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Life, actually…

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FIDGETING AND SALVATION EVERY SUNDAY

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In memory fresh, I am fidgeting and squirming here on a varnished hardwood church pew in the Forest Lake neighborhood of Tuscaloosa.

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Time is leaping a seventy-year chasm and taking me back to Sunday morning sometime in the 1940s. You know—the ’40s, just yesterday to us long-timers who are still around to remember.

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I am trying to be patient this day. As the multi-tuned untrained-but-sincere voices of the congregation blend precariously with intonations from the burgundy-robed choir, I can only think of what is coming next.

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Thinking about what is coming next is what gets me through the holy services this humid morn.

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Fidget. Squirm. Scrawl with pocket knife-sharpened number two pencil in the margins of my parents’ pre-Thermo-Faxed paper program, printed especially for today’s services.

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Check the cracked face of a bandless wrist watch found just this week on the Northington Elementary School recess playground. The watch still works and I can keep up with time as the second hand spasms away the seconds.

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I feel the vibrations from overlapping singers and wavering organ notes as they wash over me and attempt to regain my wandering attention.

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The program scratchings completed, I now carefully examine backs of necks in forward pews. Some are freshly shaved, some are scraggly, others are pockmarked or wrinkled or graceful or baggy.

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May I can write a poem about backs of necks some day.

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Reverend Bronnie Nichols now bids the congregation to rise, an apparent effort to rouse dozers and alert offering-plate deacons.

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Everybody behaves during this hour of a Sunday morning, except for a baby or two. But isn’t that what babies do?

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Playmates are scrubbed and quiet, unlike their rowdy selves a few minutes from now when they are discharged into the wilds of childhood.

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I’m happy to stand up. It is something to do. And it means I, too, will be released into an extra-churchy world any moment now.

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But Brother Nichols is not done with me yet.

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Everybody sings verse after verse of an elongated hymn designed to press guilt upon unbaptized attendees who are supposed to rush to the front to be saved from perdition. Brother Nichols will not cut short the overtime singing until somebody responds to the pressure and reaches out for dispensed holiness.

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I am relieved when a teared-up churchgoer finally inches forward to please the preacher and the saints on high. This takes the pressure off of me. Maybe another Sunday will be my day to confess and repent and relent.

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Not today.

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We sheep are eventually released, but not until Bro’ Nichols has shaken every hand and patted every shoulder as we all pass through the front door.

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Now blessed and cleansed, I can stop fidgeting and start salivating. After all, the next thing up in my small life is fried chicken and apple pie and endless hours of playground hollering and jumping and laughing, and nursing the occasional boo-boo that will surely occur.

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But the boo-boo will heal quickly under the influence of a morning of overflowing righteousness.

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And in less than seven days I’ll be fidgeting and squirming all over again, just prior to salvation

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©  Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast:  https://youtu.be/rB38gwWinng

or read his transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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A PROPOSED DAY WORTH LIVING

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My days on Planet Three are divided between what-ifs and wishful thinking.

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What if?

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What if I could re-live that embarrassing gaffe and this time comport myself correctly? Too late or too impossible to bid time return, but seldom too late to watch my step next time.

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I wish.

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I wish I were more adept at handling life’s crises. But wishing doesn’t accomplish much, in the real world of orderly time-passage. Doing is the only way to make wishing seem real. So I will wrangle the next crisis with more aplomb. I will Do Better. I wish.

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Thoughts like these seep into the cracks of the day. For instance:

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It is important to feel someone else’s pain. Makes me a tad more human. More humane.

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But I also know that feeling someone’s pain doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to do anything about it, do anything to lessen their hurt. Might be I’m too lazy. Maybe I realize I’m unskilled at helping anybody else out, much less myself.

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It takes a lot of what-ifs and wishes to come up with a solid plan for doing the right thing, the helpful thing.

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We are an imperfect species in many ways. Just look around. But strangely enough, we are also such a beautiful species when we once in a blue moon actually do something healing or helpful or unselfishly honest. A puzzling and peculiar fault of character.

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So, Bub, you’re so pontifical, tell me how you would make things better? First time I’ve ever called myself Bub.

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Assuming the duties of creation:

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If I were in charge and required to improve the human species, I would try injecting more compassion and empathy into our DNA. In addition I would toss in a pinch of willingness…willingness to not only care, but to take action, to carry out our caring impulses. To make kindness and civility key ingredients. I would decrease the number of hurtful words and rants that damage so many of us.

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Take politics and piety away and you might be left with honest interaction.

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To sweeten the recipe, I just might throw in a tablespoon of calmness. And a dab of willingness-to-forgive.

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Bake moderately and savor the newborn fragrance and peace that make a day worth living, worth remembering

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©  Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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PLaza 8-2932

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 The first phone number I ever knew by heart was the number my father and mother acquired when a rotary-dial receiver was installed at our little asbestos-shingled home on 26 Eastwood Avenue, back in 1944.

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The number was 2932. That’s it. 2932. No area codes, no “first, dial 9 to get an outside line,” no winding a lever to ring up an operator, no “pound” keys or *’s or other secret combinations.

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Just publicize the number 2932, and you could receive calls from anywhere in the world.

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Later, as the phone company became more successful and the population increased, an “8″ was added to the beginning of our number. From then on, you had to remember to dial 8, then 2932.

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I can still hear the mechanical clicks and clacks as the rotary wheel advanced and retreated with each number.

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A sure sign of additional progress was the day the phone people increased the digits again, so that the number became 758-2932. I guess the hyphen was placed there so that the number could be memorized in increments, much as your social security number is broken up. Or, during one spell of trying to seem more cosmopolitan, the phone company wanted us to dial PLaza 8-2932.

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That, of course, went the way of postal zone numbers, which were replaced eventually by ZIP codes, which were increased from five digits to nine digits—with the obligatory hyphen in between the five digits and the four digits.  Apparently, Ma Bell wasn’t sure we subscribers could remember a long stream of uninterrupted numbers.

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So, most of my life, from 1944 till now, I’ve had implanted in my brain the numerical sequence 2932, and its prefixes. It was the one number I never had to program into one of my newfangled automatic-dialing telephones, since I could dial it (excuse me, PUNCH IT) practically in my sleep.

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Well, we kids grew up and left home my, parents grew elderly and eventually died, and, not so long ago, 2932 simply disappeared from the phone lines of Tuscaloosa, the phone service discontinued. No need for a phone in a home now long emptied of its occupants.

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Some nights, when I’m tossing and turning, tormenting the Sandman with insomniac ravings, I get the urge to get up, go to the phone, and access 2932—in case I’ve accidentally tripped back in time, just in time to catch my mother’s cheery voice in the midst of singing a household song as she meanders among her flowers and plants and dusty keepsakes.

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Reckon I’ll just have to keep such imaginings to myself, lest they come and carry me away prematurely to a place full of extension phones I can’t use to dial out except on Sundays and special occasions

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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