Hear Jim’s 4-minute podcast on facebook:  https://youtu.be/Q6mXlIMAQ0o

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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FISHWRAPPERS ARE ME

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I’m making my way from early-morning creaky front porch to dew-sprinkled automobile this morning. Should you pass by my home at this moment, I will wave and smile. I like doing that.

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My right hand slides down the damp metal bannister to the speckled sidewalk. I head toward the dusty white picket fence gate and pry it open. It always expands and contracts as humidity rises and falls. On the sidewalk just past the gate lies a blue-bagged folded newspaper awaiting my free hand. The other hand holds my morning liquid, my bag of necessities, my container of munchings.

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I toss the newspaper into the open car door. It lands on the front passenger seat. It is quickly topped with bag and paraphernalia. I’ll retrieve it later.

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Ever since I tenured as an adult, I have been happily addicted to the newspaper and its contents and its attending rituals.

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After a mile or two, I sit within idling vehicle, waiting for a store to open. I open the blue plastic bag, check the freshly-gnawed hole at its edge—a daily sign that some critter, hearing the PLOP of the paper on wet grass, rushed over to see whether it is edible.

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Unfolding the front page I brace myself for whatever horrors and joys will leap out—as, usually, they must do.

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Then, I search for the inside table of contents that will point me to what I want to know. First, what page will contain today’s obits? There is no better way to briefly encapsulate someone’s life. A morning short story with beginning, middle and end neatly arranged.

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Then, the quote of the day. Somebody somewhere said something worth repeating—sad, mad, glad, goofy, inspirational…whatever. Then I dive into the editorial page and its litany of grumblings and wisdoms and angrified letters. Enough to make the head swim…or at least tread.

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I unfold and expand the paper with print-smeared fingers and noisily search for the science page. I find relief within the science page because at its best it provides me with nonpolitical nonfictionalized nonagenda data. A respite from the noise of pay-attention-to-my-life or please-believe-my- exaggerated-truths or won’t-you-buy-my-product-or-my-service-just-because-I-present-it-so-charmingly.

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The  shop before me opens its doors. I stuff the newspaper parts onto the car floor and get ready to face the day. I am filled with info both new and recycled. But at least I find a way to jump-start the next 24 hours, the 24 hours till my next critter-pecked newspaper grins at me from the sidewalk or some nearby shrubbery.

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HOW OLD AM I?

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I’m so old I must hold in my hands each and every morning…a newspaper! Don’t wish to experience mornings without such a crinkly object at hand. Don’t know how I would get along without the news of the day stretched forth before me. Don’t wish to know.

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So there

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s 3-minute podcast at: https://youtu.be/Omp-4jwRlIw

or read the transcript below…

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Life, actually…

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THE DOWN-SOUTH MOON SEES YOU

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The full moon is suspended in a childhood southern sky. There it is, glowing like a buttermilk snowball just above the starry eastern horizon.

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It is seventy-five years ago in this deep south village, and tonight the heavens belong exclusively to eight-year-old Jimmy Three.

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Jimmy Three has the universe all to himself because he is the only kid in sight who is lying flat on his back on an old handmade quilt spread upon dewy grass.

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For this moment, Jimmy Three is just another imagination floating in the ether, allowing his dreams to guide him.

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He squints at the creamy moon and starts to form questions.

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How is it that he can hide the entire orb behind his tiny thumb? It doesn’t make sense. He learns in school that the moon is thousands of miles big. He know that he is a mere handful of inches in height, his thumb smaller still.

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So how can the moon be so easily obliterated at his personal leisure?

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Does this phenomenon occur only in Alabama skies, or is he becoming aware that any kid anywhere on the planet can mimic his inquiry? Can kids everywhere experience the firmament, observing all the wonders that adults have long ago given up?

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Will Jimmy Three one day forget about the miracles just above his head? Will life become such a full-time distraction that he forgets to dream?

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Is wonderment over when he rolls up the quilt and sleepily heads toward home? Will activities of daily living turn him into an almost-aware ghostly figure?

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Will Jimmy Three grow elderly and wizened and put-upon by responsibility as the years race forward?

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Or can Jimmy Three find a way to privately re-visit his quilty glowing dewy moments of childhood, when all that matters for a few minutes is the gossamer fact that the heavens and Jimmy Three are close friends?

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Will the heavens recall Jimmy Three’s pleasure, or will Jimmy Three take his memories away with him to a private and starry haven that nobody else, nothing else, can access?

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As a village elder Jimmy Three to this day loves questions like these, questions that you can answer any way you like, because they exist beyond science, beyond reality. But never beyond memory

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Listen to Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast:

https://youtu.be/G8-sbhT-sE0

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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ALABAMA THRILL HILLS

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Zooming around the curves of Thrill Hills, my hometown’s least heralded but at one time best-utilized roadway, was the nighttime occupation of entire generations of teenagers.

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What my father’s generation called “Thrill Hills” extended the entire length of Fifteenth Street East, from Northington Campus all the way to Five Points near the Veterans Administration Hospital. It seemed like a long way, way back then.

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What was the overriding importance of Thrill Hills to teenagers of my father’s time, and mine?

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Well, you might get different stories from different people. Thrill Hills was relatively unpatrolled at night, so kids could try out their parents’ automotive vehicles and hopefully never leave evidence behind of what speeds they achieved.

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Thrill Hills was unlighted. You could not easily be identified in the darkness.

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Back in those days, everybody knew everybody in this Down South village, so you couldn’t get away with much if you were seen whizzing by at 65 miles an hour on Fifteenth Street—a considerable speed back then.

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But my father finally told me the real reason Thrill Hills was so popular with teens.

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It was a place where for a moment you could get very close to even your most timid date for the evening.

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Once you pressed the accelerator and leapt over those steep hills in the middle of the night, into the asphalt valleys and around the surprise turns, your date would hopefully grab hold of you real tight, scream loud and get all nervous and excited.

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Back then, that was as close to Going All the Way as you could get. If you’re too young to know what Going All the Way meant, ask me or any old-timer.

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Thrill Hills also gave a girl an excuse to grab a guy without necessarily making a commitment. At least the date would be a memorable one, one you could talk about a whole passel of years later, just like my old man did. Just like I’m doing.

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Every time I come to the village of my youth I try to explore the old routes to places, and Thrill Hills is one of them.

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Unfortunately, Thrill Hills isn’t so thrilling anymore. The road has been widened and lit and striped, making it a lot less daring. The hills have been smoothed down. They no longer have those steep dips and sharp turns. They are no longer as menacing.

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The main loss is that feeling of remoteness, other-worldliness.

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Next time I’m cruising my past, I’ll take one more imaginary tour of Thrill Hills. I just may press the accelerator at the top of Thrill Hills and once again get that wonderful scary feeling in the pit of my stomach as the car zooms downward in freefall, hopefully causing my wife to grab hold of me and scream from remembered passion instead of abject disapproval.

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I won’t know this will happen till I’ve tried it, will I

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed