redclaydiary.com

SWING YOUR PARTNER ‘ROUND AND ‘ROUND

Posted on November 4, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim brief audio podcast: https://youtu.be/lKFwZ1i_aqo

or read his memoir below:

SWING YOUR PARTNER ‘ROUND AND ‘ROUND

Billy the Tough Kid zooms and weaves his thick-tired bicycle through the after-school playground crowd, singing loudly with a copy-cat twang, “Swing your partner ’round and ’round! Pick her up and throw her down!”

Billy’s bike comes just close enough to students to make them jump or yell or giggle or hug close their skirts and book bags. Billy is skilled at pushing the boundaries of decorum a tad beyond School Rules. Just enough at the edge not to get disciplined. Just enough to call attention to himself. Just enough to cement a memory that lasts all the way from the 1940′s to the 21st Century.

Billy is a Tough Kid because we meeker students allow him to be. We kind of admire his brazenness—wouldn’t it be fun to be Billy the Tough Kid for a day? What would our Mommas say?

During Northington Elementary School recess one day, Jimmy, a toadie of Billy, calls a few of us into a huddle and shows off his genuine brand-new switchblade knife. We are in awe and are even allowed to touch the polished bone handle.

Jimmy is also the purveyor of naughty French postcards extracted from his WWII-veteran father’s stash, but most of us are too young to appreciate this. We kind of wander off to the safety of volleyball and tag games.

But his conspiratorial zeal makes an impression and remains sheltered in long-term memory.

I find my gentle giant in grammar school. John is a strong, to-the-point, seasoned kid who knows the ways of the world. Who, unlike Billy and Jimmy, never shows off, always dispenses quiet and sometimes misplaced gems of wisdom.

John is my temporary hero because he gives me a lift on his bike when we leave the school grounds. He drops me off at home but never visits. Instead, he pedals the heavy used bike up the hill east of Northington and disappears into the afternoon.

My next-door temporary after-school neighbor, Bubba, is a friendly playmate who has no interest in bullying or winning or showing off. We’re sitting in the shabby Tide Theatre, watching a B-grade movie, scarfing popcorn and sharing a dope (back then, cola drinks were nicknamed “dopes” for reasons we had to learn in later life). Actor Steve Cochran, a master of B-gradedness, pulls a gun on somebody and is threatening to blow his head off. I’m really into the story but suddenly realize that Bubba is crying in fear.

“It’s OK, Bubba…it’s just a movie.” He is still upset. Finally I say, “This isn’t real, it’s just play-like.” Bubba calms down because he understands the term “play-like.” It’s how we kids of playground and front yard and back yard and vacant lot communicate with one another.

“Hey, Bubba, let’s play-like you are the bad guy trying to rob a bank and I’m the gunslinger who’s going to stop you,” or “Let’s play-like we are Robin Hood and his Merry Men, out to get the sheriff of Nottingham.”

We would play-like in all our spare time during summer days that never lasted long enough.

What lessons did Billy, Jimmy, John, Bubba and all those elementary school companions teach me?

I guess that, without meaning to, they taught me to travel back in time and show some appreciation for them and who they were and who they came from and where they would wind up. They all had lives to live, and I had my life to live, and we all remain connected to this day by those tiny, seemingly insignificant encounters.

If I could meet them just one more time, what would I say today?

I’d tell Billy, Thanks for the memory of a class clown who could take a square dance song and make it funny, make me see it in a new way.

I’d say to Jimmy, thanks for showing me that great knife—I’ve never had one like that, but I still remember the joy and comfort having that knife in your pocket gave you.

To John, I’d say, Thanks for paying attention to a shy and observant little kid who didn’t have many friends, was no good at sports, but who could take the time many decades later to resuscitate a sweet memory of unconditional goodness.

To Bubba, I’d say, Thanks for making me aware that everybody reacts differently, in their own special way, to what is going on around them. I’ll never assume that people feel exactly the way I do, and I’ll always try to look more closely at who they are and how they feel.

Observing and appreciating people, not judging them, finding that shiny seam of innocence that runs through them, trying to see past the facade and bluster and acting-out that disguise and protect them from not-always-friendly realities…

That’s what I do on my best days in my best moods. And on the dark days, I try to imagine myself being the clown who knows how to swing my partner ’round and ’round just to get a laugh or a burst of joy out of us both

INSPIRATIONS PASSING BY ON THE WAY TO OVER THERE

Posted on October 28, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/TDlx0LFTTRc

or read his story below:

INSPIRATIONS PASSING BY ON THE WAY TO OVER THERE

For every thousand or so thoughts or ideas that invade my brain, only a handful are scooped from the cartoon bubble hovering above my head, then retained for possible inspiration later on.

These out-of-nowhere glitches and doodads are piled high in a corner of my mind and sorted and possibly matched on word-laundering day.

A few examples of stuff that arrived from nowhere and for no good reason reappear on this page today:

A PEW THOUGHTS

Would you term a belligerent preacher a pewgilist?

Would a smelly boxer be a phewgilist?

If the phewgilist attended church, would the pew say phew!?

You tell me: where does this material come from? Another example:

DISLIKE

That disliker dislikes me.

Not only that,

That disliker dislikes the likes of me.

I dislike not so much the

disliker, but the disliker’s

dislike of me.

I dis the disliker, not

because I disliker, but because

I disliker dislike of me.

Where am I going with this drivel? I dunno. May I impose another example?

“I can’t get very far without my body.”

Hmmm…

” If my mind wanders, it can’t get far because it is tethered to the body bag within which I reside.”

Can’t stop my brain. There’s more:

“Wisdom imparted by the wind would be called a wind advisory.”

The question may now be asked, Is there a very fine line between bursts of wisdom and instances of insanity? OK, here’s another:

“My greatest hope is that Science will find Cheese Curls to be a sure path to a healthy life.”

Now, that is almost sane. Hmmm… Another:

“If you speak the unspeakable, it isn’t.”

And on and on:

“If you build it, there is no telling whether anybody will come.”

Either I’m losing it, or this stuff is beginning to sound, well, Sound—if not of mind, at least of whimsy. Can you take another?

“I’m so skeptical I’m skeptical about my skepticism.”

I’m not so sure I’m a skeptic.

Uh-oh, this is now becoming Zen-like:

“Why do people only have flights of fancy? Can’t one occasionally enjoy a sea voyage of fancy or a hike of fancy?”

Now, Grasshopper, this exercise starts to morph into quotable realms of ephemeral wiseness.

Why don’t I shut up while I’m still behind

I GOT SHOES YOU GOT SHOES

Posted on October 21, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/IURRe-m1PtA

or read his tale below…

I GOT SHOES YOU GOT SHOES

I got to have shoes you got to have shoes. Most everybody’s got to have shoes.

But, you know, sometimes barefoot is the best disguise.

If you’re barefoot, nobody can judge you by the quality, price, stylishness, source and brand-name of what’s encasing your feet.

Barefoot is always the best way to be—every child knows that.

But shoes eventually win out, the wearing of shoes eventually becomes mandatory and womandatory.

I had to start wearing shoes every day when I entered the First Grade at Northington Elementary School. That’s back when the school was physically located inside old Army and Prisoner of War buildings left over from World War II.

My father, Tommy Reed, was a carpenter—later, a city building inspector. But before that, he had been a coal miner when he was a boy, then a shoe salesman.

By the time I was old enough to wear serious shoes instead of fun ones (hard leather-soled shoes to replace the black and white gym tennis shoes and the summer sandals), Daddy declared that after extensive research and experience, he had determined that the best shoe store in Tuscaloosa County was Central Shoe Store at 519 Greensboro Avenue, Downtown.

As a career carpenter, my Father had once done some carpentry work at Central Shoe Store and had become friends with Paul Applebaum, who, with his father Abe, operated the shop. After their discussions of past shoe sales experience, it was decided that Paul Applebaum was the best judge of proper shoes and proper shoe fit.

Back in those days, nobody would dream of allowing a kid to pick out his or her own shoes.

When families were close and warmly connected to one another, parents had a great deal of say-so in their children’s lives. Shoe-purchasing trips were on the level of car-buying, since one was likely to own only two pairs of shoes at a time—Sunday shoes and school shoes.

Back then, there was no such thing as extravagant ownership of dozens of pairs of highly-priced shoes.

It was a serious affair, this shoe-buying thing. But it was also a comforting experience because it meant that my brother Ronny and I would have Daddy all to ourselves for a Saturday while the three of us traveled Downtown to Central Shoe Store.

Paul Applebaum would carefully measure our feet for length and width in a serious but friendly manner. The beauty of Paul Applebaum was that he paid close attention to his job and his customers. I liked him because he treated my Father, who was literally a quiet and humble carpenter, as seriously as his most well-to-do clients from the better side of the tracks.

And that new pair of heavier-than-lead thick-leather black wingtipped Sunday shoes took weeks to break in—you never knew if the fit was good till you’d pretty well worn the shoes down a bit.

Paul Applebaum and his generation of apprenticed shoe-sellers are gone now. Buying shoes today is just another fast-convenience off-the-rack experience. Nothing like those days when getting into a new pair of shoes was the result of hours of study, measure, contemplation, talking and comparing…and good-natured visitation with the county’s greatest shoe salesman, Paul Applebaum

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/anotherreallifemartianhorrorstory.mp3

PREPARE YE FOR ANOTHER HALLOWEEN

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

or read on…

PREPARE YE FOR ANOTHER HALLOWEEN

A true and actual Martian Horror Story

It is 21 years ago, right now, in sweet memory:

We are trudging through the sand pits at Woking, looking carefully about for any signs of Martian space ships, when I realize for the umpteenth time in my life that it’s good to get away and do something different with mind and body and spirit.

I am in England with a group of scholars, authors and fans of H.G.Wells. We are walking together near the town of Woking.

H.G. Wells lived in Woking whilst writing THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, and a few things, such as the sand pits, have not radically changed.

In the cool and humid forest we finally find the exact landing site of the Martian cylinders, then go on to other landmarks of the Martian invasion—places where, in the mind of HGW, houses and buildings have been destroyed by the invaders, and we pass the house where the story’s hero had lived.

Once in the town square, I get to stand beneath a replica of one of the 55-foot-high Martian robots, something these aliens had left behind when an earthly virus finally killed them all off.

HGW would have been delighted to see this machine, but he might have expressed disappointment that his warnings about unanticipated invasion (invasion from Fascists, invasion from bad ideas, etc.) have gone largely unheeded, generation after generation.

Soon after he published WAR OF THE WORLDS, the invasions of WWI began, the war destined not to be the war to end all wars. And finally, in 1945, Wells had a chance to see what horrible use his predictions about atomic energy would be put to.

The good news is, Wells’ early draft of a universal human rights statement for mankind was adapted, then adopted, by the League of Nations, then the United Nations. His visionary views of racial harmony, feminism, equality and freedom from repression have stuck with many of us.

But it’s good to know that there’s an ever-present reminder of what can happen if mankind doesn’t learn to stick together and get along: the Martian machine can be re-animated at any time and the world can plunge once more, as it has plunged many times in the past, one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back…

It’s hard to find the pony some days, but, as Wells reminded us: Despite the despairs and depravities of humanity, we must accomplish two things simultaneously. 1. do everything we can to fight them, and 2. live our lives each day as if these despairs and depravities do not exist.

After my Martian trek through the forests of Woking, I return to the States with renewed hope.

Within two days I contract a strange virus

Twitter and Facebook

LEMMINGS

Posted on September 30, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/PbvgQnbWTdM

or read his story below…

A few eons ago, I was a Mad Man in a three-piece suit, horn rimmed glasses, full head of hair and skinny as a rail. And I had to attend these conferences as part of my mad world. Here’s an entry from the Red Clay Diary…

LEMMINGS

I am sitting in this convention banquet room inside this convention banquet hotel within this convention banquet town, and I am listening or trying to listen, to the most boring speech ever conceived by humankind.

The words are beginning to float around the room like disembodied specters of things that no longer look like words because the life has been sucked right out of them by the passionless and precise and uncaring speaker who produces them with great pride and certainty, in the sure knowledge that, because he FEELS these words are important, they must be equally important to everyone else sitting in the lifeless room.

And so the words continue to meander in the air and overlap and bounce against one another in their pale green soulless journeys, and not one person in the room is even the least bit interested in these words. But each person, for a dozen different reasons, sits politely and dutifully and tries to look interested, and those who are not trying to look interested are not doing so because they are expending every ounce of energy simply trying to stay awake, or at least LOOK as if they are staying awake, each wishing that they had remembered to paint lifelike alert eyeballs on their eyelids so that when they closed their eyes those around them would believe they were still awake.

As I sit here in this acoustically alive but soul-deadened room I realize that the people sitting around the circular table I’m sitting at are beginning ever so slightly to rise up toward the ceiling, and then I realize that the table itself is beginning to rise ever so slightly. But upon blinking my drying eyes to refocus and assure myself that I am not dreaming, I notice that it is not the people rising, it is not the table rising, it is I who is descending.

I am, without even trying to, starting to slip slowly lower in my chair as if I’m wearing something smooth and polished, as if the chair seat is smooth and polished, as if I can’t keep myself from slowly slipping under the table.

I hope nobody’s watching my descent, for I have no desire to stop sliding under the table.

Soon, the table is above my head and the people are all invisible except for their waists and fidgeting legs that I can now clearly see under the table. I finally am sitting on the floor under the conference table and I am now leaning forward to get on my hands and knees, and I find myself crawling on my hands and knees toward the convention room exit, unable to stop myself.

And the speaker is oblivious to this because the speaker is conscious only of his own self-important words, and he is delivering them to the audience BECAUSE HE CAN, because he outranks everyone in the room, and they are as surely prisoners of his implied power as I am.

But I continue to crawl on my hands and knees toward the door, only to look back over my shoulder at the conference table where I was sitting moments ago, and I discover that I am still sitting at the conference table, or at least the nearly transparent husk of my body is still sitting there, but in reality my soul and my spirit and my pilgrim energy are crawling on their hands and knees toward the exit, wading through those ghostly meaningless words still issuing forth from the speaker.

I glance back to see if I’m still in two places at once and I see something remarkable and very logical happening—slowly but surely, each person at my table is slipping dreamlike to the floor and beginning to crawl on hands and knees, following me to the exit. Each face as a glow of expectancy, each is smiling hopefully, so happy that someone has lowered himself and started an exodus they moments ago could only dream about.

And, before you know it, everybody in the convention room at this hotel is crawling toward the exits, and after a while the speaker is the only person left in the room, oblivious to anything but his own gossamer words, and he continues to speak to the ether and, as far as I know, is still standing there speaking to this day

https://youtu.be/OCWqwewwfEs

IN MY SOUTH…

Posted on September 23, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:

or read his story below…

IN MY SOUTH…

People just come right out with it. With an engaging smile.

We scratch when and where it itches.

A speed limit is a suggestion.

IN MY SOUTH…

Socrates (SEW-crates) and Socrates (SAH-cruh-tees) are the same person.

GO-eeth and Goethe (GER-tuh) are the same philosopher.

It’s pronounced WALL-mark—not WALL-mart. We don’t know why.

Arab (A-rabb) is a place and Arab (EH-rubb) is a person.

Geezers are sexy.

IN MY SOUTH…

Accumulating sounds more dignified than collecting or hoarding.

We pretty much want to be wherever we are—and don’t you rush it!

Dentists hand out lollipops.

IN MY SOUTH…

The second “t” in the word Contact is always silent.

We never, ever make Mama mad.

“How’s your mama ‘n ‘em?” is the kickstarter to a friendly and successful conversation.

IN MY SOUTH…

We respect women who spit and pick their teeth in public.

Spitting and picking your teeth in public is mandatory.

Chawing and kissing can go right together.

IN MY SOUTH…

You can wear a tie to go to lunch, but you have to leave your jacket at the office. White short-sleeved dress shirts are required.

You never allow guests to leave your home without escorting them to the car and chatting about this and that for another forty minutes.

Y’all is both singular and plural.

IN MY SOUTH…

Grits is a sacred food…and can be singular or plural. So there.

Grit is always true.

Ma’am and Sir are polite and gentle and respectful terms.

And so it goes. In my South, the only place I’ve ever lived, local folks and local customs and local habits continue to amaze me and make me feel right at home.

What would it be like to live anywhere else? Y’all tell me

https://youtu.be/pyWPsyQXp9c

ZEN AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF ONE STYROFOAM CUP

Posted on September 15, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:

or read his story below…

ZEN AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF ONE STYROFOAM CUP

How to torture a roomful of balanced and unbalanced executives:

Carefully, slowly, meticulously disassemble one styrofoam cup.

They can’t arrest you for disassembling one styrofoam cup, but you can exact revenge on just about anybody you wish to annoy, through the simple act of using the weapon at hand.

Way back when, way back Then…I worked in a mythic kingdom named ExecutiveLand. It was in ExecutiveLand that I learned the finest forms of guerilla warfare…a type of warfare that can bring strong grownups to their knees. I learned this fine skill from another executive, Hamp Swann. Now, Hamp Swann was a true scientist, an engineer who really knew things, as opposed to executives like me, who knew very little but pretended to know a whole lot.

Hamp and I used to have to attend these regular management meetings called the AEC (administrative executive committee) at ExecutiveLand. These were really boring meetings, because they consisted of a group of leaders telling each other how carefully they planned and executed things that always succeeded–whether or not they really succeeded, and whether or not they actually spent any time planning them.

Kind of like cabinet meetings.

Anyhow, most of us who had very little power would find ways to survive these meetings–we’d look alert but would be largely brain-inert, since we didn’t really care what went on. We were the realists–we knew that no matter how many meetings were held, the chief executive officers of ExecutiveLand never varied from their actions (They would tell us we were conducting participatory administrative activities, but invariably they’d wind up doing exactly what they intended to do before receiving our input…they’d do this because they could.)!

Anyhow, we juniors would play little games with one another to keep from falling asleep or bursting into tears or jumping across the large meeting table to strangle somebody. This was our therapy.

Hamp Swann didn’t play these games because he was a truly independent thinker and did not need our ideas to figure out what the right thing to do was. One day, Hamp, looking intensely interested in the goings-on of the meeting, began dismantling a styrofoam coffee cup. There are many ways to accomplish this task, but Hamp’s method was simple: he started at the rim of the empty cup and slowly separated the foam into one continuous strip, the way you’d peel an apple. This is a very noisy procedure, particularly noisy in a solemn room of solemn senior executives who hope that all the juniors are acting solemn and hanging on to their every word in silent adulation.

Screeckkk…screeckkk…screeckk…the styrofoam noise slowly infiltrated the subconscious and unconscious people in the room. At first, the screeckkk wasn’t noticed, because all the seniors were so self-involved and all the juniors were trying to stay awake, but eventually, the screeckkk started making people uncomfortable. Hamp was dismantling the cup absent-mindedly, so he didn’t even know it was making a sound, plus it was in his lap, so nobody knew where the sound was coming from.

Screeckkk…screeckkk…screeckkk. Now, people were looking around for the source, each person still not knowing whether anybody else was hearing the same thing. One executive adjusted his hearing aid, just in case it was static. Another shifted in his chair to see whether it needed oiling, yet another looked nervously at the ceiling insulation to see if an insect or rodent had been self-invited.

Then, there were the other juniors like me. I found this event to be the most entertaining one I’d experienced in years, so I started yearning for popcorn, since I can’t watch a movie without something buttery and salty and crunchy in my mouth.

I won’t tell you the ending of this story–you’ll just have to ask me. All I know is, the Great Styrofoam Cup Dismantling Caper has stayed in my memory for decades, and nothing, but nothing, about the intended content of that solemn meeting lingers.

I dream of the day when somebody will stage a production of styrofoam cup dismantlings…a wonderfully chaotic symphony orchestrating the simultaneous screeckkk…screeckkk…screeckkks produced by hordes of cups large and small, each tuned to its own cacophony, its own joyfully annoying disruptive sounds

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/hardwarehitch.mp3

HARDWARE HITCH

Posted on September 9, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:

or read it below…

HARDWARE HITCH

Hitching up his trousers by grabbing his belt up front to cover a lower layer of belly fold, he struts into the hardware store as if a potbellied stove were still radiant, as if a cracker barrel still dropped crumbs onto an oil-soaked concrete floor, as if laughter and storytelling were still saturating the air.

Faint fragrances of topsoil and fertilizer and WD-40 and unfinished lumber and old rubber flanges remind him of the odor of Lifebuoy soap and metal filings from key-makng machines that used to dominate hardware stores more years ago than he dares to count.

His Daddy and his Daddy’s Daddy hitched their pants up, too, way back when, in search of nomadic waist lines.

But this new hardware store no longer attracts hitching-up men because the potbellied stove and cracker barrel have been moved aside to accommodate central air and heat, more display space, additional stock turnover, busier and less-connected customers.

Gossip and news and palavering are unknown here, so the store proprietors don’t have any idea what’s going on in the surrounding neighborhood.

Instead of sharing eye-to-eye anecdotes about neighbors and common issues and genealogies, the proprietors and customers now obtain their gossip and news on talk shows and via social media.

Chatter and noise caulk the previous silences but tell the pants-hitcher nothing about life-saturated happenings…the newborn baby down the street, the latest success of a nearby friend, oh so important life-changes and twists of fate that overlie daily flesh-and-bone existence.

Former cracker barrel potbellied men still come into the store and hitch up their pants, but they are methodically processed by clerks whose eyes glaze past them, into the virtual-cloud mist

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/icehotasphaltsummerday.mp3

ICY HOT ASPHALT SUMMER DAY

Posted on September 2, 2018 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast

or read his memory below:

ICY HOT ASPHALT SUMMER DAY

Way, way back, on an Alabama summer day…

Hot concrete under tender bare feet makes you dance…first one foot down while the other foot’s up, then the other foot down while one foot’s up.

The only relief comes when you hop onto the cool prickly grass next to the concrete sidewalk, let the green blades slide up between your toes and press against your soles, sigh a loud sigh of relief, pause a moment, then dance right back onto the concrete sidewalk, because that’s the only way you’re going to get to the asphalt road.

Once on the asphalt road, you start dancing again, because asphalt is dark and more heat-absorbent than concrete, only the texture is different and the tarry pebbles make hash marks on your feet when you finally find a bit of shade to stand under where the asphalt is cooler, or at least lukewarm.

The reason you’re standing here on the ridged asphalt is because you can hear the milk truck coming and you have to be right there on the asphalt in just the right place in order not to miss the milkman’s rushed schedule.

Finally, you see the milkman and his vehicle lumbering stickshifty along, creaking to an idling halt while he emerges, lifts a metal tray of thick-walled bottles filled with Perry Creamery’s pasteurized homogenized milk, trots up the sidewalk, not even aware that it’s hot because he has on these thick-soled military shoes made of hard leather, stitched tightly to harder leather.

He clanks the new bottles down on my front porch, picks up the waiting empty bottles, and heads back to the milk truck.

By this time, out of nowhere, several summertime barefoot kids about my age have gathered around the back of the truck, dancing on the hot asphalt and waiting for the treat of the morning: free crushed ice.

The milkman dips his large hands into the trunkful of finely shaved ice supporting the fresh milk bottles, and breaks off hand-sized hunks, doling them out to each streetkid.

We immediately scatter to the hot morning air, sucking our chunks of ice, biting into them and getting the only cool surge of the day, since none of us lives in an air-conditioned home.

Maybe we remember to say “Thank you” to the milkman, maybe sometimes we forget, but we are grateful for this assumed and taken-for-granted small free favor granted us each time the milkman and his freshly produced pasteurized homogenized milk comes our way.

It’s another ritual in our tiny neighborhood, one of many rituals that serve to hold us all together and make us feel somewhat secure, ignorant of what lies ahead way beyond the hot-asphalt smalltown mornings of our very precious and very fleeting childhood