Listen to Jim’s audio podcast (3 minutes)

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/tinklingattheneighborhooddiner.mp3

or read his story below…

TINKLING AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD DINER

Here I go again, digging down into piles of forgotten red clay diary entries from almost thirty years ago. HERE’S ONE: Looks like I jotted this down just about the time cellphones were beginning to take over the daily lives of us somnambulists. Well, we were somnambulists up until the time all of us became drones in an enormous humming hive of portable electronic devices. See if this stirs a memory or two…

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

I turn my head right and left to see where this ringy-rattly sound is coming from.

It is not a sound to be ignored. It requires action. Maybe.

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

My racing brain tries to determine whether a fire needs putting out, whether a door needs answering, whether a phone should be answered…

Suddenly, Billybobjimmyjack, the guy at the next booth, answers his cellphone.

We’re in the neighborhood diner, having breakfast.

I’m here in the diner to gain some meditative equilibrium in preparation for the daily doings at work. I have to assume that Billybobjimmyjack does not come here for the same purpose, since his breakfast is hardly meditative. Or quiet.

“SHELLO!”

Billybobjimmyjack mushes through his mouthful. He’s talking to the phone. “I’M EATIN’ BREAKFAST!” he says resonantly for the whole room to hear. “I’LL TALK TO YOU LATER,” he says, and disconnects, slamming the phone on the table.

I sink philosophically back into the op-ed page of the daily wrapper and resume enjoying my ham-and-eggs-and-grits breakfast.

TINKLEZZZ!

TINKLEZZZ!

Billybobjimmyjack says “HELLO,” since his mouth is temporarily bereft of southern penicillin (grits) and his voice is aboom once again.

“YEAH, I’M EATIN’ BREAKFAST! I’LL CALL YOU BACK.”

Slam.

Billybobjimmyjack is from a generation that reasons you have to shout into a phone because the person at the other end of the exchange is so far away.

This goes on a total of four times, each jangling of the phone jangling my nerves and causing my grits to go cold. Grits, as any gritslover knows, are no damned good if they are cold.

Don’t knock this bit of wisdom if you’ve never had grits. And when you do eat them, make sure you start off properly. They must be served steaming hot with a big puddle of butter in the center and unreasonably thick layers of salt and pepper atop. Go ahead, try it. If you like it you can add other stuff to taste, such as garlic and cheese.

Back to Billybobjimmyjack. Yes, we must bring closure to this anecdote.

Why did he bother to bring his phone into the diner, display it in plain view next to the catsup and pepper sauce and toothpick holder, if he didn’t intend to talk to anyone while eating?

Now he’s got to return four phone calls after he gets into his car, and you know what that will do to his digestive tract. Four incoming, four outgoing…double the pleasure, double the stress, a stomach full of cold grits.

Next time I spy Billybobjimmyjack at the diner, I plan to present him with a little gift of Pepto-Bismol. Or maybe I’ll just leave it on his windshield wiper outside and run like the dickens.

That way, I’ll be safe and he’ll find relief that can never come from receiving four and returning four totally necessary but annoying grits-chilling calls even before his workday begins

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/feelinggoodallunder.mp3

or read his stuff below…

FEELING GOOD ALL UNDER

 A 20-year-ago note just tumbled from the Red Clay Diary. Haven’t thought about this for a long, long time…so let’s see how these thoughts hold up and ring true…

Once a week, the laundry freshly done and most things in their place, I pick out the newest pair of underpants and slide them on. As the week progresses or regresses, I put on a fresh pair each day (yes, I do take off the used pair before doing so) and try to face the world with undergirdings bolstering a flagging confidence.

You know what happens next, of course. By the end of the week and through the weekend, I run out of the newest pairs and start digging down into the drawer for older, slightly ragged shorts until, at last, by Monday I am starting the week off with underwear that is holy but not righteous, as my mother used to say.

The pair I’m wearing now is the most tattered I own, since laundry is a day late.

Now just suppose that this is all metaphoric, and just suppose that the state of my underwear is roughly equivalent to my state of mind and level of energy?

What would happen if I began the week wearing the raggedest underwear and progressively turned to newer pairs as the week waned? Would my attitude be thus affected, would I be saving my high-self-esteem underwear for the most worn-down and wearisome part of the week—thus giving me an extra boost to make it crawling through Saturday night toward the Day of Rest?

Maybe, if this works, I will no longer find myself sitting in my ragged underwear on my favorite equally ragged easy-chair on Sunday afternoon, staring into space and dozing, trying to rev up my juices for the week ahead.

The secret of life-energy may be in here somewhere.

I mean, don’t we all still believe in magic, and isn’t that why we keep on getting up in the morning and trying to tackle each day anew with the idea that there’s just got to be something better about this dawn?

Without this magic-potion kind of thinking, we’re just another bunch of trembling primitives waiting to  be run over by life, and taken to the emergency room with—horror of horrors—ragged underwear

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/jottingdowntheimaginaryinvisibles.mp3

or read his diary here:

JOTTING DOWN THE IMAGINARY INVISIBLES

 Underneath a scraggly neighborhood tree, the tree that drops small red berries, berries impossible to eat but just perfect for squeezing and squirting red streaks across face and body during playtime war games, I sit. I sit here beneath the branches and leaves and whittle a bit with my Hopalong Cassidy penknife…whittle a small loose branch…whittle nothing in particular…whittle away, watching the wood decrease in size…whittle and whittle, leaving notches here and there as token memories of this childhood day that is passing so rapidly, so rapidly.

The notches on the shrinking wood represent things of utmost importance in my thus-far short life, way back here in the early times of youthful existence.

This notch next to my left thumb represents the recent departure of my two best friends, Monk and Deebie. You were unable to see them because they were visible only to me. We had great times together but now they exist as a notch and a deep memory.

A longer notch honors my baby brother, Ronny, who is at last old enough to be my daily playmate and fellow conspirator. Ronny will show up soon and sit next to me beneath the red berry tree. He will search for four-leaf clovers while my mind meanders notch by notch.

Many years later, when Ronny and I are ancient grownup children living far apart, we will reminisce and fondly cherish these days when there is for a moment nothing more important than juicy berries and pocket knives and shards of wood and patches of shade and four-leaf clovers.

As we age and mellow, our memories of childhood will become more vivid, more detailed, more nuanced. And we will come to realize that we were lucky, so lucky, to have been children protected by parents and family and neighbors and relatives…protected just enough so that for a short and precious time, we could safely deploy our vivid imaginations, gently express our best intentions, take time to smell the Johnson grass and red dirt, spend aimless hours observing spiders and ants and worms and crickets and frogs as they wended their way through the quiet and unpolluted landscape.

Nowadays, instead of whittling my memories, I jot them down in this Red Clay Diary, where they will exist until someone finds them and reads them or discards them. That’s the way it goes, this stuffing bottles full of notes and tossing them into the cosmos. They might survive. They might be lost. They might evaporate. But, so what? The greatest pleasure has already been experienced, the pleasure of re-living good times in memory ever fresh, the pleasure of taking a moment to relish the fact that, among the chaos of daily living through the years, there were and are good things, things worth grasping and mulling over and clinging to…and passing along to you, the next whittler

(c) Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/bornbeneaththepapermillmist.mp3

or read his tale…

Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa…they are forever linked in memory by the fact that both places mean Home to me. Here’s a page that slipped from my Red Clay Diary this morning…an entry from five years back…

Listen to Jim’s podcasts:

https://redclaydiary.com/mp3/anothermorningoncatfishrow.mp3

or read his thoughts below:

It is a better life than I deserve, this career as a bookshop owner. Just thumbing through the ol’ Red Clay Diary, I resurrect a fond memory from eight years ago, when I was barely younger…

ANOTHER MORNING ON CATFISH ROW

I’m plugging in the neon “open” sign in the bookshop window, preparing to begin the day’s business.

As I struggle putting the $2-book-and-record rack out on the sidewalk, I see Rhonda, just across the street at Goodyear Shoe Hospital. Her red hair glows in the sun as she swishes her broom and spreads leaves and dust over the curb.

When was the last time I saw a banker sweeping up in front of a bank?

There is Melissa next door at Sojourns hauling her A-frame sign and balancing it on the walkway, her smile adding to the sunlight.

When was the last time I saw an attorney putting up a sign in front of an office?

I pick up the many cigarette butts in front of my shop, left there by my customers and employees of the Massey Building.

When was the last time I saw a smoker dispose of a cigarette in the enormous City trash can on the sidewalk?

I politely brush off a salesman who wants to examine my phone service records and credit card terminals to give me a “better” deal.

When was the last time one of these salespeople actually took time to shop at the store? Do they realize that I’ll give the time of day to any sales rep who will try to learn a little about my business and actually take a moment to see through my eyes. Think of the income they are missing!

A self-published author wants me to sell her new book in the store. When I show her my own latest book, she sniffs at it, puts it down and continues her sales pitch.

Will she ever understand why I turn her down?

The publisher of a small “literary” journal wants me to purchase copies for the shop but doesn’t bother to open the Birmingham Arts Journal I proudly show him.

Has he ever heard of tit for tat?

I go about opening up and operating my sidewalk shop in much the same way each day, pretty much repeating my motions—with variations. Since some kind of civilization began, I suppose the rituals have been similar—we bazaar vendors have our routines, routines that keep us grounded, routines our customers come to expect of us.

And we also always deal with non-customers who want a favor given without giving a favor.

Much of each day is spent providing free advice and consultation to people who want to know the “value” of a book or those who want me to research and find an obscure title, which I gladly do free of charge—then turn me down, saying, “Oh now that you’ve helped me find it, I’ll just go online and order it myself.” No kidding!

Much of my social life is spent listening to folks promising me that they will someday visit Reed Books—they’ve heard so much about it, you know—but who, year after year, never come in.

I just chuckle and go about my business.

What sustains me during all this rejection?

You do. You sustain me.

You are the customer who shops and enjoys and purchases. You are the customer who returns to the shop, bringing friends and family. You are the customer who gives me thumbs-up reports on social media.

You are the customer who “gets” it—you get the fact that I’m here providing a service that only 60 years of experience can provide.

You are the customer who remembers to thank me for Being Here, just after I thank you for Shopping Here.

You are the customer who appreciates the fact that I’m still in business.

You are my sustenance.

Time to sweep up, tidy up, rearrange loose books, prepare for one long delightful day of meeting and enjoying customers new and old, customers oblivious and sensitive, customers knowledgeable and in search of knowledge, customers who swim and tread their way through the generations of authors and editors and illustrators who generously donate their creative lives to us for the sheer rush of it all

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s blog:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/monkanddeebiesaveanotherchild.mp3

or read his tale below:

MONK AND DEEBIE SAVE ANOTHER CHILD

Monk and Deebie were my imaginary friends when I was a child.

I use the term “imaginary friends” as shorthand so you’ll know approximately what I’m talking about.

The truth is, Monk and Deebie were in no way imaginary. As any adult who ever had such companions will tell you, imaginary friends are very real, very solid, very three-dimensional and quite alive.

If you’ve ever had the privilege of living close to an imaginary friend, you know what I’m talking about. If you have never for a moment enjoyed the presence of an imaginary friend, then I can’t imagine how you got through childhood’s enormous obstacles in one piece.

Monk and Deebie lived with me in a world all their own, a world exactly contiguous to yours and mine.

This is not exactly a parallel universe, because both the universe of Monk and Deebie and the universe of you and me exist simultaneously in the same place. And, yes, two worlds can and do exist in the same location at the same moment, as any child can tell you.

Monk and Deebie were a fully adult couple, a middle-aged husband and wife who lived peacefully and with comfortable dignity in a small home that I could occupy at any time. They often joined my family for meals, and I often joined them in their home for meals and camaraderie.

Being the luckiest child alive, I was granted the most gentle and understanding real-life family you can imagine. My mother and father and sister took my childhood seriously. They never made fun of Monk and Deebie. They accepted me and my only friends. They set places at our little garage apartment kitchen table for this couple they could only see through my eyes.

My family and Monk and Deebie nurtured and supported me. As I said, I was the luckiest child alive.

The great thing about Monk and Deebie was they were exactly my size, even though they were grownups.

Monk always wore a nicely-tailored brown, double-breasted suit and tie and smoked a large cigar. Deebie was neatly attired in a 1940′s Sunday school dress complete with apron for working around their little kitchen.

One day, Monk and Deebie disappeared.

As a child full of energy and imagination and challenges at hand, I did not know they had packed up and moved on to support the next three-year-old shy kid who needed them. Later, I imagined that Monk and Deebie traveled around, helping one kid till things looked safe and stable, then leaving to help another…

Ever since childhood, now and then, I think about Monk and Deebie, my very first personal friends, friends who never let me down, never criticized me. Friends who to this day accept me the way I was and the way I am.

To this day, I am certain that if they ever decide to re-appear and visit me they will still be accepting and loving and as comfortably situated in my heart as they always were in their tiny living room when I was three of age.

I’ve discussed the concept of imaginary friends with adults who had them around when they were kids, and I’ve noticed that their imaginary friends were every bit as important to them as mine were to me. I don’t understand any of this at all. But you know, I’m not sure I want to understand or probe too deeply.

After all, what if Monk and Deebie return and find that I no longer believe in them?

What an embarrassment that would be.

Here’s hoping that you and Monk and Deebie are comfortable having a fine time remembering the good and disenfranchising the bad and just generally having a happy thought intrude itself on your existence once in a while in this real and imaginary life

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/aninstanceofhypnoticmetalballoons.mp3

or read his story below:

AN INSTANCE OF HYPNOTIC METAL BALLOONS

*

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/borntobemild.mp3

or read his diary entry below:

BORN TO BE MILD

a long-ago entry in my ancient Red Clay Diary…memories still fresh as greens…

The rusty pedal car I own when I am tiny and a wee bit young…somewhere along the way it disappears. Or I grow too large to occupy it. Or I graduate to tricycle and simply ignore those squeaky pedals that up till tricycle mean so much to me.

As predicted by everyone but me, even the tricycle is left kudzu-covered in the back yard when suddenly an old used bicycle comes upon me and I learn to unwobble my way to bikehood.

I haven’t mounted a bicycle for nearly six decades, but I can feel it beween my legs as if it is still here.

Here goes.

The free ride of a bicycle. Push of pedal. Turn of wheel. Press of brakes. Spokes & fastened bottle caps and rubber-bulbed horn and flickering battered headlight and reflector discs.

Flimsy wire basket up front. Pants cuffs tucked into high-pulled socks. Axle grease and  narrow bent passenger-perch right behind. Fanny-piercing triangled seat and rubber-tipped anodized handlebars. High-ride bars versus cool-looking lowered bars.

And that moment of stasis when going uphill has to switch to walking & pushing.

Finding just the right hill to coast down in free-fall, hair-combing wind in my face, and stinging eyes and tooth-lodged insects. And sweatsweatsweat. And that strange sensation when I stop, dismount and feel the contrasting silence with its stunned density all around, in contrast to the movement, the movement.

How could any destination compare to this paused moment?

Then, anticipation hovers…the anticipation of the next ride,  the next adventure, the next quest.

Then there’s the patch patch patch of used blown tires,  the fear of theft thus chain and padlock. The certain feeling that there will never be another vehicle as freeing as this vehicle…the freedom ride to Somewhere Else, someplace different.

And, eventually, the notion that the trip goes only so far before it rounds itself into homeward bound.

Arriving back home to recount adventures to mother and siblings.

The comforting belief that the day will be complete once a homecooked meal beckons with fragrance and stomach grumble.

The starry late-night dreams snuggled under covers with me, the ever-young imagineering bike kid floating, floating abed.

Anticipating the sun and the dew and the next great trek

 © Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute blog:

https://redclaydiary.com/mp3/prettybreeze.mp3

or read his memory below…

A twenty-five-year-old page falls out of my red clay diary today.

This must have been who I was way, way back then…

PRETTY BREEZE

The fluffy gentle cotton blue and white frock floats in the breeze past the book shop window.

Contained therein is a young slim body topped with blonde long hair flowing flowing flowing in the June-cool Thursday morning.

Another day at the shop, and I the shop owner stand at the window affixing postage stamps and pressing them against the upper right-hand corners of envelopes.

Just the other day, a white sports car pulls up before the parking meter in front of the book store. Moving gracefully out of the driver’s side is another young woman dressed in high heels and short short dress, her stockingless legs evenly toned and steady on the pavement as she walks around the front of the car and bends down to open the passenger door.

Gently, she removes a small basket from the seat and just as gently carries it to the book shop door and enters.

I recognize her as a regular customer who, a few weeks before, was body-large with wedlockless child, the same child who now occupies the basket she totes. I am introduced to the infant Sidney, whose tiny feet and toes curl in silent slumber, oblivious to the old books and the old relic proprietor and the young exotic dancer who has decided to raise Sidney on her own. She is now back to dancing at Sammy’s Go-Go Lounge.

The customer beams at the basket and its contents, picks up the books I’ve been holding for her these last few weeks. She pulls forth a large roll of five-dollar bills.

The tab is fifty dollars, so now I am ten five-dollar-bills richer.

I watch as she carries her precious cargo to the car and drives away, then go about my business and file the experience away with all the other unusual and eccentric happenings of book shop life.

The infant Sidney is a living contact between me and my customer.

It occurs to me later that the five-dollar bills are probably equally personal objects, since they have most likely been received as tax-free tips during her performances.

I have a sense of personal contact with all my customers, though the interchanges are varied and vexing and joyful and sad, depending on what and when and where and how.

They are all part of my family, in a way. In a way.

Sometimes I feel that the act of opening a book and finding a pressed flower or a love letter or a four-leaf clover is just as personal an act as discovering a basketed infant or a folded five-dollar bill recently pressed against the skin of a young exotic dancer in the remains of a big city on a cool June morning

 © Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim’s blog:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/skywardhandsignal.mp3

or read his memories below:

THE SKYWARD HAND SIGNAL AND THE DANDELION MEMOIR

 On this particular day of hotness and elevated humidity, the driver of the westbound automobile dares to do something different. Obviating the dry coolness issuing forth from her air conditioner, she grasps the plastic knob of the anodized door handle and cranks it counter-clockwise. The window descends, massive heat rolls in.

Then, the driver extends her left arm into the sunny morning, right-angles her elbow so that extended fingers point skyward, and prepares for the right turn she intends to execute a few feet ahead.

Just a few yards behind her rear bumper is the front bumper of my vehicle, and behind that bumper is driver number two—me.

I am awed by this small vision, a vision of someone out of the past navigating the modern streets of Birmingham as if the previous fifty years have evaporated. The car is old and iron-solid, blinkerless and weighted down by time.

The woman ahead of me is neatly coiffed and Sunday-school-tailored. She seems to exist in her own orderly time zone, reminding me of earlier days when all drivers were required to provide solid and accurate hand signals so that tailgaters would know well in advance that a slow turn is in the offing.

This time traveler ahead of me triggers other memories I will have to deal with in future red clay diary entries…just to settle them back into place in extensive and dusty files.

Memories of helping my mother hang soggy fresh-washed garments on our backyard clothesline. Flashbacks of incredibly sweaty afternoons penduluming a swing blade to control the advance of tall weeds. Learning how to avoid stripping gears while attempting to navigate a stick shift VW Beetle.

Watching my aunts carefully flatten and wash aluminum foil so that it can be re-used—Waste Not being the operative term. Saving canceled bank checks so that they can be employed as play money in imaginary games and used as notepaper for grocery lists. Wiping dry dinner plates one by one as they are hand washed.

The careful practice of slow-dialing a heavy black telephone after making sure the party line is not in use. Opening a massive dictionary and experiencing the texture and sound of turning pages, then moving fingers down columns to find how many definitions apply to each and every entry. Picking a delicate dandelion and slowly blowing its fluffy seeds into the childhood air.

The Sunday school hand-signal woman disappears to the right, my memories are interrupted by speeding hornblowers and orange construction cones, daytime redefines itself so that I am back to Now, the hustle emerges, the step-by-step responsibilities of life intrude and brush aside all but the next thing and the next thing after the next thing

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast