Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast here: https://youtu.be/q3keoh8eUFc
or read his transcript below:
Life, actually…
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FIREWORKS GO BOOM BOOM
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In the muggy summer twilight heat of our Deep South village, you can feel excitement and anticipation rising in the heavy air.
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It’s another Fourth of July here. Like so many other Fourths of July, we are all peering out doors and windows to see who will join us in the streets for the annual fireworks display.
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Just above us on a ridge called Red Mountain, the world’s largest cast iron statue hovers on its pedestal, anvil and spear in place, ever prepared for whatever the Village offers.
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Visiting strangers mingle with locals, glancing and re-glancing at the sculpture as if the big show might be missed in a blink. Soon, above the head of this icon, there will be bursts and outbursts, booming loudness and applause, as the sky is illuminated one second at a time.
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But right now, all is quiet except for gurgling babies and yippy dogs and laughing gossipers and nervous run-amok children.
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The impending show is free to all, so the price of admission is just right, for paupers and millionaires alike.
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As if the war-level volume isn’t enough, radios are turned up full blast with patriotic music, and expensive amateur explosives polka-dot the lawns.
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While all this is going on, I prepare myself for watching and observing all the goings-on. Once the crackling and earth-shaking begins, I will walk among the throngs and watch the watchers. Fireworks I have seen before. What I enjoy most is the expressions on people’s faces as they thrill to the show.
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All gaze upward from blankets spread and lawn chairs unfolded, from hoods of cars and open windows, from strollers and porches and truck beds and fence posts, from tree limbs and stalled scooters and frozen skateboards.
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Here it comes. The boom-boom crack-crack bang-bang swish-swish heaven-painting display of wartime munitions converted into jolly, peacetime entertainment.
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And here I go, watching confused babes and hunkered-down birds and camouflaged cats and hands-over-ears fretters, each a party to this strange and wonderful and dangerously enjoyable twenty-minute outburst.
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For these all-too-few moments, everybody forgets politics and tribe and beliefs and animosities. Everybody suddenly merges as one tribe to gaze in awe at the volcanic fire and smoke above.
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I watch as faces are transported into a never-for-long land of simple joy, simple enjoyment. I marvel at how we all get along during times like this. I marvel always at the fact that this feeling is not sustainable all the time.
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And, of course, I marvel at how in the not-too-distant, not-soon-enough future we will again find a way to harmoniously focus side-by-side on the simple act of being excited and satisfied with life as it is, life as it could be
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Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.
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Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY