opportunity.

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3. Strangers can became lifelong friends in just a few hours.

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4. Whether we like it or not, we do depend upon each other.

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There were more lessons learned. Can you add to this list?

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Perhaps it would be an uplifting exercise for all of us to compile a list of lessons learned.

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It could always be referred to next time we wonder what this world is coming to

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 © Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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Listen to Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/Rjs7gKIU36k

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or read his story…

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CAUGHT WHISTLING UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF LIFE

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Roy Rogers is standing horseless on the big white movie screen before me. I’m just a kid sitting in the darkened theatre, watching Roy’s every move.

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I munch my popcorn slowly, since I can only afford a small bag, since I must share it with brother Ronny, since there is only one watered-down cola drink between us.

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Roy-on-the-screen has just punched out a bad guy. Now he needs to rush to the defense of a far-off damsel in distress, but where is his pal Trigger? Roy wipes away the smudge on his cheek, grabs his white hat, and whistles loud and clear. From outside the screen, a beautiful palomino races to his side, barely slowing down as Roy hops astride. They gallop to the rescue to save the day.

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A whistle is all it took.

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Ronny and I sit through Roy’s movie a second time, impatiently tolerating the animated cartoon, endless previews of coming attractions, and episode six of an action-packed serial.

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I can’t wait till Roy whistles again, since I’ve never been able to whistle like that. My whistles are kind of under-the-breath affairs that don’t pierce the air. Whistles that never produce a golden horse with spangled saddle.

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Ronny and I step into blinding sunlight and head for the bus stop, knowing we have to be home by late afternoon. I whistle a tune much like the kind produced by Bing Crosby to accompany his songs. Ronny hums background music in imitation of the movie score.

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Bad guys and good guys alike are always backed up by dramatic music played, I suppose, by an orchestra just out of screen shot.

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Now it’s today, countless decades later, and I hear Roy’s whistle just out of screen shot. I am suddenly alert and turn to see a scaffold-high hard hatted workman signaling for the attention of his down-below assistant on a construction site.

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I start whistling under my breath in fond memory. As I enter the market, I whistle to accompany another man of a certain age who is whistling to himself in a nearby aisle.

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He and I and many other old-timers whistle so much we don’t even know it, much to the bemusement of shoppers and family.

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I remember my mother telling us kids that she heard my father long before she ever saw him. She would hear him whistling to himself in the neighborhood and wonder what he looked like. Apparently he passed muster and helped produce five children and a lifetime marriage with her.

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I became because of a whistle. Imagine that!

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When you hear an under-the-breath whistler whiling away the day, think kindly of me and my heroes: the workers, the shoppers, Roy Rogers, Tommy Reed, and all the other dudes who roam their imaginations while awaiting their golden stallions

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© 2022 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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ONE LITTLE GIRL, ONE MAGIC DOOR

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One magic wand is all she lacks this sunny morning.

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I’m in front of a certain pharmacy, one that sports these automatic sliding aluminum-and-glass doors. Doors that open and close depending upon who or what triggers the electric eye that never blinks.

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One person, and only one person, is transfixed by these sliding doors.

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The small girl standing inside the doorway has no inkling of what makes these doors open and close, so when she moves near them in order to go outside, they quickly and Star Trekkily whoosh open.

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She stops, gazes up at the doors in abject wonder and surprise. She backs away to get a better look.

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Backing away causes the doors to whoosh closed, thus making the little girl in the red dress freeze in her tracks in an attempt to figure things out.

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She’s temporarily unsupervised, so at this exact moment, she exists only in her self-made world and must bravely use her own mind without the stiff intervention of adults.

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Her eyebrows go up, an idea pops like a light bulb above her head, and she decides that she possesses magical powers, just like those magical powers that characters in her storybooks use.

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She waves her magic-wand arms toward the doors and they open.

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Now she has proof that the Power is hers!

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She steps away to survey her tiny kingdom. The doors close again.

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She jumps up and down, claps her hands and smiles Cheshire-like into the morning air.

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The adults around her do not notice her drama. She tentatively repeats it now and then.

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Just as suddenly as it all begins, the little red-dress girl is pulled by her adult companion towards the rear of the store, and the magical spell is broken.

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Only she and I know that we just witnessed a miracle that nobody else will ever understand quite the way we understand it

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Visit Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary on youtube: https://youtu.be/JmymRx2Kr4k

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Life, actually…

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(A note from my Red Clay Diary: Many years ago when things were different but always the same, this happened right in front of me. I often wonder whatever happened to this frantic, disoriented soul and her baby.)

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JUNKER JUNKIE

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She’s struggling to get that big junker of a belching-fume car into a parallel parking space in front of Tony’s Terrific Hotdogs up on Second Avenue North in the tattered remains of downtown and the kid beside her is screaming its head off and she’s trying to shut it up and at the same time keep the lit cigarette from falling off the hand she’s using to guide the big, power-steeringless vehicle into some crooked semblance of a resting position and it’s hot and muggy and steamy already and it’s only 9:30 on a Saturday morning, for God’s sake, and the car’s air conditioning system died about ten years ago and was never resuscitated and her bangs are beginning to mat to her forehead and she’s hoping that the drugstore across the street from Tony’s is open on Saturdays because she has to get some Preparation H for her invalid mother and her absentee husband is three years behind on child-support payments and her sleazeball lawyer keeps sending bills to get her to pay for the work he’s done to try and get the guy to make his child-support payments and the lawyer sure managed to generate a lot of paperwork that never quite caused the fictitious payments to start appearing in the mailbox but he expects to get his attorney’s fees anyhow which means that she is basically supposed to start paying the child support fees she isn’t getting from her estranged husband to this attorney so that even if the support money started coming in it wouldn’t do her any good because she’d have to turn around and pay it to the lawyer and how did she get herself into this mess in the first place?

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Well, she guessed it had all started one adolescent evening at Roebuck Park when she decided that intimacy and marriage would have to be better than living with broken parents in a broken home within a broken neighborhood in a broken city so she stopped saying no after the hundredth time and said yes just one time and that about wrapped up her date with fate and determined the course of the next fifty-odd years of her life unless some miracle occurred to change all that and since being a Baptist hadn’t seemed to help much about all she could hope for now was a UFO abduction or the lottery or a good horoscope to change her life and she could not imagine what else might change her life except maybe if she stopped worrying about her no-good husband and no-good lawyer and decided to say yes just one time to that good-looking beeraholic neighbor with the relatively new pickup truck who kept asking her out just maybe if she said yes to him he might save her and change her life and help her get this damned junker fixed and sweaty screaming kid made happy and her invalid mother the correct kind of medical care and then life would be just about complete, wouldn’t it

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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WHITE KNUCKLES

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Mac McMack leans over sideways in the Yelloworange Traffic Threader, his right elbow indenting the moveable armrest, his left arm, attached to the steering wheel,  making little jerking motions as he weaves through traffic.

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Mac McMack calls out his thoughts to no-one in particular.

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“Damn Cadillacs take up most of the road,” he grumbles, as I, sitting in the back seat, scrunch my shoulder blades together hoping to magically decrease the width of the cab so that it won’t lodge between the passing Caddie on the left and a parked car on the right.

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Mac puffs heartily on a cigarette while I cough and search frantically for the seat belts he has long ago surgically removed.

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“Damn old people complain about a $2.45 fare to take ‘em six blocks,” he says in response to an undecipherable call on the two-way.

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“They don’t understand what it costs to drive one. Spent $157.00 for brakes last week.”

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There is a brief pause while he ponders his observation.

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He thuds through one of the town’s obligatory potholes.

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” Hmmph!” he finally says.

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Mac McMack’s sandy 1950′s ducktail hairdo is about the only neatly-kept part of his being, and he is cutting corners—indeed, driving over curbs—to get where he is taking me.

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The muffler bangs rhythmically on the underside of the cab. Mac starts blowing his horn at a red car that is leaking over into his lane. He never seems to see anything more than half a block ahead—so, unloading-trucks and stalled vehicles immediately cause the cab to stop and Mac to start cussing again.

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He pulls up into a handicapped space at the Post Office so that I can pick up mail. I hurry in, wondering whether my Iranian carpetbag will still be waiting for me when I return.

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Somehow we arrive at the bookshop, I give Mac McMack a tip in gratitude for my life. I quickly get out of his way.

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Last I see of him, he is weaving across three lanes in his Yelloworange Traffic Threader, cursing the universe and all its purposeful obstacles.

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How I wish at this moment that I could return to my hometown as a child, getting on a bus to go downtown, a bus driven by somebody I actually know and feel safe around.

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I kind of wish that Mac McMack could also remember how nice it was at one time in his life to be quietly and politely shuttled around in a yesteryear small town where people who don’t necessarily always like each other at least act neighborly towards each other.

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Because after all they would be crossing each others’ paths for the rest of their lives

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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