Here Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/SDSC5j7glWI

or read the transcript below:

FROM GRUNTY TO NERDY AND BACK AGAIN

Sweeping up and straightening and cleaning.

Those are my summer tasks here at the Tuscaloosa YMCA in the late 1950s.

For this dusty work I receive a few dollars from the Y executive director.

With those few dollars I head for Lustig’s bookstore nearby and spend an hour roaming the aisles and inhaling the knowledge and humor and danger and romance dormant within multi-colored multi-shaped volumes.

These few days in the old Victorian house that shelters the Y provide my first experience in earning non-allowance non-school-lunch-money income. It is also a way to pay my way for an upcoming Hi-Y field trip.

As I walk home, saving bus money for more book purchases, pockets jingle with fresh income I can call my own. Previous entrepreneurial efforts have been terrifying and discouraging. Trying to sell greeting cards door to door is not for me. Who or what hides behind those doors I’m supposed to knock on? Cold calling , I learn, is way too scary to ever attempt again.

Next day after school, I cross fifteenth street and head for Parkview Drugs, where unspent lunch money and bus fare allow me to buy books from rotating squeaky metal racks. I will forever associate that sound with exciting literature and forbidden titles.

After the Y job, my working career lies fallow until the next summer, when I am employed as a day-laborer at a government housing construction project in Warrior, Alabama. Six weeks of sunburn and heat rash and heavy lifting bring me even more income. But those six weeks teach me that, like cold calling, grunt labor is not something that will ever satisfy me. I gain a new and unexpected education from co-workers. I learn a lot of cuss words and folklore, too. It is a vivid experience that still influences my writing and my journey through life.

The following summer brings me my bliss and sets my course.

At the age of seventeen I become an on-air personality at the public radio station in Tuscaloosa. More money, more jingle in my pockets, more books. Mainly, more experience that I, as a nerdy youngster, can appreciate and feel at home with. This later turns into a career in television.

There are other careers later on, but they turn out to be mistaken choices…until, one day, I begin to buy and sell old books for a living, writing a few books along the way. And, forty years later, I am still at it.

Many decades later, looking back with joy and horror at those and many other jobs, I can pick and choose…pick and choose which careers were ripe for me, right for me…which careers I should have avoided.

Should groundhog day ever occur, should I ever be allowed to do it all over again, I know exactly what I will pick this time as the best career of all best careers.

But that’s another story for another time

©  by Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

Listen to Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary on youtube: https://youtu.be/SvXqgomWH88

or read the correct transcript below:

THE RANTS OF THE LANKY DEEP FROWN MAN

The mouth of the lanky Deep Frown Man is barely moving as his words issue forth from between clinched teeth. He’s pecking around within my bookshop, looking for things to rant about, his rantings deeply concretized and often repeated, rants he is clinging to in order to make some sense of his minuscule world.

My mind deflects the Deep Frown Man’s utterances, since I really do not know how to treat his pain.

He sends out probes to my blissful bubble, hoping to get a predictable response, a response that will allow him entry to my political depths, my tribal beliefs. He wants so much to show me how right he is and how wrong I am and how much of an ally I could become if only I would subscribe to his tract.

I quietly and rather merrily go about the business of assisting customers and shelving books, confident that this man will eventually leave and that peace will salve the atmosphere, and that nearby browsers can breathe a sign of relief and continue their gentle cruise.

The Deep Frown Man and others like him add an edge to the shop, but the fights they attempt to initiate are simply not there. It is not within me to punch back. It is not within me to counter his rants with facts or counterintelligence. Would not have any effect anyhow, don’t you know?

In a world of my own making, people like the Deep Frown Man would have a way to congregate and hear each other out. They would not have to go forth into the random world and try to force-feed folks who have no inclination to be force-fed.

Yes, I know that the Internet is the enormous palette upon which ranters can meet and greet…but this in no way affects the generation of Deep Frowners who have not embraced the Internet age, who don’t own a computer, who are not willing to learn more than they already know. So they are left to wander the earth, bringing their angry sadnesses to the rest of us through their non-virtual presence.

The Deep Frown People are fascinating, worth writing about, worthy of our examination in writings such as the one you are now reading.

I just wish they could find some peace and hope in listening to the rants of people who feel and believe differently. Wish they could embrace us, hear us out, allow us to hear them out minus the proselytizing, minus the intolerance they carry against anything opposed to their views.

Oh, well, I was raised to really look at people and try to appreciate the eternal children they carry inside themselves.

After all, what good is a day in which I, too, turn into a Deep Frown Man?

What good is any day if it is not predominantly a period of time in which I can seek to love unconditionally someone who is not at all lovable

©  by Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/mhE9ga0QCnA

or read his transcript:

FINE CHINA FACE

 Once upon a time or two, way back when, my happy day at the shop is interrupted by the entrance of a customer from some far-away harsh place. She seems so lonely and isolated. I have to take note. I have to record her presence in case I never see her again, in case you never have a chance to meet her…

Her face is like fine china, only it is more like old china, the pale white nearly transparent china that looks as if it would break into a million pieces should you drop it .

Her face looks like brittle pale white china that has indeed incurred stress fractures throughout its surface. Tiny dark lines run delicately about, some parallel, some crossing, some ending abruptly. Like those tiny thin lines that a fortune teller will pay close attention to in the palm of an old withered hand.

She walks steadfastly into the shop. Her gait is the gait of a young woman. Her body is the body of a young woman.

But her face. Oh, her face.

Her face, though obviously young, has been stress-fractured like fine old china, and she is holding that face stiff and straight as if she knows for certain that the act of smiling or even of frowning will cause a million-pieced shattering.

Her face seems frozen into this image that her mind extrudes through her pores, and now she might never smile again, lest she become tiny sparkling flak whirlpooling itself to the impersonal ground where it can never be assembled again in just the same way, the way it once started out.

And so she keeps the expression and holds together the fine piece of china that she is. She is intent upon making it through the day. Or making it through the events that have caused her to decide to stay in one expression, regardless, till something better or something worse comes along.

The fine china woman is just one beautiful solitude on one beautiful day at the shop. She will be followed by other beautiful solitudes as the day goes by. She deserves my attention and your attention. What kindnesses may come from us when we notice? What kindnesses do these beautiful solitudes deserve? What kindnesses will they never experience should you and I fail to heed their deserving presence?

It’s another beautiful day in Mr. Reed’s neighborhood

©  by Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/2ZTeRjC3PU8

or read transcript below:

HOW TO THROW A PUNCH

I am lying flat on my back, staring up at off-stage theatrical trappings just out of sight of an audience. This is a theatre and I am an amateur actor, way back in the 1950s.

I lie on the hardwood floor because I am dead, killed by the pen of dramatist Maxwell Anderson.

I perform as well as I can, making sure that the rapt crowd really believes for a suspended moment that I am no longer alive. This means that breathing must be shallow and non-apparent. Eyelids must not flutter. Mouth must be slack. Giggling must not occur.

Being slain in a play is kind of fun. You get to pretend someone else’s life while hiding your actual life from view. And being dead is great. The audience cannot remove its attention from you, even though the living characters continue the scene. Not only do you get lots of attention, but there are no memorized lines to be remembered, to be spoken.

Once you as a character in a play have done your dramatic dying, it’s all over. You can rest backstage later while everybody else continues working. You stick around for curtain call because that’s when the applause will rise in concert with your bow. By the end of the play, audience members will have forgotten what your role is, but they will remember that you fought and died a violent death right in front of them.

But back to the scene. This is one of those performances without curtains. The audience gets to watch the actors leave the stage and the scene-changers re-arrange the props.

At this point in such a production, suspended disbelief breaks through the fourth wall and the audience gasps as the corpse—me—suddenly rises quickly and leaves the stage.

Later on, the play is successfully concluded and we actors get to mingle with instant fans.

One woman singles me out and gushes, “Oh, you were so graceful in that scene.” I just listen because graceful is not a word that has ever been applied to me.

“The way you fell to the floor, how did you manage not to get hurt.?” she does go on. “And suddenly you get up and become alive again!” She furrows her brow and asks intensely, “How do you do that?”

I am too young to come up with sage answers, so I just thank her, sign her program, and continue milling about until cast and crew are ready to pack up and travel to the next town, the next performance, the next dying scene.

When even younger, we playground kids call this play-acting. It is improvised but it is pretty much the same thing I am doing on stages. The difference is, the audience actually believes the story for bit.

In another play, I as a character get to punch another actor. This time, he is the body on the floor for a minute. Of course the punch is fake—you get to learn how to do this in rehearsals and acting classes—but some viewers actually believe it. After this performance, a fan asks me whether I am a trained athlete. I  haven’t the heart to tell her I am a practicing wimp and cannot, in real life, throw a punch or defend myself against one. I just play-act.

Decades later—right now, for instance—I am still haunted by people who believe I am someone I am not and can never be. But I also have these wonderful warm memories of being, just for an instant each time, a jock or an action hero or a resurrected body. And I can go back on my worst days and reminisce about all those people I could be.

And I am really grateful for the fact that no matter how wild and improbable those fictitious folks are, I can still bask in being me. The me who secretly re-visits the other me’s that no-one else can see

©  by Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/tombstonemist.mp3

or read his transcript below:

Way back in time, some several decades ago,

I am grabbing lunch at a nearby diner.

Suddenly I see a lone figure…and I realize that this person

is who I will someday become.

Today, it has all come true. I am now that man.

This is my entry into the Red Clay Diary from those many years ago…

TOMBSTONE MIST (A True Time Travel Tale)

An old, stooped man walks gingerly down the street holding his lunchtime book under his arm and heading for the sandwich place he’s been eating at lo these many years.

     His friends now long dead but not forgotten, he dines alone and peers deeply into his book for signs of life beyond his life, for indications of what will happen once he has become a mist over a tombstone.

     He eats quietly while noisy and harried fellow diners hassle over their individual lives and talk and signify among themselves.

     He turns another page in the musty volume and there lies, flatly pressed and nearly ossified, a long-stemmed green four-leaf clover. A symbol stuck there many decades back by someone who had feelings thoughts aspirations and longings, a person who believed if only for a moment that luck would somehow be mummified and preserved and passed on from reader to reader as long as the book lasted as long as the clover endured.

     He smiles to himself, for no one else is looking at him.

     He briefly picks up the botanical artifact and sniffs it, then carefully places it back onto the page and neatly turns the next page over it, being careful not to fold or harm it.

     He strolls back to his shop, a little less stooped so that nobody but he himself can tell, and he re-enters his quiet place of business and spends the afternoon dreaming of what never could have been and wondering what the young woman who had owned the book and the four-leaf clover had been like and whether she too was a mist over a tombstone awaiting contact with the mist he will become

© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: 

WINTER BLUNDERLAND

Deep, deep down within the deep, deep South, I find myself wading through the leavings of one year, preparing to encounter a newly-birthed year.

I am tempted to make New Year’s resolutions but I tend to come up with safe ones that in no way challenge me. For instance, I resolve to inhale and exhale repeatedly throughout the year. Or, I plan to floss no more than once a day. And there’s always that one resolution that I make and break within minutes—-lose ten pounds and work out.

Resolution-making being a farce, I resolve not to make any. Instead, I wish to continue the practice of exploring the world through furtive glance and direct gaze.

Here are some things that astound and entertain me:

My quest to find the proper fastener for a piece of split wood takes me to the hardware store, a haven of emotion-deprived semi-conscious barely-mobile texting clerks who don’t know much about hardware but know a lot about googling. I finally locate one of those rare birds—-an old-timer who actually leads me down obscure aisles to search in real non-virtual time for just the right implement.

In this copious den of visionaries both real and imagined, I await my tiny fate.

Everywhere I go today, I find the Leaf Blower Syndrome hard at work. Leaf Blower workers are in the business of transferring trash and particulates to Somewhere Besides Here. Leaf Blower wannabes practice the fine art of referring me to Someone Else or Somewhere Else, secure in the notion that they have earned their income and done their job.

I get it. Lots of folks just transfer and delegate challenges to That Place Over Yonder.

Another New Year’s vision:

I am amused at the fact that I am often polite to robots. I say Thank You to a drive-through ordering device. I say No Thanks to a robocall request. I begin confessing sidebar information to an automated questionnaire that only wants a Yes or a No—-and tells me so. My computer requires passwords that I do not wish to provide, but I must obey in order to get anything at all done today. If I follow procedure and instruction the robotic internet will grant me permission to ply my life, live my day.

In the midst of all this mindless soulless automation, I cherish the real human contacts that occur outside the electronic cyborg world. The tiny moments of revelation or joy.

On the way to the drop-off laundry, I tune in to a jazz radio station. It Ellingtons its way through the car as I pull into the parking lot. The jolly laundry lady opens the passenger door to retrieve my cleanables and laughs quite lustily when she hears the music. She says, “Oh, Jim, you be jammin’!” As I drive away, she smiles and says, “You keep jammin’!”

This makes my morning. This is amusing, warming, symbolic, humane. This makes me smile. This erases all memory of abstract encounters with gadgets and distracted automatons and flaccid clerks.

I drive on to my other errands.

I keep on jammin’

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast:  https://youtu.be/sOxjLs3-0r8

or read the transcript below:

THE JOYS OF JAYWALKING 

I’m dodging cars and dancing through traffic to get to the north side of University Boulevard.

Whoosh! There goes a red pickup truck, missing me by inches. I feel the warm draft of air rustling my jacket. I come to a halt on the center yellow line, awaiting the opportunity to race the rest of the way across the street. Two more vehicles and I am in the clear.

This is called jaywalking, and it is a tradition, a habit.

The time is 1970. I am young and foolish and full of energy. As opposed to right now, when I find myself not-so-young and just as foolish and minimally energetic.

Being youthful and unaware of consequences, I dash around the campus of the University, plying my trade each day. My job as a Mad Man is to run the school’s news bureau. That means holding press conferences, writing news stories, reducing my bosses’ diatribes to palatable statements, schmoozing the media and in general attempting to display the University in a positive light. Jaywalking is a way to save time and meet appointments. Travelling all the way to the corner and waiting for a favorable traffic light to send me on my way is just a waste of resources.

As years go by, I find myself continuing to be a poor man’s adventurer by jaywalking everywhere I go. I’m playing a video game without having to fret over the trappings of electronics.

As a young 1970′s dude, I also have a life beyond the University. At home I am the victim of fad and fashion. In addition to purchasing trendy ties and classy shoes, I also fall briefly under the spell of exercise promoters. I begin jogging, thus awakening each day with new sorenesses and nifty muscle pains.

Again, back to 1970, here I am another morning on the south side of eighth avenue south, getting ready to speed northward to the Veterans Hospital to interview a visiting scientist. The opportunity comes amid traffic and I begin running to cross before a looming Chevrolet runs me down.

Suddenly, I freeze in place right in the middle of traffic, unable to move. Leg cramps hold me stiff and sore. Traffic has to dodge and swirl about me as I limp to the center line to avoid sudden death.

For the first time in my life my body doesn’t obey my commands.

I finally hobble to safety, humbled by DNA and the physicality of life.

My jaywalking days will continue, but caution and fear will train me to take fewer risks.

Being of unsound mind and unpredictable body, I give up jogging. Ain’t worth the trouble, I tell myself.

Eventually, I abandon my Mad Man career out of sheer conscience, weary of trying to make iffy policies and procedures seem sterling, tired of spinning semi-truths, anxious to begin a new career over which I will have some control.

“The gunman was a loner who lived with his mother,” an oft-heard phrase employed by diffident reporters. I’d like to re-write this to read, “The jaywalker was a loner who lived with his wife.” The story might extend as, “He was known to keep to himself and read books whenever he could.”

I am preparing the news release now, at this moment. I might add, “The jaywalker emerged from his books now and then to mingle with family and friends and customers. Neighbors report that he seemed suspiciously drawn to writing stories and selling books, though no-one could say for sure what else he did in his private moments.”

Jaywalking, exercise-avoidance, doing bookie things like reading and writing…all seem to calm me down and give me purpose.

There could be worse ways to live a solitary life

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

WEBSITE

Hear Jim’s podcast: https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast

or read his transcript below:

THE APPLESEED UNIVERSE

I’m sitting on a rock some 500 feet above sea level, making notes.

The time is the 1970s, and this is the road to Mount Palomar observatory, way out west. Far away from my Deep South Alabama roots.

My small notepad with hardware store letterhead is filling up with penciled thoughts and memories and hopes and fears. Right now, nothing bad can happen because each time I glance at the valley below me, a deep sigh of relief issues forth involuntarily.

This is a special moment in time, and I know it will never happen again.

One of my lifelong dreams—to visit the world’s largest optical telescope. I have just done that. All it took was to wish upon some stars.

Now that I’m descending the mountain, I stop to absorb what has just occurred. The observatory is what I thought it would be—a symbol of my never-ending latent desire to know what’s beyond all visible boundaries. To know what’s out there. To find some hope beyond an encapsulated daily existence.

The very earthly presence of this telescope is a sign. A sign that there are others who, like me, want to find things out…just in case humanity has thus far managed to overlook something important.

So what’s the big deal? With bigger telescopes we learn that yet another billion galaxies exist. Does that help me pay the rent, feed the family, comfort the deprived?

Years later, I will find this quote from Martin Luther: ”Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

Sounds as if Luther and you and I intuitively know the same thing. We know that whatever is out there or down there or over there is worthy of inspection, just because and despite. Because it’s there. Because it might be there. Because it’s important to know if it’s not there.

Bits of wisdom, carefully accumulated and notated upon a hardware store notepad, are worthy of archiving, because and despite. Despite the forces that suppress. Despite the naysaying cynics. Despite the persistent tendency to deny and avoid.

Apple trees must be planted. Stars must be counted. Attention must be paid.

Just despite. Just because

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

WEBSITE

GLOVING UP FOR WINTER CHUCKLES

I am counting down the final days of autumn.

I am indeed approaching the winter of my contentment.

These days, I pay more attention to tiny things, tiny moments, tiny feelings, tiny thoughts…things and moments and feelings and thoughts that may go unnoticed should I forget to record them in my red clay diary.

So, why are these seemingly insignificant bits and pieces so…surprisingly significant?

Why do they matter?

To work through these ponderings, maybe I should name my new car, Eloquent.

That way, neighbors can observe, “There’s Jim, waxing Eloquent again.”

Try and stop me from going on about this. Just a few more words:

The first cold morning of autumn finds me digging through the detritus on the floor of the passenger side of Eloquent. I am searching for matching gloves.

Long ago, I purchased some gardening gloves, on sale, four pairs for two dollars. Who could resist?

With every spell of low outdoor temperatures, I grab the first pair of gloves in sight. One for the right hand, one for the left hand—who cares if their shades of brown don’t match up?

But this particular morning, I can’t for the life of me locate a right-hand glove. After diligence is spent, after time is squandered, I can only come up with four left-hand gloves. Has there been a glove rebellion?  Have the righters escaped?

Hmm. Have you ever tried putting a left-hand glove on your right hand? Two ways to do this, maybe three.

I turn the glove backwards and slide my hand in. A bit clumsily, since the gloves are formed to bend palmward, not the other way around.  Then I try donning the glove properly, but the little finger tends to be smaller than the thumb—ever noticed that?

Maybe I should try turning a glove inside-out. Think this will work? I’ll let you know.

Now…wasn’t that refreshing? Spending two minutes contemplating something so different, so silly and so engrossing that you can’t help but chuckle at the effort?

Well, at least I got a chuckle out of it, even if you didn’t.

An old Russian proverb states, “If you can tickle yourself, you can laugh when you please.”

Here I am, just tickling myself for the sheer fun of it

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

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