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http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his column below:
The Good the Better and the Bestest
Every day is Tall Tale Day in Mister Reed’s Neighborhood.
I’m talking about all those The Glass Is Half Empty/The Glass Is Half Full stories that I listen to, here on Third Avenue North. These are stories about The City, and they are all a fun and sometimes disturbing mixture of urban mythology, high expectations, observation, low expectations, and a healthy salting of real stuff.
From the Red Clay Diary:
A rough-hewn woman with a tattoo (we’re talking sailor-biker bar type of tattoo, not surburban I-gotta-have-one-because-it’s-IN tattoo) says to me, “I wanted to make sure there’s a place to park Down Here (Down Here being Downtown), cause of the, you know, the stuff.”
Playing naïve, I say, “What do you mean, The Stuff?” and she says, “Well, I don’t want no crackhead jumping me,” to which I reply, “Oh, you must mean the homeless panhandlers—don’t worry about them, they’re harmless…and besides, I’m more scared to walk around in the Galleria parking lot at night than I’ve ever been, walking around Downtown at night.” I just have to rub it in and get my commercial in—quickly, before she disappears.
“Oh, yeah?” she says with interest, then kind of drops the subject, only she’s still in a hurry to hit the road. She only lingers because the shop is so damned fascinating to the uninitiated.
Earlier, a between-flight flight attendant comes into the shop for the first time, beaming ear to ear. After she has stayed a while, she volunteers, “Birmingham is one of my favorite cities!” This is the kind of day when I need to hear something good, so I urge her to say more. “Well, my favorite restaurant in the whole world is here, the streets are clean, the air is nice, the people are REAL friendly, and I feel so safe, walking around and taking the Dart.”
I just soak all this in, because it’s got to tide me over during the next three stories I will hear about how run-down or corrupt or ugly the city is.
I know the “ugly city” is not true, YOU know it’s not true, but it’s almost frightening how many people mouth off about Downtown without actually ever having spent a few hours touring and shopping and eating and just TALKING with people.
Mister Reed’s Neighborhood is either half-full or brimful of goodness, or it’s half-full or brimful of badness. Why is this so? Is it a matter of who’s doing the observing? Are both factoids true simultaneously?
Or should we simply go around, aggressively telling the good, the great, half-full-of-goodness stories, until they become contagious?
Bishop Spong once said that each city is as good or as bad as you expect it to be.
Wonder if he was right
© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.