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Life, actually…

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FROM BUSY BUSY TO SLOW POKEDNESS, GRIT BY GRIT

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“Is this your first time here?”

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This is a question I often ask when a browser enters the bookshop not seeming to know exactly what to do next. Curious but wary is one way to put it.

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The visitor scans the highly decorated walls, teetering bookshelves and high-piled ancient merchandise in an attempt to “get the lay of the land,” as we say Down South.

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“Yes, this is my first time.”

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“Well, I’m glad you finally arrived. Been waiting for you,” I smile and send out a test palaver. Just to see whether this newbie wishes to engage further. Or to determine whether being quiet and unconversational is preferred.

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“Are you enjoying the town?” I’m always anxious to see whether newcomers are getting a positive first impression.

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“Well, I’ve only been here an hour or so…” the visitor hesitates, then reveals a first concern. “Tell me, I notice that people look directly at me and wish me Good Morning.” Another hesitation, but my inquisitive smile is encouraging. “Are they being sarcastic when they say that?”

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I’m taken aback each time this kind of nervously-asked question arises, but I am also used to receiving similar inquiries, particularly from first-timers who hail from the West Coast, Northeast or even Canada.

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I now understand what the questioner is really trying to find out: Are these locals actually friendly and engaging, or are they sending coded unwelcoming messages?

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I welcome this kind of inquiry because it gives me a small opportunity to show them what Southern Hospitality is like.

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“No,” I grin. “This is just the way most of us are brought up. Our mommas taught us to meet and greet everybody with polite salutations and helpfulness.”

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I let this sink in for a second.

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“We have this engaging way of letting you know that we actually See You, that we want to let you know we are ok. That we would like to know you better.”

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I can see the customer is taking a breath of relief, but I also know that just saying how nice we are does not offer proof that we really are.

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While the aisles are cruised, I occasionally check to see whether there are other questions. Along the way, we engage a bit more. I learn some personal history, the customer learns more about where to go and what to do in this friendly Southern village.

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Once we establish the fact that grits have never been experienced, that our kind of barbeque has not been tasted, I make sure that when the store is exited, this visitor will try us out, preferably at the next destination I recommend.

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Amazingly, this approach to greeting newbies sometimes produces positive results!

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Hours later, the not-from-around-here browser returns to the shop, big smile and pleasant tone combined.

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“Hey, I just wanted to thank you for recommending that diner. You were right—grits are tasty if they are hot and buttered and salted.” A pause. “And I met some really interesting people!”

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The visitor then disappears.

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Later, while quietly shelving books, I imagine that stories will be told back home about this Down South place and its engaging populace and delicious fattening food.

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And maybe, as the customer enthusiastically reports, just maybe, they’ll return to our village someday with family and friends and spend some more time adjusting to this slow-paced, pleasant Southern Hospitality thing

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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I’LL NEVER FORGET THE DAY I TASTED A BOOK

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So…what is the first book you ever read?

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What is the first book I ever read?

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Allow me to crank up the Time Machine and get back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when books slowly insinuated themselves into my life.

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First thing I do is SEE a book. It’s over there, just within reach of my chubby little uncoordinated fingers. I can roll just a quarter-roll in my crib—that’s all it takes to see this unfocused blur of colors and shapes on the cover. All I know how to do is experience the book, not knowing that it can be read and manipulated. So, I do what I know how to do: lick the cover and gnaw at the corners. It tastes different than those mashed-up things they are feeding me. It would be even tastier if I could bite off a piece and swallow it, but that comes later.

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So, first I SEE a book. Then I TASTE it. Then I masticate a bit. Then, I lose concentration and fixate on a wiggly toy that is hanging above me. I’ll get back to the book later.

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Next thing I know, I’m snuggled up to my mother’s chest, experiencing the words she is reading to me as they vibrate the side of my face. I can HEAR her voice with one ear. I can FEEL her voice with the other. And then I note that she is gently turning the pages, causing the colorful shapes and strange markings to shift each time. I can hear her inflections of warmth, suspense, happiness, as the pages drift by.

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Before I know it, I’m sitting up in my own wobbly fashion and turning the pages—not necessarily one at a time, not necessarily in any order. But I am doing the book the way I know how to do it. And, now and then, I even taste it again. I’ve been known to rub a crayon onto the paper to add color and design.

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Time flies and now I’m reciting a book to my mother and sister, pretending that I’m reading it as the pages pass, but actually I still don’t know how to read, I’m just feeding back what I’ve heard them read aloud so many times. They play along with the ruse.

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Now, at last, I am picking out a word or two in preparation for enrolling in the first grade. I’m excited about the prospect of actually making my way through the words with some degree of understanding. And, amazingly, after a while I start to read big-lettered words on my own.

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What is the first book I can read without assistance? Hard to tell, since the books at school are not the same books we have at home. I’m reading some in both places. But in class, I get to read a Dick and Jane and Sally story all the way through! When I become an author many years later, I am jealous of those who wrote this reader. Wouldn’t you like to be the writer whose works can be recited by heart by millions of school kids? “See Dick run. Run, Dick, run!”

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In middle age, I discover the song that comedian Jimmy Durante co-wrote and performed with gusto:

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 There’s one day that I recall, though it was years ago.

All my life I will remember it, I know.

I’ll never forget the day a read a book.

It was contagious, seventy pages.

There were pictures here and there,

So it wasn’t hard to bear,

The day I read a book.

It’s a shame I don’t recall the name of the book.

It wasn’t a history. I know because it had no plot.

It wasn’t a mystery, because nobody there got shot.

The day I read a book? I can’t remember when,

But one o’ these days, I’m gonna do it again.

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Just yesterday, a pleasant family enters the shop, looking around and remarking upon the variety of things to read. One young girl is just tagging along, so naturally she’s the one I try to engage in conversation: “What do you like to read?” I ask, hoping to introduce some titles to her. She performs a sly smile and doesn’t answer because, like so many other children I meet these days, she knows her avid parents will answer for her. “Oh, she doesn’t read,” her father says. I know what he’s saying, but I play dumb just to see what kind of response I’ll get: “You mean she doesn’t know how to read?” I ask sympathetically. She grins even more deeply, waiting for her parent’s punchline. “No she just doesn’t like to read.”

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I get it now. This lass has found a way to rebel against her parents, assert her own identity, appear cool to other kids. Normally, I get to talk up a book enough to inspire someone like her to try it, but I know there’s no way this can happen when hovering but well-meaning parents are there to puppet-master her conversation.

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So, I say what I always say whenever the situation calls for it: “Oh, too bad. Mark Twain once said that a person who does not read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

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This is aimed at no-one in particular. The girl gets the joke but continues to play dumb. The parents remain perplexed.

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What will no doubt happen—I’ve see it often—is she will discover a spicy novel proffered by a friend and, in secret, read it voraciously, becoming hooked on reading despite herself. She will, in the tradition of all kids, hide this novel and this fact from her parents as long as she possibly can.

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The cycle goes on.

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And maybe one day she’ll hear an old Jimmy Durante song and get excited all over again

Here’s Jimmy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLOR8gKwyoo

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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THE DREAM BORROWERS

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I just borrowed a memory from two late friends.

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The thing about a borrowed memory is that I can’t give it back to the borrowerees.

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Once lent, a vivid memory endures and travels forth, a close copy of the one held dear by its original owner.

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As a borrower of memory, I am obligated to respect, cherish and handle with care its perpetuation, its nourishment. Until I can pass it on to the next borrower.

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Is borrowing the same thing as theft? Am I a thief of memory? Maybe not—I did not mean to borrow, it just came at me, entered my mind, and there it resides.

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The thing about an acquired memory is that it often morphs and mingles with similar memories that I hold dear. The two memories entwine and enrich one another.

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Quick, allow me to give you an explanatory anecdote before you roll your eyes and leave my presence.

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One time years ago my friend Robbie Willmarth gave a remarkable account of an encounter she once had with a work by the poet Carl Sandburg. Her fond memory leapt into my own recollection of an in-person  encounter I, too, had with this remarkable poet. As a precocious teenager, I sat enthralled in the presence of Sandburg as he recited, sang and wove tales on the stage of Foster Auditorium in Tuscaloosa. 

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Then, after the program was over, the audience dissolving, the lights dimming, the press heading out, I got brave enough to descend from the balcony and race toward the stage just to see whether I could shake the hand of this wonderful historian/troubadour/poet. Or at least stand in his presence.

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My buddy, Doug Bleicher, was ahead of me, already chatting with Sandburg, so it seemed safe to walk up, mumble some incoherent expression of adulation, and then try not to wash my right hand for a day or two. I was so excited that to this day I don’t recall exactly what was said, but this thing I do know: Carl Sandburg responded with gentle wit to our comments and questions, smiled and listened intently, and in general made us feel like we were the most important temporary companions in the county.

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Then, as memory-makers will do, Sandburg went on his way to the next town and left behind a permanent image in the minds of both us kids.

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Doug and I compared notes and found that each of us independently loved the poetry of this man, each of us was awe-stricken by our encounter, each of us filed sweet memories away for rainy days…and life went on.

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Today, my memory, the memory of Robbie’s experience, the memory of Doug’s parallel poetic encounter, stays with me and emerges over the years to offer comfort when times are chaotic.

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The long string of memories, borrowed or created, sustains us artists and poets and writers and creators…and links us together with past, present and future, always present, always circling around, seeking new angles and new ways of telling that which must never be forgotten, that which must be willingly lent out to the next excited and alert observer.

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As Carl Sandburg said, “Nothing happens unless first a dream.”

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I pay attention to dreams, since I never know what will happen next

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 © 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Listen to the 4-minute podcast on youtube:  https://youtu.be/i7Abe0yzPZU

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Life, actually…

as it was more decades ago than you can count on one hand…

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UP IN SMOKE

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Oh was it cool to smoke, oh was it was even cooler to smoke Kools, oh it was so cool to

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look cool

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smoke cool

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inhale cool

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exhale cool

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light up cool

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tamp ashes off the tip cool

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extinguish cool

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light one cigarette off the lighted end of another cigarette cool

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pause thoughtfully while tamping the unfiltered tip of an unlighted cigarette against the back of your hand cool.

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Everything about smoking tobacco was oh so cool when I was young.

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Young and clueless cool.

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Somewhere in the shrubbery beside our home on Eastwood Avenue, I tried to learn how to smoke, having snuck some of my Uncle Adron’s free-sample Lucky Strikes and a few wooden matches from our gas stove.

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Luckily, I didn’t know what you did once you lit up, didn’t know that you had to draw air through a cigarette while holding the lighted match to the other end. I lit up and blew, and the danged cigarette just wouldn’t stay lit.

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I didn’t know you had to inhale to appreciate the smoking habit, I kept blowing out and the effort eventually made me sick from secondary smoke and sick from guilt—not guilt of smoking without permission but guilt from having taken the cigarettes undetected.

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Thus, I taught myself my own lesson about smoking—don’t do it till you know how.

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But it was so seductive, watching all those famous people smoking away, watching how suave and graceful they were, lighting up while posturing. While being beautiful and charming and in-charge.

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Watching those sexy women look twice as tough and twice as possible because they dared to smoke in public.

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Smoking was so cool.

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Cigars were tough-guy smokes. Only a real man—whatever that was—could handle those big cigars, could use them to punctuate speech, to mark off territory, to hold bad dudes at bay. And a cigar-smoking woman could look twice as riveting as any mere macho man.

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And pipes were even cooler. You could look thoughtful even when you hadn’t a thought in your head if you knew how to handle a pipe.

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Lighting up, puffing, packing tobacco into the bowl, reaming the bowl, clacking the pipe against an ashtray or the heel of your shoe, taking the pipe apart and carefully cleaning it during a deep conversation, and never having to answer any question immediately—everybody would pause, waiting for your answer, while you prepared that pipe for your ceremonial smoke.

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It wasn’t the taste, the feel, the odor. It was the process of lighting up a cigarette or cigar or pipe, it was the way you moved, it was the kind of smoking paraphernalia you carried, it was the way you accentuated your every action, that made smoking so cool.

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The coolest thing you could do was master the art of nonchalantly lighting up without missing a beat or blinking an eye. It was America’s version of Zen mastery. It was art.

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Threats of death, threats of ill health, threats of being ousted, threats of smelling bad, threats of divorce would never make you stop smoking back then because it was about the coolest thing you could possibly do in public without getting arrested. It was the closest you could possibly get to being somebody worthy of notice.

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It was the thing you did BECAUSE you knew you would never be famous.

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It was a way to strut when you had nothing whatsoever to strut about.

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It was as close to immortality as you could ever hope to be, looking and acting like all those beautiful famous people you looked up to and secretly wished you were

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed