Catch Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/PdrfGUPIFFc

or read his story below…

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Life, actually…

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ROUSTABOUT WEAKLING

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Jimmy Three sneaks into the family living room to check his appearance in the cracked full-length mirror next to the doorway. Jimmy lives at this moment back in 1952, when the entire life ahead of him will extend at least another bunch of decades.

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As an eleven-year-old going on twelve, Jimmy is wrestling with nature. Nature is pounding him with new feelings, fanciful insights, reality-laden fantasies, imaginary realities.

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Right now, Jimmy Three cannot see himself objectively in the wavy mirror. His vision is clouded by random ideas scattered in his path. Ideas of what grown-guys-to-be should look like, ideas of whether he will soon become a heroically handsome dude or a wimpy 98-pound weakling.

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He flexes his meager muscles, turning in the light. Not so good an image. Okay, I’ll probably be the last teammate selected for today’s playground games. Maybe I’ll get lucky and be the next-to-last selection, should my scrawny pal Billy show up.

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Jimmy Three should be in despair about his future prospects, but it turns out that he eventually does find hope and adventure in his own way. He is happiest when huddling over a favorite book. He is content to sketch and write random stories of his own. He is able to entertain himself, a talent he later learns that many kids never experience.

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Through the years Jimmy Three morphs his life into what is tailored for his own strengths and flaws. Intensely observing others of his species he comes to know that people are immensely interesting. He also learns that each person seems to be on track to becoming whatever they once were. Each starts out dreaming dreamy dreams about things that will never be. Those who finally come to terms with themselves eventually discard those peculiar ideas that never bore fruit.

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Jimmy Three and his fellow star-scattered roustabouts find ways to navigate the world using their own individualized roadmaps, not the pre-ordained roadmaps structured by dogma and prescribed behavior and rule makers and bullyboys.

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Maybe these roustabouts who avoid and disdain all ironclad dictums, will bump into things more often. Maybe they will measure their successes by refusing to measure their successes.  Maybe they won’t turn out to be rich and famous and helpless. Maybe they will find their laughing places of bliss by simply taking one last look at a mirror and thereafter building their own wings and soaring their own migrations.

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Maybe being a 98-pound-weakling is a safe way to hide out from the improvised shaming devices that unhappy wanderers seek to toss my way, Jimmy Three tells himself

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© Jim Reed 2026 A.D.

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/ip1CEeB286A

or read his story below…

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Life, actually…

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BUMPER CARS AND ROLLER COASTERS AND LIFE GOES ON

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Blue or pink metallic balloons softly dance around one another above a village mail box. A freshly born life is celebrated with vim and vigor.

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Nearby, somberly garbed neighbors gaze at a carved box as it rests beneath remembrance flowers in a patched green field, with only silent granite witnesses remaining later to stand guard.

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Red carpet welcomings and thoughtful goodbyes are never far apart.

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Let’s call these first and last things Bookends to life. Ceremonial displays. Attention must be paid and all that.

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Tokens and trinkets abound between these bookends. After the long dance, tokens and trinkets remain, reminders of people we once knew.

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The tokens and trinkets may not be important in the schemelessness of things, but they do have purpose. Their presence jars the memory, jags us back to sweet recollection.

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Once we send these silly props to Goodwill, we risk dispatching fond memory into faded vagueness. We risk waking up one day with nothing to remind us that these special beings ever existed.

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So, bits and pieces can outlast people themselves. They can be passed down the generations. They can be our visual genealogies. They can be touched and caressed and hidden nearby, or displayed up front.

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Maybe a flattened metallic balloon in the sock drawer will emerge one day, maybe someone will suddenly smile and recall. Maybe a dried flower from the granite field will be found tucked into a favorite book. Maybe it will strike a note of familiarity in those of us who welcome the indentured images that skulk about in our minds, awaiting reinstallment.

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We begin to understand the meaning of bumper cars and roller coasters. Very few words are needed to comprehend the absolute thrill of unpredictable existence. We bump and bounce and scream in joy and howl in fright. It is one heck of a journey.

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Together, let us experience the journey and hold close the best of our memories.

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It’s what we cling to before coming up against the right-hand bookend

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© Jim Reed 2026 A.D.

  

Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/021bu0seOSY

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Life, actually…

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CALL ME ALABAMA!

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A DOWN-SOUTH ANTHEM

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Alabama is a state of mind.

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No, I take that back.

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Alabama is your state of mind.

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Alabama is my state of mind.

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Look at the map.

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There is no logical border.

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If logic prevailed, Alabama would be panhandled-with-care to the Gulf and barely miss the Mississippi River to the west and stick-toed in the Atlantic to the east.

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The Alabama state of my mind is…

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Alabama is a truncated

Arbitrarily-bordered

Mixture of Appalachian

Foothills and Gulf beaches

And Tennessean

Valleys and Southern

Pines and black dirt

Flatlands and red

Clay banks and

Human-formed mounds

And dinosaur-chalked

Banks and ‘gator

Swamps and

Cricks and meandering-barged rivers

And angel-haired falls and bluebird

Nests and mosquito bites

And chigger itches and ancient

Warrior-ghosts and

Dirt-poor moonshiners

And proud farmers and

Vegetable-stand pickups

And blue highways

And washboard roads

And scorching sun and

Humid rashes and

Fields endless fields

And full-moon-activated

Cemeteries and

Tombstone graveyards and

Midwife shacks and

Breezeways and clapboards

And wild blackberries and lazy

Cows cud-ding and calves

Cuddling and hay bales and

Barn lofts and suckling puppies

And strutting blue roosters

And water moccasins

And synchronized

Twilight fireflies and glistening

Stars so close you can

Touch them.

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Alabama in my state of mind is

Far-off 3:00 A.M. train

Whistles and howling dogs

And skittish deer and roadside

Tire carcasses and skulking

Buzzards and dearly departed

Armadillos and skunk-fragranced

Air blended with sweet honeysuckle and smothered

With kudzu and life-saving

Breezes interspersed with

Gasping-for-air heat.

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Alabama in my state of mind is

At her best

When you close your eyes

And remember how

Good she was when you

Were young, how wise

She became as you yourself

Wised up and how good she

Can be whenever she

Re-claims her fairness

Of spirit, whenever she

Gets back to

The earth, gets back

Down to earth,

Remembers her hard-working

Closely-tied families.

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In my state-of-Alabama-mind,

Alabama is at her best

When she’s all potential and

Hope and strut…at her

Best when she remembers

Her humble beginnings…

At her best when she

Gives up the chanting

And pays attention to

The babies and the infirm and the

Poor…at her best when

She recalls how wonderful

It is to be paid tender attention to,

To be well-paid with tender attention

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Y’all come visit. Stay as long as you like.

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See how easily we embrace you

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How lavishly we feed you

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How generously we share stories with one another

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See what we are really like

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© Jim Reed 2026 A.D.

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/021bu0seOSY

 

Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast:  https://youtu.be/t0nw3IksojE

or

Read his story below… 

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Life, actually…

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GOOD NIGHT STACK OF BOOKS

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Good night stack of bedside books holding firm your promise to levitate my dreams.

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Good night volumes of verse waiting for a chance to teach me how to be a better denizen of the world.

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Good night dreary tomes that make me try harder to wade chin deep through the infinite choices you lay out for my inspection.

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Good night adventures and antics and plots and twists that just cannot wait to bring me out of my doldrums and into fresh light.

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Good night books brimful of mushy ideas and aha! epiphanies and sad but loving passings.

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Good night corner-folded pages that show me where I left off and where I resume.

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Good night books topped off with nightmares and daymares and scary beginnings and happy endings.

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Good night books with texture and heft and fragrance and hints of previous readers.

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Good night books that accompany me through infancy and into youth and onward to smartly sassy adulthood and heavily responsible middle age.

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Good night books that will chaperone me into elderliness and pleasant-dream continuances.

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Good night to you, the next foster parent who will adopt and take sweet care of these living bindings and pages that meant so much to all who loved them

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© 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed