Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/FROM%20DOWNTOWN%20TO%20DOGTOWN.mp3

or read his story below:

FINDING THE SOLITUDES OF DOGTOWN AND DOWNTOWN

Here’s what happened one Alabama night some years ago.

It still stands out in my Red Clay Diary

 Tonight I find myself atop a mountain in Dogtown, south of Fort Payne,  north of Collinsville, watching a clear cool sky and feeling the wideness of the open spaces around me.

Just east of where I am standing, the red planet Mars appears on the horizon, and to the west the diamond-bright planet Venus is about to be occluded by the trees below.

It is a night to take a deep breath and wonder why you can see so many more stars on this mountain, stars that you can’t see in Downtown Birmingham. Years ago, when Reed Books was located within the Wooster Lofts on First Avenue North, I would climb four flights of stairs above my bookloft at night to gaze at the city–Vulcan would wave from afar, aircraft would whoosh past to land—then leave—the airport, lone walkers would dodge the occasional automobile on the streets below. Above, the moon would moon me, a meteor would give me an instant razz, and I could see a bright star or steady planet cruising on by.

Anyhow, back to this night, where my mind is right now. I’ve come to this mountain, two hours from Birmingham, to speak to a gathering of volunteer chaplains who make sure that hospital patients are not alone spiritually when they don’t want to be.  Inside the restaurant—much warmer than the outside mountain air—I find folks who are relaxed and happy about where they live and what they do, in Dekalb and Cherokee Counties. They are close to Mentone and Chattanooga, not too far from Birmingham, but far enough away to feel like country folks when they need to.

It’s clear to me, a couple of hours later, as I hurtle back towards Downtown Birmingham, that most of us find a way to have some peace and quiet midst the hustle and smoke and sounds of the city. Folks back in Dogtown can go to people-laden places whenever they need a break from solitude…folks in Downtown Birmingham can find solitude when they’re done with crowds. In Downtown, I see loners finding occasional solitude in their idling cars, in pocket parks, within their earpods, behind their closed-lidded eyes, inside a restroom or in a stock room, on a streetside bench, in a quiet loft room, on the back pew of an empty church. I notice people who, even in a crowd, can find solitude for a moment—at a symphony concert, in the corner at a cocktail party, inside a book huddling in an alcove.

So, Dogtown and Downtown are just names we give places. In each place, people can find what they need if they use a bit of imagination.

Back in Birmingham the next day, as I leave work, I walk onto the parking deck adjacent to the century-old building that houses shop. It is nearly dark and the sunset is spectacular in the middle of the city. To the west, I can see First Avenue South running straight toward the sun. To the north, the truncated skyscraper we used to call the Daniel Building shows evidence that some employees haven’t fled yet—perhaps they’re taking in a bit of solitude before fighting the traffic. To the east, Mars is struggling to be seen again, and a solitary aircraft dips towards the landing strip.

I breathe deeply, realizing that, whether it’s Dogtown or Downtown, I can always find a sky and an interlude just when I need it most

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:  https://youtu.be/eqT5ONjFgto

or read his story below:

THE WAITING ROOM OF THE VANITIES

I am right here right now…here in an unaccustomed room sitting atop unaccustomed furniture surrounded by cloned and soul-deprived magazines and sales brochures and neutral wall hangings and lifeless crisscrossed carpet tiles and a genuine artificial potted plant…

How many other waiting rooms have I experienced during this awkwardly extended lifetime? How many more waiting rooms are waiting for me to wait within them? Just what is a waiting room?

I look around.

The unfamiliarity of this cubed space is intentional, I suppose. Was this room’s original designer considering the feelings and fears and hopes and lives of future temporary occupants? Or was the designer merely working quickly within budget and space restrictions to come up with something saleable and boss-acceptable?

What else weighs upon me in this special neutered space?

Well, it is silent. No unidentifiable music piping in, no large-screen-image device screaming for my attention and my wallet.

What else is missing?

There is no clock to remind me whether the system is on time or tardy or suspended. There is no intentional sound, just the hovering hum of air conditioning, the muted mutterings of people in the hallway. Just the sound of my own voices at conflict with one another.

Oh, and there is no mirror. That’s just as well, because whenever I pass by a mirror I am amazed at what I see. Just who is that old dude who is concealing my 22-year-old self?Inside I am young. Outside, there is something else going on—the aging process that does not permit me to cast a vote aye or nay. I am disenfranchised.

Now and again, another waiting room denizen visits, sits, stares at some palmed device, eventually exits.

What’s the good news in this room? There is no lock on the door. I can leave whenever. But I don’t leave whenever because that would mean having to re-start the process of setting up computerized appointments using computerized systems and computerized voices and triggering computerized reminder calls. I’ll just continue waiting, if you please.

I sit here, unaccustomed.

Maybe this is better than I imagine, this waiting room of the vanities. At least I am in-between dramas. Before I entered I was just a preemie. While I’m here I am cocooned and protected from other realities. In just a little while I will be released to the world, sadder but wiser—or happier but wiser.

This place is protective of me and my thoughts and all knowledge of the outer world. Maybe it’s a chapel of meditation and I just now realize it. Just in time to be summoned into the hallway for my next trek toward the unknown

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: 

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/outsideinsocksneatlyfolded.mp3

or read his diary below:

BUTTONED-UP BOOK ‘EM, DANNO! SHIRTS AS EVIDENCE OF CHARACTER

I found this entry from some years back, in the Red Clay Diary today.

Seems like a worthy subject to re-ponder:

This evening, I open the first big bag of wash-dry-fold from an unfamiliar neighborhood laundry and wish for the best.

After all, for decades, the Laundry Ladies at the just-closed Flamingo Cleaners have been taking care of us—the Reed family of 17th Street South. Each week, I gather everything dirty-but-washable into these drawstring bags and toss them over the banister to the foyer below. The resultant THUDS are part of the ritual of the morning. Then, I lug the bags to the car and drop them off on the way to work. At the end of the day, there are few things more satisfying than still-warm gently-sorted-and-folded sweet-smelling garments ready to be tucked away in closets and drawers. The most satisfying part of this ritual is the fact that, in all these decades, I haven’t had to wash a single item of clothing myself!

Back in a previous life, the task of sitting for hours in a laundromat usually fell to me, and I always considered it to be an incredible waste of perfectly good time. I recall as a small child watching my mother literally toil over clothes-washing, having to stir  and scrub them by hand in a tub, rinse them, wring them out, hoist the water-heavy garments onto her shoulders to the backyard, where they were one by one tidily smoothed straight and hung out to dry, later to be brought inside, pressed, sorted, folded and put away.

But, as I say, I got out of having to feed quarters into broken machinery many moons ago, and my mother eventually got some machinery that made her life somewhat easier. I just never got her toil out of my mind and hoped my wife would never have to do what she had to do.

Anyhow, the Laundry Ladies always took care of the task, usually with good humor and silent professionalism. And, unlike Mother, they were paid to do so.

But today is the first day I’ve had to use a new wash-dry-fold facility, and I’m hoping for the best.

As I empty the clothes onto the upstairs master bed, I’m pleasantly surprised. And grateful! That’s because I begin to realize, as I put things away, that the new laundry folder has added personality to the process. My socks, always turned inside-out because I wear them that way, have been methodically matched and turned outside-in, because that’s the way socks should be. My BOOK-EM DANNO shirts are not only folded, but they are buttoned up—something I’ve never experienced. Everything is categorized and ready to use.

This might be evidence of someone who truly loves the job of washing-drying-folding, someone who takes pride in the task, someone who gains some degree of satisfaction from having done well what could be considered an uninteresting and repetitive chore.

So, what’s the difference between this service worker and my previous Laundry Ladies?

Not much, on one level—the Laundry Ladies were very proficient, friendly, poorly paid and overworked, but they kept on keeping on, doing what they could do, and doing it dependably well. The mysterious new laundry worker is equally task-driven and polite, but that extra bit of care, that WILLINGNESS TO DO MORE THAN THE JOB REQUIRES, speaks of an earlier generation, an almost forgotten work ethic that only us geezers with good memories recall.

This makes me wish to do a shout-out of THANKS! to all people who rise above their potentially humdrum jobs. The people who take time to find some joy and satisfaction in the hands they are dealt. The people who tend to do that special one little thing beyond the call of duty and cause an involuntary smile to appear on a customer’s face.

Makes me want to be a better worker myself

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/wBP_IgYPlsM

or read his tale…

INCARCERATING THE PINK AND AQUA-EDGED YELLOW STRIPE RAINBOW

 Just standing here at the edge of my 1906-built home on the big city’s south side, old time lyrics creep into my unfiltered mind, “It’s only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea…”

I look out over the carpenter-gothic and condo-lined street and await the arrival of my true love.

It’s a generational rumble, this little avenue of leftover dreams. The modern structures on one side, the ancient wooden houses on the other, facing off each day and actually getting along, coexisting just fine.

My gaze drifts upward to take in something prettier than phone and cable line criss-crossings and teetering wooden support poles and fractured sidewalks and potholed battlefields and grammatically-challenged signage.

Up, up in the Maxfield Parrish clouds a rainbow fades itself into existence. For a few minutes, that’s all I can see, all I care to see.

Can I see it on your behalf?

This particular rainbow has no specified beginning, an invisible ending way beyond, but in between sports its colors. The three stripes begin on the upper edge with a light rose pink kind of effect. The lower track is aqua, almost transparent. Between is a remarkable lemon-yellow stripe rendering the other colors unable to collide and conflict. No rumble here, this day at least.

The lyrics keep repeating themselves in a Nat King Cole-Ella Fitzgerald amalgam,  ”It’s only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea…”

I find myself smiling without benefit of audience, without any attempt to please anybody else. I’m just smiling at this wonderful, pure sight hovering blissfully out of reach of the day to day toil and disarray of the village, the admixture of life and dream, reality and illusion.

If I capture this mirage, firefly it in a jar, will it die of incarceration? Will it no longer exist because of my interference?

I leave the rainbow alone, it leaves me alone. We regard each other and exist in peace.

And for a few ticks of the celestial timepiece, all is calm, all is bright

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/hIdEDkvcsbg

or read forth, below:

IT’S A MOODY ELEVATOR KIND OF DAY

An oblong thick plastic credit card-sized key grants me entrance to a big-city parking deck behind the bookstore.

Without this key, my work day would be spent inserting handfuls of quarters into disorderly and often malfunctioning parking meters. All this activity to restrain the gleeful meter-monitor person who races to issue overtime penalties to anyone who stays too long downtown.

It is a game I no longer play. I would just as soon pay a monthly fee to the parking deck cartel so that the security of my automobile will be assured.

So, here I am, dodging impatient traffic in order to drive into the deck entrance. I wave the key at an unreachable sensor and something magically causes the creaky wooden blockade arm before me to elevate itself long enough to allow entrance.

I steer the car through six levels of obtusely-stationary vehicles in order to park in a diagonal space on the seventh level.

I gather my jacket and aluminum beverage cup, step onto unpainted concrete, and head for the dreaded elevators.

I stand between two double-doored elevators, punch the slightly askew DOWN button and await my fate.

It is a toss-up as to which elevator will arrive. I listen for metallic pulley sounds and grinding mechanisms as the strains of elevation sound out. I gaze through the adjacent windows at the city below me and scrutinize office and condo windows for signs of life.

To my dismay, it is the left-hand elevator that opens its doors to me. This is the one that recently stopped halfway up, halfway down, stranding a lone passenger till rescuers freed him. This is also the elevator that sometimes opens and closes by itself, sometimes half-opens, then shuts, before I can board it.

Several weeks back, I meet an elevator repair man who is cutting and pasting and oiling the shaft innards to keep them operating. He nervously and apologetically reports that the elevators are old and perhaps past their prime. His assignment is to keep running a hundred or so units around town so that the machinations of commerce and governance keep racing along.

So, today, this morning, I step gingerly through  the open doors and do an about-face. I punch the ONE button and wait to see what adventure will befall me between level seven and level one.

As the doors slide shut, I squint at the posted inspection certificate and note that the elevator has not passed inspection for sixteen months. I wonder whether an elevator loses flavor after its expiration date.

The elevator stops at level six, the doors grind open, no visible being enters, the doors close and the descent resumes. The elevator stops at level five, opens to invisibles or ghosts or spirits, closes again. This continues for each level until Number One pops up.

I hold my breath and await my fate, hoping against hope that the doors will slide apart and allow me to escape the pursuing hounds of imagination

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/s8quNZnyh3g

or read on…

Deep South Tales Both Actual and True

Who isn’t present at last Friday’s family reunion?

I wander among the relatives and semi-relatives scattered about the room, looking deep into eyes that sometimes match my genes, my kinships.

This annual gathering of people whose lives overlap with mine is comforting and glad, poignant and sad, funny and…well, a bit of everything.

Each year, there are more children, each year there are fewer oldtimers, each year, last year’s young’uns have grown a bit older, each year I marvel at the mysteries of birth and death, the rambunctious progression of wrinkles and wry humor, that characterize this family.

Each year, someone present last year is now missing.

Each reunion makes me want to go back and visit in three dimensions the good times of yesteryear.

But this is the only way I know how to visit: I write down my memories in order to keep alive the good people, the good times.

This is one of many memories recorded in my Red Clay Diary:

HOW MANY Z’S IN ZZZZZ?

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ….

I’m lying abed in this small plaster-ceilinged bedroom I share with brother Ronny.

The time is longer ago than you might remember, or maybe even before you were born.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ….

It is just after sunrise. I am slowly drifting back and forth between slumber and wakefulness. Dreams are fading into daydreams. Reality is creeping in to take over.

My ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s are turning into snorts, then into eyes wide open…

In the living room, the Sunday newspaper comic strips await.

The comics are everything on Sunday morning. That’s where I learn what those ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s mean. They are shorthand for Sleeping Soundly.

When a comic strip cartoonist wants me to know that a character is asleep or dozing, a row of ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s informs me. When a cartoon bubble hovering above Little Orphan Annie’s head is dripping tiny closed circles, I know that this is what Annie is thinking, not what she is saying aloud. And so on.

I idly wonder how many Z’s are grammatically proper.

But I’m lying here in my bunk bed, now fully awake but hoping that if I can visualize those ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s floating above my head, I can convince anyone peeking into the room that I am still asleep. Can’t they see the Z’s?

It doesn’t work, this attempt to make palpable a cartoonist’s Morse code. I try to pretend sleep, but older sister Barbara opens the door a crack to call me to breakfast. “I see your eyelids moving. You’re awake!” she grins gleefully. I can never fool Barbara.

I swat away the floating ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s and dangle my feet over the side of the mattress. I’m on the top bunk, so part of becoming fully awake is the jolt to the system that I feel when I leap into the vast space between here and hardwood floor.

Time to pretend I’m awake for another day. Time to do little kid things that little kids do on Sunday mornings.

Time to find the Sunday paper and discover what Dagwood is doing—is he asleep on the couch under ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s? What about The Phantom—does he ever sleep? And Snuffy Smith? I know he knows all about Z’s, as does Pappy Yokum. As does brother Ronny on the bottom bunk. They are my kind of people.

To this day, many decades later, I envy those people, real-lifed and cartooned, who know how to catch a few ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s any time they please. Or at least any time their cartoonist so deems.

Or any time sister Barbara isn’t looking

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/0zTgM_tAog0

or read his words below:

EXCAVATING HOPE FROM THE RUINS OF FALLEN DREAMS

A scrawny pedestrian hikes the wilds of the chaos city.

He leans into the warmed-over breeze, backpack causing him to chug forward at slug pace.

He holds a very long unopened umbrella in his left hand, ever ready to draw it from ragged scabbard with right hand, should foe or prey appear.

Like a bow hunter, he darts his vision side to side, up and down, wary of feral surroundings in the downtown traffic.

As he passes by the old book store, I the proprietor observe him and wonder whether he’s ever read a book voluntarily, whether he has ever found pleasure in writing or ingesting inscribed paper thoughts. The scrawny man sideglances and acknowledges me, but maintains his errant pace.

Setting out the OPEN sign for morning customers, I look at the sky above old towers and wonder what else the day will bring.

Before I can re-enter the shop, another figure hobbles by, this time a ragtag woman walking gingerly in tiny steps as if her feet are bound, her heels forcing her to tread carefully. She, too, acknowledges me but sallies forth. Her elsewhere destination is everything.

I retreat to the security of my shop and await door chimes that will announce visitors.

Next to enter are curiosity shoppers who troll the stacks in wonder, pulling volumes both ancient and modern, touching them, experiencing the weight and textures that virtual hand-held devices don’t deliver.

It is as if the shoppers are re-discovering three-dimensional reality in stark contrast to the flat screen images dominating most waking moments.

Other browsers soon arrive, some finding comfort in the existence of books loved in childhood, others gawking and appreciating near-forgotten long-lost storybooks.

Researchers and scholars and wanderers fill the day and weave past passers-by on the way to coffee across the street, on their way to fair trade objects from afar at the shop next door. On their way with book in hand to unearth what else is worth seeing in the excavated ruins of the city.

The day is filled with stories told loudly by some, stories held close and monosyllabic by others, stories in the process of being created, stories spilling over and mingling with stories lying in wait within the books.

The scrawny hunter and the hobbled woman people my thoughts. In imagination unfettered, they mingle with my customers and enjoy their company. In imagination most hopeful, these explorers and warriors find peace and camaraderie with one another.

The stragglers of the city streets are my family, the browsers my foster children, the friends and strangers alike my motivators.

At end of day, I close shop and make journey homeward, part of me in need of rest and recoup, another part of me wondering with high expectation what tomorrow will bring, what Tomorrow People will be like, what adventures I will have with these real and imaginary wisps

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

WEBSITE

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/iu6MNvxvxSg

or read on…

THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT

Children of the Deep South Soil, this is a special report from one Village Elder.

See whether you can immerse yourself in these flashes of long ago joys. See whether you will be inspired to file away and cherish your own lifetime extension of happy treasures.

Everything I say is true and actual.

Driving west from Birmingham, I pass by a ramshackle breezeway home where one wizened whittler quietly shapes his lap sculpture on porch steps, pausing only a moment to look at me and wave a smile before I disappear into the red bug ladybug mist. 

Further on, the West Blocton exit illuminates vivid times where deep inside I still play on Rose Lane, birthplace of my father. The family house is gone now, but part of me is still running around the backyard, next in line to use the outhouse.

Tuscaloosa approaches, and there I am suddenly standing barefoot on clay, recalling times when kinfolk still lived in a breezeway dogtrot house on the North River. I can still taste crystal water dipped from the front yard well, feel its coolness, experience the nurturing of people genetically connected to me.

Good times and fond memories during my time here on Planet Three bounce all over the place.

On the way to T Town, there is the Brookwood exit, where the hope and play of childhood remembers me as a tad adventuring into the woods of Peterson. Nearby homes of grandparents and cousins are my tether, guaranteeing I won’t be lost for long during tiny explorations.

The Birmingham to Tuscaloosa Breezeway Dogtrot memory machine is merrily out of control.

Somewhere hereabouts is Hurricane Creek, where water moccasins and giggly girlfriends play side by side during weekend picnics. Not too far away is Lock 13, a marvel of technology and noise and clanking metals.

All these places intermingle in my childhood playground, and it’s good to call on them when I need to escape the computerized and politicized world for a bit.

Sometimes I recall them, sometimes they recall me right back.

If you can imagine my extensive and erratic Alabama lifespan as a plot of land, you could measure it from Cuba on the Mississippi border to western Jefferson County, from north Birmingham and Northport to Montevallo just south of here.

My forays outside this region are instructive, but there is never any place anything like sweet home Deep South Alabama.

And home is where I still dip into the past to dredge up washboard roads, fossils jutting from chalky riverbanks, sputtering swimmers at play, rolled-down windows, stick shift roadsters, long rope swings, barbed wire fences, pines and scraggly bushes, teetering tree houses, corrugated tin roofs, makeshift bows and arrows, wandering hobos, haunting train whistles, arrowheads here and there, infinitely observable ant beds, penny candy, sparklers and fireflies in the dusk, mysterious attics and damp basements, whispery gossip and tall tales, pet frogs, yodeling playmates, bubblegum cards, and always and forever the homebase, the center of the known universe, my family, my bunk bed, my endless dreams at the end of hard play days.

You children of the Deep South soil, cherish what time you have, pay attention to the tales of elders, protect the young’uns, and hold fast to your fond memories. They might come in handy here and there, now and then

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast:  https://youtu.be/9rkRZIgcDGQ

or read his story…

Deep South Tales Both Actual and True

THE HISTORIC BIG SANDY CREEK WATERMELON SEED SKIRMISH 

Uncle Sam’s big shiny-toothed smile is directed at me one scorching summer afternoon. He stands waist-deep in icy water, waiting for me to take my next deep breath.

It’s the longest deep breath I’ve ever held.

I’m standing barefoot and swimming-suited atop a time-smoothed boulder on the banks of Big Sandy Creek near Tuscaloosa, just a few years after the end of World War II.

My life hangs in the balance as I try to make an important decision.

I must decide whether and when to jump into the coldest cold water in my  known universe. Big Sandy is always chilling to the senses, way colder than any other creek or stream anywhere around, making it difficult for most of us kids and relatives to tolerate it for long. Will I enter or will I retreat?

I take one more look around me, looking for a sign, but all I see is cousins and aunts and uncles and parents. They are all preoccupied with the duties of summer—-skimming pebbles across running waters, spreading blankets on the red clay ground, opening picnic baskets and spreading snacks and goodies about, shooing flies and gnats away from body and edibles, playing tag among the pines, hiking up swimming trunks that are soggy and descending, heaving a large watermelon from the water, sunning themselves on grass and stone.

I can’t hold my breath any longer. My toes are twitching, curling in anticipation of slamming into barely tolerable  temperatures. My hesitancy hordes a secret, and that secret is the fact that I do not know how to swim and that I would rather Uncle Sam did not learn this fact. He’s been known to toss kids into water just to see whether they know how to swim or whether they are skilled at sinking like stones.

There has got to be a way to avoid becoming one of Uncle Sam’s experiments.

Splat!

That’s the sudden sound of a small dark missile bouncing off my right temple. I snap a sideways glance just in time to spy Cousin Jerry squeezing a watermelon seed between thumb and finger, aiming a second volley at my head.

All my attention is diverted. I jump off the boulder onto the bank and run toward the watermelon slices that Mother has just laid out for us. Jerry is chasing me with his cocked and loaded seed, and I am in survival mode, grabbing a slice for myself, munching into the red sweetness in order to retrieve two seeds.

I turn to Jerry, whose seedy bullet has just missed me, giving me the two seconds I need to spurt a seed at him. A nicely aimed hit to his shoulder. The Big Sandy Creek Watermelon Seed Skirmish begins!

Soon, several of us kids and adults are ducking and shooting seeds and generally laughing ourselves silly.

This is my kind of war. Nobody wins, nobody loses. We just have a good time jumping headlong out of our hot summer day routines. The rewards are immense—-we eat some really good watermelon, we run ourselves ragged, we express our happiness and camaraderie in a harmless and memorable manner, and some of us even venture into Big Sandy Creek.

Those of us who can’t swim keep Uncle Sam at a distance. Those who know how to swim have a great time with uncles and aunts and kin.

The day is a happy one, and Big Sandy Creek remains fresh in memory to this day, though I never returned to the scene of the battle. I don’t know what happened to the big smooth boulder. I don’t even know whether Big Sandy waters remain to this day the coldest in the universe.

I do know this. To this day, I do not know how to swim. To this day, seedless watermelons seem not quite normal. To this day, I would give much to enjoy just one more golden afternoon cavorting with loved and lovely family members during a harmless war, the kind of war I wish everybody knew how to wage

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Deep South Memories from a Red Clay Diary…

 Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast:  https://youtu.be/KBpBESt1RmY

or read his memoir below:

TEMPTATION IS WAY TOO TEMPTING

After spending ten years as a new member of my species, I begin to realize that I am in way over my head.

Way back yonder—right now, inside my diary—in the 1950s, everything seems so new, so fresh, so exciting, so…tempting.

Fortunately for me, I have my family and playmates and neighbors and teachers and relatives to keep me in line. Mostly. They are here to protect me, show me the way, warn me when I venture too far off-track, mend me when I crack or bruise or break.

This protective dome of caring and nurturing is keeping me alive and well till I can strike out on my own, which won’t be for another few years.

But the temptations remain.

When I am all alone and no-one is looking, I still am not really all alone. I keep picturing two funny and scary characters who people my world: upon my left shoulder smolders a tiny laughing, horned and pointy-tailed little red devil who eggs me on when I want to misbehave or bend unwritten rules or snap commandments in two. Upon my right shoulder resides a tiny angelic whispering little guy who whispers goodness in my ear, who pulls me back from the brink of sin and misbehavior.

These small beings are real enough in fertile imagination to balance me in my lifetime tightrope walk. Much of the time. And they fill in when I meander through solitude.

Characters like the devil and the angel formed themselves out of B-movies, comic books, Sunday school dogma, radio dramas, and stern adults who look out for my safety.

In these 1950s I don’t get away with much, at least until teenagedom encroaches and those temptations take on a hormonal power that cannot be ignored.

Now, some numerous decades later, I no longer see the angel and the devil, I no longer enjoy the safety of my long-gone grown-up protectors. Now I am fully aware that I am on my own, that I must answer to myself when I stray or when I have unacceptable inclinations. I am my own boss…which means I cannot blame anybody but myself for infractions, I cannot delegate guilt or regret to anyone but Me.

Dang! Being a grownup means I don’t look like a kid anymore. But it doesn’t mean that I am not still a kid deep within, a kid enjoying the idea of temptation, if not the reality of it.

I have become the avatar of all those families and playmates and neighbors and teachers and relatives who jump-started me. I feel free and confident and ready to face the snarkies and the meanies…most of the time.

But I keep an imaginary swatter nearby just in case the shoulder critters return one day to once again take over and confuse me. I never forget to thank them silently, these real and imaginary people who ushered me across the darkened chasm. These beings who slapped me together, patched and instructed me, brought me safely from way back then to right now, to this very minute.

Who kept me around just long enough to impart my fragile wisdom to an unexpected reader…You

© 2019 A.D. by Jim the Reed