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Life, actually…

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FROM BUSY BUSY TO SLOW POKEDNESS, GRIT BY GRIT

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“Is this your first time here?”

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This is a question I often ask when a browser enters the bookshop not seeming to know exactly what to do next. Curious but wary is one way to put it.

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The visitor scans the highly decorated walls, teetering bookshelves and high-piled ancient merchandise in an attempt to “get the lay of the land,” as we say Down South.

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“Yes, this is my first time.”

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“Well, I’m glad you finally arrived. Been waiting for you,” I smile and send out a test palaver. Just to see whether this newbie wishes to engage further. Or to determine whether being quiet and unconversational is preferred.

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“Are you enjoying the town?” I’m always anxious to see whether newcomers are getting a positive first impression.

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“Well, I’ve only been here an hour or so…” the visitor hesitates, then reveals a first concern. “Tell me, I notice that people look directly at me and wish me Good Morning.” Another hesitation, but my inquisitive smile is encouraging. “Are they being sarcastic when they say that?”

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I’m taken aback each time this kind of nervously-asked question arises, but I am also used to receiving similar inquiries, particularly from first-timers who hail from the West Coast, Northeast or even Canada.

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I now understand what the questioner is really trying to find out: Are these locals actually friendly and engaging, or are they sending coded unwelcoming messages?

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I welcome this kind of inquiry because it gives me a small opportunity to show them what Southern Hospitality is like.

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“No,” I grin. “This is just the way most of us are brought up. Our mommas taught us to meet and greet everybody with polite salutations and helpfulness.”

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I let this sink in for a second.

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“We have this engaging way of letting you know that we actually See You, that we want to let you know we are ok. That we would like to know you better.”

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I can see the customer is taking a breath of relief, but I also know that just saying how nice we are does not offer proof that we really are.

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While the aisles are cruised, I occasionally check to see whether there are other questions. Along the way, we engage a bit more. I learn some personal history, the customer learns more about where to go and what to do in this friendly Southern village.

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Once we establish the fact that grits have never been experienced, that our kind of barbeque has not been tasted, I make sure that when the store is exited, this visitor will try us out, preferably at the next destination I recommend.

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Amazingly, this approach to greeting newbies sometimes produces positive results!

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Hours later, the not-from-around-here browser returns to the shop, big smile and pleasant tone combined.

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“Hey, I just wanted to thank you for recommending that diner. You were right—grits are tasty if they are hot and buttered and salted.” A pause. “And I met some really interesting people!”

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The visitor then disappears.

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Later, while quietly shelving books, I imagine that stories will be told back home about this Down South place and its engaging populace and delicious fattening food.

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And maybe, as the customer enthusiastically reports, just maybe, they’ll return to our village someday with family and friends and spend some more time adjusting to this slow-paced, pleasant Southern Hospitality thing

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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I’LL NEVER FORGET THE DAY I TASTED A BOOK

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So…what is the first book you ever read?

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What is the first book I ever read?

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Allow me to crank up the Time Machine and get back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when books slowly insinuated themselves into my life.

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First thing I do is SEE a book. It’s over there, just within reach of my chubby little uncoordinated fingers. I can roll just a quarter-roll in my crib—that’s all it takes to see this unfocused blur of colors and shapes on the cover. All I know how to do is experience the book, not knowing that it can be read and manipulated. So, I do what I know how to do: lick the cover and gnaw at the corners. It tastes different than those mashed-up things they are feeding me. It would be even tastier if I could bite off a piece and swallow it, but that comes later.

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So, first I SEE a book. Then I TASTE it. Then I masticate a bit. Then, I lose concentration and fixate on a wiggly toy that is hanging above me. I’ll get back to the book later.

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Next thing I know, I’m snuggled up to my mother’s chest, experiencing the words she is reading to me as they vibrate the side of my face. I can HEAR her voice with one ear. I can FEEL her voice with the other. And then I note that she is gently turning the pages, causing the colorful shapes and strange markings to shift each time. I can hear her inflections of warmth, suspense, happiness, as the pages drift by.

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Before I know it, I’m sitting up in my own wobbly fashion and turning the pages—not necessarily one at a time, not necessarily in any order. But I am doing the book the way I know how to do it. And, now and then, I even taste it again. I’ve been known to rub a crayon onto the paper to add color and design.

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Time flies and now I’m reciting a book to my mother and sister, pretending that I’m reading it as the pages pass, but actually I still don’t know how to read, I’m just feeding back what I’ve heard them read aloud so many times. They play along with the ruse.

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Now, at last, I am picking out a word or two in preparation for enrolling in the first grade. I’m excited about the prospect of actually making my way through the words with some degree of understanding. And, amazingly, after a while I start to read big-lettered words on my own.

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What is the first book I can read without assistance? Hard to tell, since the books at school are not the same books we have at home. I’m reading some in both places. But in class, I get to read a Dick and Jane and Sally story all the way through! When I become an author many years later, I am jealous of those who wrote this reader. Wouldn’t you like to be the writer whose works can be recited by heart by millions of school kids? “See Dick run. Run, Dick, run!”

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In middle age, I discover the song that comedian Jimmy Durante co-wrote and performed with gusto:

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 There’s one day that I recall, though it was years ago.

All my life I will remember it, I know.

I’ll never forget the day a read a book.

It was contagious, seventy pages.

There were pictures here and there,

So it wasn’t hard to bear,

The day I read a book.

It’s a shame I don’t recall the name of the book.

It wasn’t a history. I know because it had no plot.

It wasn’t a mystery, because nobody there got shot.

The day I read a book? I can’t remember when,

But one o’ these days, I’m gonna do it again.

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Just yesterday, a pleasant family enters the shop, looking around and remarking upon the variety of things to read. One young girl is just tagging along, so naturally she’s the one I try to engage in conversation: “What do you like to read?” I ask, hoping to introduce some titles to her. She performs a sly smile and doesn’t answer because, like so many other children I meet these days, she knows her avid parents will answer for her. “Oh, she doesn’t read,” her father says. I know what he’s saying, but I play dumb just to see what kind of response I’ll get: “You mean she doesn’t know how to read?” I ask sympathetically. She grins even more deeply, waiting for her parent’s punchline. “No she just doesn’t like to read.”

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I get it now. This lass has found a way to rebel against her parents, assert her own identity, appear cool to other kids. Normally, I get to talk up a book enough to inspire someone like her to try it, but I know there’s no way this can happen when hovering but well-meaning parents are there to puppet-master her conversation.

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So, I say what I always say whenever the situation calls for it: “Oh, too bad. Mark Twain once said that a person who does not read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

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This is aimed at no-one in particular. The girl gets the joke but continues to play dumb. The parents remain perplexed.

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What will no doubt happen—I’ve see it often—is she will discover a spicy novel proffered by a friend and, in secret, read it voraciously, becoming hooked on reading despite herself. She will, in the tradition of all kids, hide this novel and this fact from her parents as long as she possibly can.

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The cycle goes on.

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And maybe one day she’ll hear an old Jimmy Durante song and get excited all over again

Here’s Jimmy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLOR8gKwyoo

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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THE DREAM BORROWERS

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I just borrowed a memory from two late friends.

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The thing about a borrowed memory is that I can’t give it back to the borrowerees.

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Once lent, a vivid memory endures and travels forth, a close copy of the one held dear by its original owner.

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As a borrower of memory, I am obligated to respect, cherish and handle with care its perpetuation, its nourishment. Until I can pass it on to the next borrower.

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Is borrowing the same thing as theft? Am I a thief of memory? Maybe not—I did not mean to borrow, it just came at me, entered my mind, and there it resides.

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The thing about an acquired memory is that it often morphs and mingles with similar memories that I hold dear. The two memories entwine and enrich one another.

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Quick, allow me to give you an explanatory anecdote before you roll your eyes and leave my presence.

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One time years ago my friend Robbie Willmarth gave a remarkable account of an encounter she once had with a work by the poet Carl Sandburg. Her fond memory leapt into my own recollection of an in-person  encounter I, too, had with this remarkable poet. As a precocious teenager, I sat enthralled in the presence of Sandburg as he recited, sang and wove tales on the stage of Foster Auditorium in Tuscaloosa. 

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Then, after the program was over, the audience dissolving, the lights dimming, the press heading out, I got brave enough to descend from the balcony and race toward the stage just to see whether I could shake the hand of this wonderful historian/troubadour/poet. Or at least stand in his presence.

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My buddy, Doug Bleicher, was ahead of me, already chatting with Sandburg, so it seemed safe to walk up, mumble some incoherent expression of adulation, and then try not to wash my right hand for a day or two. I was so excited that to this day I don’t recall exactly what was said, but this thing I do know: Carl Sandburg responded with gentle wit to our comments and questions, smiled and listened intently, and in general made us feel like we were the most important temporary companions in the county.

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Then, as memory-makers will do, Sandburg went on his way to the next town and left behind a permanent image in the minds of both us kids.

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Doug and I compared notes and found that each of us independently loved the poetry of this man, each of us was awe-stricken by our encounter, each of us filed sweet memories away for rainy days…and life went on.

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Today, my memory, the memory of Robbie’s experience, the memory of Doug’s parallel poetic encounter, stays with me and emerges over the years to offer comfort when times are chaotic.

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The long string of memories, borrowed or created, sustains us artists and poets and writers and creators…and links us together with past, present and future, always present, always circling around, seeking new angles and new ways of telling that which must never be forgotten, that which must be willingly lent out to the next excited and alert observer.

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As Carl Sandburg said, “Nothing happens unless first a dream.”

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I pay attention to dreams, since I never know what will happen next

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 © 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Listen to the 4-minute podcast on youtube:  https://youtu.be/i7Abe0yzPZU

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Life, actually…

as it was more decades ago than you can count on one hand…

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UP IN SMOKE

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Oh was it cool to smoke, oh was it was even cooler to smoke Kools, oh it was so cool to

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look cool

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smoke cool

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inhale cool

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exhale cool

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light up cool

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tamp ashes off the tip cool

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extinguish cool

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light one cigarette off the lighted end of another cigarette cool

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pause thoughtfully while tamping the unfiltered tip of an unlighted cigarette against the back of your hand cool.

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Everything about smoking tobacco was oh so cool when I was young.

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Young and clueless cool.

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Somewhere in the shrubbery beside our home on Eastwood Avenue, I tried to learn how to smoke, having snuck some of my Uncle Adron’s free-sample Lucky Strikes and a few wooden matches from our gas stove.

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Luckily, I didn’t know what you did once you lit up, didn’t know that you had to draw air through a cigarette while holding the lighted match to the other end. I lit up and blew, and the danged cigarette just wouldn’t stay lit.

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I didn’t know you had to inhale to appreciate the smoking habit, I kept blowing out and the effort eventually made me sick from secondary smoke and sick from guilt—not guilt of smoking without permission but guilt from having taken the cigarettes undetected.

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Thus, I taught myself my own lesson about smoking—don’t do it till you know how.

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But it was so seductive, watching all those famous people smoking away, watching how suave and graceful they were, lighting up while posturing. While being beautiful and charming and in-charge.

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Watching those sexy women look twice as tough and twice as possible because they dared to smoke in public.

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Smoking was so cool.

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Cigars were tough-guy smokes. Only a real man—whatever that was—could handle those big cigars, could use them to punctuate speech, to mark off territory, to hold bad dudes at bay. And a cigar-smoking woman could look twice as riveting as any mere macho man.

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And pipes were even cooler. You could look thoughtful even when you hadn’t a thought in your head if you knew how to handle a pipe.

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Lighting up, puffing, packing tobacco into the bowl, reaming the bowl, clacking the pipe against an ashtray or the heel of your shoe, taking the pipe apart and carefully cleaning it during a deep conversation, and never having to answer any question immediately—everybody would pause, waiting for your answer, while you prepared that pipe for your ceremonial smoke.

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It wasn’t the taste, the feel, the odor. It was the process of lighting up a cigarette or cigar or pipe, it was the way you moved, it was the kind of smoking paraphernalia you carried, it was the way you accentuated your every action, that made smoking so cool.

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The coolest thing you could do was master the art of nonchalantly lighting up without missing a beat or blinking an eye. It was America’s version of Zen mastery. It was art.

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Threats of death, threats of ill health, threats of being ousted, threats of smelling bad, threats of divorce would never make you stop smoking back then because it was about the coolest thing you could possibly do in public without getting arrested. It was the closest you could possibly get to being somebody worthy of notice.

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It was the thing you did BECAUSE you knew you would never be famous.

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It was a way to strut when you had nothing whatsoever to strut about.

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It was as close to immortality as you could ever hope to be, looking and acting like all those beautiful famous people you looked up to and secretly wished you were

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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TEMPLE BELLS

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This is the way it was one Saturday in my little corner of Down South,

a mere thirty years ago:

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Standing in a stranger’s front yard under a bright sun on an early Saturday morning surrounded by good ol’ boys and poofed-hair women may not be my idea of how to spend an hour or two of increasingly precious spare time. But you know how us booklovers are—we will go anyplace anytime under any circumstances to see whether there is a nice old volume or two worth adopting.

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This is, of course, before the internet, before the smart devices, during olden times of landlines and Yellow Pages and following verbal directions to get where you want to go.

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So here I am, back in days of yore, on somebody’s lawn in the middle of a cluster of middle-aged-ups who are sniffing and poking a Lincoln Town Car that will be auctioned off along with household goods.

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Small wisdoms and unsolicited observations are being passed around like hot potatoes. I have the idea that these are mostly poker-players, what with their stoic expressions and hands-in-deep-pockets attitudes…trying to appear dis-interested and reserved, but watching everything out of the corners of their eyes.

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A faint but persistent tinkling provides our soundtrack, overriding everything so consistently that it is all but unnoticed.

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Finally, I realize that the almost temple-bell-like noise is coming from pockets, where fidgety fingers continuously rattle loose change and car keys and good-luck charms and old tokens.

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The bells will last till after the auction.

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The house on the property is filled with anonymous tire-kickers who have never known its former occupants. And here all these pokers and prodders are, walking about, exhuming previously-loved belongings that no longer belong to anyone, no longer belong to the people who first purchased them with great excitement, with great expectations that life would be slightly changed for the better as a result of each purchase. That life would forever be different and special if this object were possessed and kept nearby.

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People sit on chairs and leave grass stains on old carpets and exhale their stale internal airs, invading the once personal and very private atmosphere that not so long ago thrived in this village.

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Somebody’s past, somebody’s story, is about to be sold to the highest bidder, piece by truncated piece. For a moment I feel like an interloper, an invader, a trespasser. But really I am just a preserver dedicated to finding just the right thing to rescue and adopt and offer a safe home. In memory of absentee family. In honor of all those magical-thinking objects we all cherish and discard, cherish and discard.

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I can never rescue all the books in all the estate sales throughout the planet. And ain’t that about the most interesting way for a bookie like me to paddle though life?

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Cherish is the word I use to describe the feely feelings that arise when I complete my Saturday mission

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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MISTER FIDGET MAKES MY DAY

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Mister Fidget skulks around inside the bookstore, picking up and examining items at random. He is always in motion, asking about this object and that object but never waiting for a complete answer from me.

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He is busy looking for the next thing before ending his perusal of the previous thing.

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Fidget is entertaining and annoying and restless. But he is a customer, and each customer is treated with respect and kindness. Each customer has something to teach me. I try to pay attention while going about the business of keeping the shop afloat.

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As he rambles about, never quite leaving each item at its original site, he talks and chatters and speaks in one continuous sentence. I can’t keep up with him but he does come up with oblique observations.

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“These pants are too tight.” He tugs at his trousers fore and aft. “You can’t get a wallet in and out of them, dammit!”

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He does go on.

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“Maybe they make these pants tight so that nobody can pick your pocket.” This idea might have some validity.

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“Boy, this is not a very good block here.” He refers to the Downtown streets where I ply my trade.

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“I can’t find any good parking places.” I wonder how he got to the shop without finding a parking place.

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“Wow! this bookstore must not have many customers down here, huh?” He is adding to the popular myth that the city is barren, a wasteland left over from the flights of the 1960s. In truth, business has never been better, and the urban township is sort of booming.

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He scattershots through the rows of vinyl records on display. “Wow, these records, some of them are broken, did you know some of these records are broken?”

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He carefully waves a chipped disc into the morning air to prove his point, never considering the fact that I, the little old storekeeper, handled and placed every single record on display myself.

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“Oh, look, here’s a record, it’s part one but there’s no part two, do you have part two?” I do have part two but he’s already on to the next shopping critique.

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“You don’t have as many records as you used to.” He immediately spies the next enormous rack and says, “Oh, look, you’ve got a whole lot of records.”

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Mister Fidget runs about the aisles talking out of earshot, not aware that he is his only listener.

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I go about my chores and help other customers. Eventually, Mister Fidget exits the establishment, promising to actually purchase a book or record when he gets his next check.

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Some store owners express annoyance at such folk, but not I. He is just as important as the next browser. That’s because he takes something valuable with him—he will tell others about his adventure. Others will tell others. Eventually new shoppers will appear, having heard something nice about this wonderful old museum of fond memories.

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Every fidgeter who comes and goes carries a message to the village at large. That’s why I do my utmost to engage with everybody, be they sightseers, tire-kickers, comparison-shoppers, curiosity seekers, explorers, readers, non-readers, tag-alongs, collectors, decorators, bargain hunters, wheelers and dealers, touchy-feelies, nostalgia ramblers.

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How they feel about the way they were treated at Reed Books will lodge in fond memory.

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And maybe, just maybe, they will mention us to others who care deeply about kindness and sweet reminiscence

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/hairtodaygonetomorrow.mp3

or read his story below:

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW. 

I miss my hair.

I don’t miss barbers.

Yep, one day many, many moons ago, I had a full head of hair. Now, though, I still have lots of hair, it’s just that it’s everywhere but atop my head.

I have alarmingly fast-growing hair in my ears, my nose, on my face, on my back, on my chest, and, well, just about all over. And its rate of growth is not full-moon dependent.

Nature has a sense of humor—most of us start out bald and toothless, and we end up…dead.

Now, I know lots of guys who still go to the barbershop, or even the hair stylist, long after their heads are virtually bald. Guys with a little fallen halo of hair rimming half the head from ear to ear, still go and get it trimmed. I guess they’re holding on to every shred of dignity they can.

I don’t blame men who have enormous comb-overs. Others laugh at them, but I laugh at the laughers, who will begin losing hair long before they’re prepared to. I don’t even mind guys with ridiculously obvious toupees, since they, too, are living in the same fantasy world occupied by large-beehived women and three-strand-combover men.

So, does not having any hair mean you’ll never again go into a barbershop or hair salon? I asked one hair stylist in the Big City that question and gave her the challenge.

We brainstormed together.

If you are baldheaded, what can you get at a hair styling place?

1.  You can get your beard shaped and styled.

2.  If your baldness extends to the face, you can ask for a trim–of your nose hairs and eyebrows and ear hairs and that weird hair growing out of the top of your beauty mark.

3.  You can get a therapeutic massage and stop worrying about baldness for a few minutes.

4.  You can just have your bald pate buffed and shined or powdered or perfumed. Flaunt it! 

5.  Maybe the most fun you as a baldheaded man can have is to bring family—kids, grandkids, cousins and spouse or friend—to the hair place and sit there and thumb through the pages of beautifully coiffed models in the magazines, and just watch and enjoy the banter  and fun.

Full-head-of-hair guys, beware: an experience like this could make you want to shave your head and join the rest of us sexy devils.

Incidentally, I haven’t been to a barber since 1985, nor have I had a professional hair cut since then. But if I do start going to hair stylists/designers, I’ll let you know. Well, actually, you’ll know because I’ll smell funny for a few hours. What I really liked about hair salon places is that, unlike barbers in my day, they didn’t discuss politics and sports and hunting and fishing and a thousand other things I have no interest in. They did gossip, but gossip is more like entertainment—more interesting than watching all that internet detritus. 

By the time you leave the joint, you look better than you really are.

What more could anybody ask?

Just asking

© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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THE GOOD TIMES BEFORE YESTERDAY

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The double-clasped wooden treasure box is practically invisible. It is invisible because it is in plain sight. I see it so often I no longer see it.

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But once every handful of years, the double-clasped wooden treasure box beckons, calls attention to itself, dares me to unclasp and lift the lid.

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Here I am this morning, doing just that.

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I already know what is inside the box, but gazing directly at the objects within refreshes my memory, teases me with snippets of childhood adventures.

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There, right on top of the box’s other contents, is a stack of Topps trading cards, squirreled away when I was eleven.

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No, these are not sports trading cards. They are trading cards designed for those of us who were useless on the playing fields of competition. These cards were made for us, the invisible unathletic unpopular clumsy-but-smart kids who maneuvered  through life by finding our own pleasures.

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My calisthenics included re-reading and memorizing the historical and biographical information on the back of each Topps Look ‘n See card.

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Back then, they were called bubble gum cards, packaged with a red cellophane decoder, a modest slab of pink barely-chewable gum, and a beautifully painted portrait of our heroes of the day, one per card per chaw per history lesson.

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Here are some of them right in front of me. Jules Verne, Sitting Bull, Jesse James, Cleopatra, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Washington Carver…and on and on. At the age of eleven I knew something about each of these and dozens more, long before we studied them in school.

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I could act smarter than I was, which was helpful to an otherwise unrenowned sub-teen who at the very least needed to spout off smart thoughts designed to impress others when they were not obsessively watching sports, participating in sports, and thumbing through their Topps sports cards.

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At least I knew who H.G. Wells and Mahatma Gandhi were, even if you didn’t.

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Cheap thrills for what we now call a Nerd.

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And another thing—these famous characters of history were on equal footing in my imagination. Francis Scott Key and Jefferson Davis and Ponce de Leon are worthy of attention, at least for 30 seconds each.

.

Ironically, they rest inside the wooden box as compatriots. At least they no longer disagree or wage war or gripe.

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Oh, if you are worried that my childhood deprived me of the need to adore famous sports figures, just relax. There is one sportsman in the Topps collection, just one.

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Babe Ruth.

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In my eleven-year-old world Babe Ruth was worthy of attention. Not because of his considerable prowess, but because there was something magical about him. In the imaginations of us kids, Babe Ruth was mythological, the greatest icon of all. I have no idea why…he just was.

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There you have it. The confessions of a Topps Look ‘n See non-sports bubble gum trading card kid. A kid who has grown from wimpy sub-teen to become wimpy octogenarian.

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An overgrown kid who still dreams of picking up a wooden stick, pointing to a certain part of a crowd-filled stadium, and whapping a homer right on target

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 © Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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