Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/DajVZHnp3Dk
or read his transcript below:
SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE REMEMBERED
In my richly textured memory of being four years old back in the 1940s, I am once again facing a Philco radio.
Just four feet away, this wood-encased time machine houses some of my favorite legendary characters.
Sister Barbara and I sit on the hard wood floor in front of the radio, gazing at the textured cloth that covers a metal speaker…a speaker that hides our heroes within.
There’s the Lone Ranger, riding away from a western solved-crime scene, as townspeople wonder aloud, “Who was that masked man?”
Later on this evening, clueless jokester Fibber McGee will verbally joust with his always patient and sweet wife Molly.
Orson Welles’ voice will vibrate the speaker when his alter ego The Shadow makes the bad guys regret their anti-social behavior.
And Jack Benny will make us laugh the hardest when he’s not saying anything at all–the longer he pauses, the more we are amused.
And so on.
The real mystery: How do all these life-sized characters manage to shrink down to the size of a radio interior for a few minutes each week?
Other puzzles of childhood haunt me.
No matter how many times I rapidly open the refrigerator door, I can’t catch the guy inside who is in charge of turning the light off and on.
My frequent attempts to push at the living room mirror, to enter the reverse world on the other side…they just don’t work. Apparently, only Alice can achieve this feat while she is inside her story.
Even when I shout SHAZAM! at the heavens, I never turn into Captain Marvel. I forever remain meek and mild Billy Batson.
When I don a tee-shirt emblazoned with the handmade felt image of a black bat, when I am complete with improvised utility belt, I don’t really become Bat Man. I just stand there in the back yard, looking around for criminals to subdue. They don’t appear.
As I progress in age, I begin to see the clear difference between reality and expectation. As I draw crayoned stories on butcher paper, as I block-letter penciled tales of wished-for adventures of derring-do, I come to realize that all stories, invented or true, exist to entertain and distract me from the more blatant events of daily life.
And even though, to this day, I love the act of imagining and wishing, I am always able to beam back to reality when needed.
I Walter Mitty my life as well as I can.
All these eons later, here I am, distracting you from the pangs and pains of life, if only for a minute or three.
My job is done here. For today, at least
Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.
Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY