Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary: https://youtu.be/BGbT1SDIRbI

or read his transcript, below:

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Life, actually…

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CRISPY FRIES, LEMON MERINGUE AND THICK GOOEY ICING

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Here’s something I like about Down South.

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I was raised on country food, soul food, junk food, down-home food.

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Guilty admissions about my lifelong Down South diet: If it is breaded, crunchy, overcooked, crusted, sugary, salty, spicy and just plain bad for me, I tend to love it.

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I know, I know…this kind of eating is not endorsed by healthy, evangelical, disapproving whole-food progressives. They want me to live longer and more miserably by ingesting only those tasteless things that are good for me.

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That phrase, Good for Me, is the red line that rankles and holds me back from doing the Right Thing.

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I am not yet a complete idiot, but I am approaching complete idiocy. The sane part of me knows that the good-fooders are correct—I should be eating what they eat. And, of course, I do eat properly most of the time. Maybe I’ll live an extra two hours because of this.

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But Temptation is so…Tempting.

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I just have to revert to childhood now and then and eat everything that is holy and unhealthy.

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Sacred food is essential at times:  I tend to eat the icing and forego the cake. I chomp on the meringue and try the lemon maybe later. I munch the crunchy fries quickly, before they turn mushy. I crave the grooves in Ruffles. I always eat one too many seasalted cashews. I vow to stop at one Buddy Bar, then fail.  A whiff of hot dog produces catsup dreams. Triple-buttered-and-salted-and-peppered grits are the only grits worthy of consideration.

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Are you following me?

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All this stuff will eventually kill me.

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But I’ll go out with a pleasured smile on my face.

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What would that smile look like were I to die while eating kale?

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Scary thought, isn’t it

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s story on youtube: https://youtu.be/UMiG1jy_ysc

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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MARKING TIME WITH BOONDOGGLERS

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Wasting time is the most productive thing I do in my little corner of the world.

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When I consider a book for possible acquisition, I look as if I am not doing anything at all. I hold it, stare, turn it over, riffle, check copyright page, sniff for contaminations, and so on and so forth. To the casual observer I am merely frozen in place, book in hand, doing a lot of nothing. You know—I’m that old guy having an old guy moment.

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I seem to be a boondoggler.

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At my writing desk in my writing room, I stare motionless at surroundings—walls, pictures, ephemera, fixtures, displays, bookcases. If you catch me in the non-act, I seem to be stop-motioned and absent-minded.

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I am thinking, I am thinking, I tell you! Busy busy.

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When a droner drones on, I am gazing deeply as though attention is being paid. In fact, I am sometimes somewhere else, though my alert body tells a fib. If the droner is infatuated with the droning, my diverted self will not be noticed.

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Honest, we authors and artists are doing our best work when static and mulling.

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By the way, the actual production of a ponderment seldom takes more than a few minutes. A fully-formed story may just stream through my fingers onto keyboard keys and produce a six-hour work of art in two minutes of typing. This may feel like cheating to you, but it is no more mysterious than cooking an omelet or laying a brick.

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Most of the time, I don’t get caught not paying attention until the very end. When the droning ends and my only reaction is to say, “There is a dab of chocolate on the tip of your nose. Thought you’d like to know,” the droner suddenly realizes nobody was listening.

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I don’t mean to offend, but this is the way it is, here in Boondoggle Land

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 © 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/iu6MNvxvxSg

or read on…

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Life, actually…

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THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT

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Children of the Down South Soil, this is a special report from one Village Elder.

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See whether you can immerse yourself in these flashes of long-ago joys. See whether you will be inspired to file away and cherish your own lifetime extension of happy treasures.

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Everything I say is true and actual.

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Driving west from Birmingham, I pass by a ramshackle breezeway home where one wizened whittler quietly shapes his lap sculpture on porch steps, pausing only a moment to look at me and wave a smile before I disappear into the red bug ladybug mist. 

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Further on, the West Blocton exit illuminates vivid times where deep inside I still play on Rose Lane, birthplace of my father. The family house is gone now, but part of me is still running around the backyard, next in line to use the outhouse.

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Tuscaloosa approaches, and there I am suddenly standing barefoot on clay, recalling times when kinfolk still lived in a breezeway dogtrot house on the North River. I can still taste crystal water dipped from the front yard well, feel its coolness, experience the nurturing of people genetically connected to me.

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Good times and fond memories during my time here on Planet Three bounce all over the place.

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On the way to T Town, there is the Brookwood exit, where the hope and play of childhood remembers me as a tad adventuring into the woods of Peterson. Nearby homes of grandparents and cousins are my tether, guaranteeing I won’t be lost for long during tiny explorations.

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The Birmingham to Tuscaloosa Breezeway Dogtrot memory machine is merrily out of control.

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Somewhere hereabouts is Hurricane Creek, where water moccasins and giggly girlfriends play side by side during weekend picnics. Not too far away is Lock 13, a marvel of technology and noise and clanking waterlogged metals.

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All these places intermingle in my childhood playground, and it’s good to call on them when I need to escape the computerized and politicized world for a bit.

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Sometimes I recall them, sometimes they recall me right back.

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If you can imagine my extensive and erratic Alabama lifespan as a plot of land, you could measure it from Cuba on the Mississippi border to western Jefferson County, from north Birmingham and Northport to Montevallo just south of here.

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My forays outside this region are instructive, but there is never any place anything like sweet home Down South Alabama.

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And home is where I still dip into the past to dredge up washboard roads, fossils jutting from chalky riverbanks, sputtering swimmers and treaders at play, rolled-down windows, stick shift roadsters, long rope swings, barbed wire fences, pines and scraggly bushes, teetering tree houses, corrugated tin roofs, makeshift bows and arrows, wandering hobos, haunting train whistles, arrowheads here and there, infinitely observable ant beds, penny candy, sparklers and fireflies in the dusk, mysterious attics and damp basements, whispery gossip and tall tales, pet frogs, yodeling playmates, bubblegum cards, and always and forever the homebase, the center of the known universe, my family, my bunk bed, my endless dreams at the end of hard play days.

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You children of the Down South soil, cherish what time you have, pay attention to the tales of elders, protect the young’uns, and hold fast to your fond memories. They might come in handy here and there, now and then

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim’s two-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/qlOa5IQ_aGM

or read the transcript below…

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Life, actually…

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THE TWIRLING DRESS

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She designed it from sweet memory.

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Then she made it just for herself.

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A dress well-conceived and well executed.

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A dress that existed for celebrations to come.

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It was pretty when she made it so long ago.

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It was bright and fresh and new.

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It smelled so good.

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It felt like an elegant second skin.

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It reminded her of a good life on a good day on a one-day-only good planet.

It made her want to dance.

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It made her want to twirl.

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It made her want to remain within that moment.

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It made her wish that moment would be endless and forever accessible.

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She was fine and bright and filled with the goodness that forms from sacrifice and good will.

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She had done her share of nurturing and comforting those around her.

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The newly formed dress gave her permission to pamper herself for a change.

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A lovely creation a lovely creature a lovely chance to toss away past regrets and future fears.

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A lovely chance to soar free and easy for a few moments, to create special memories that could never be taken from her.

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The twirling is done now, the times have shifted.

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But the fine painting she created now hangs high in her room. Her painting of that wonderful dress suspends the moment and makes it so easy for her to occasionally float into the canvas and once more pilot the dress, don the dress, feel the dress, levitate those past moments so dear to her

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 © 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed