Listen to Jim’s 4-minute podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ahLIw13hY&feature=youtu.be

or read his story below…

NOWHERE NEAR TALL AND STRIKINGLY HANDSOME

I am the merest mere pre-teen you can possibly picture in your mind today, since I am somewhere back in time at the moment.

I the merest kid dare to push the big red Control button that transports me from today, all the way back to the first summer of the 1950′s.

The bombastic march from Puccini’s opera AIDA is about to begin as we kids of Vacation Bible School queue up and prepare to proceed lockstep into the cool interior of Forest Lake Baptist Church. Vacation Bible School is the only day camp my parents can afford, so to this day it is Summer Camp in sweet memory.

A loudspeaker crackles, a rusting needle descends to a rapidly spinning 78 rpm recording, and AIDA begins.

The hot summer sun weighs upon us as we dutifully descend into the shaded interior of the church.

As mere youth, we kids have no choice as to whether we will attend this camp. Indeed, we really don’t worry about whether it is desirable, we just welcome the break from being home all day every day with not much adventure in store.

The music ends and the needle noisily amplifies the endless blank groove until someone remembers to lift it and kill the volume. We stand silently in rows awaiting further instructions.

Finally, the director, Mrs. Campbell, joyfully greets us, leads us in prayer while we peek around to see who else is peeking around, then permits us to sit on the hard wooden pews. Today we are to recite memorized bible verses. I am thankful that we do this as a group, allowing me to mouth words I don’t quite remember.

Later, volunteer adults show us how to do crafts and clumsy arts. I get to build a lopsided lightly sanded-and-painted wooden kitchen shelf in the shape of an apple. This is a gift for Mother’s kitchen, a gift she keeps on display for the next seventy years.

Break-time Kool-Aid and cookies save my life while a 16-mm projector briefly entertains us with black and white cartoons and movie previews featuring heroes such as Gregory Peck and Popeye and Buck Rogers. What brings me back to the 1950′s today is the red button and a blurb about Gregory Peck that describes him as “tall and strikingly handsome,” a phrase I realize, even this early in life, will never be applied to the likes of me.

Short and strikingly wimpy, I still manage to find some pleasure in activities such as dodge ball and checkers, hymn-singing and hide-and-seek, and quiet time breaks while we study verses.

A decade or so later, when I am a public radio announcer, I queue up a recording of an entire opera and listen raptly, suddenly surprised when the march turns out to be my very own summer school march.

AIDA.

Till now, I never knew the name of the tune, but suddenly it brings memories of bliss, it introduces me to the world of grand opera, it resuscitates the best of what good spirits I still carry with me.

Thanks to AIDA and day camp, I can find respite in time travel, I can be at peace as a strikingly individualistic non-tall dreamer whose purpose is to remind those who read these words that there are enough fond memories stored up inside us to comfort and put us at ease just in time to face another day.

Just push the big red button

© 2019 A.D. by Jim the Reed

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

or read on…

COMING BACK THE OLD WAY

From the earliest times of remembrance, when I was a tad hanging on to every word uttered by family and kin and villagers, I was awed by the things I knew I would never experience first hand.

I remain awed at the lives I will never lead, at the lives I can only imagine in passing.

Coming back the old way from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham I imagine more than I actually see. I skip the all-too-efficient and soulless interstate highway, veer off to cruise the two-lane blacktops, the blue roads that used to crisscross old folding gas station maps.

I toss aside the idea of GPS and dive into the antiquated concept of driving around till something out of the ordinary presents itself.

Oh, the things I see.

Leaning barns, truncated railroad tracks, bullet hole-enhanced Stop signs, ragged children playing ragtag games in merrily cluttered front yards, leftover Christmas decorations dangling from rusted mail boxes, pickup trucks with FOR SELL signs, loose gravel driveways, shiny and tarnished tin roofs, a three-legged dog romping along, buggy bugs splattering against my windshield.

There’s more.

Single-lane red mud roads disappear into camouflage woods, abandoned tractor tires make great playmates, rope swings dangle from trees, elderly women wave from front porches, kudzu continues its plan to conquer the world, aluminum siding braces for the next tornado, sunburned orange-suited prisoners pick up trash, an abandoned meat-and-three diner gives up and ages rapidly, impatient truckers whiz past, a lone and scraggly horse stares into space, an armadillo narrowly escapes being squashed, one pedestrian plods along toward the next convenience store.

All these signs of life are mysterious and enthralling, all these signs of life are stories unfolding.

There is always more…

Grazing cattle await their fate, potholes plot against alignment, a straw-hatted fisherman meditates next to a muddy stream, billboards tout local political dreams of power, an already grizzled teenager grabs a smoke, yard sales offer old baby clothes and plastic pedal cars, boarded-up cinder block buildings hide their contents, pine trees proliferate or tumble, a biker bar forbids further examination, remains of villages nurture their ghosts, KEEP OUT signs obscure silent sadnesses, microwave towers mock the past, friendly servers offer menus and sweet tea relief.

Coming back the old way reminds me that this is my land, the land I come from. It also reminds me that I am no longer a resident, that I am a now stranger in my own land.

The blue roads re-animate wonderful memories. They exist to excite my past and force me to re-examine both past and present.

The blue roads caution me not to snub all the secret stories waiting to be told, but they also tell me to record what I see so that future travelers down the old way will take a second look, a fresh appreciation…a deep respect for all villages and villagers past and present and future, in a land as varied as varied can possibly be

© 2019 A.D. by Jim the Reed

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast:  https://youtu.be/BDbH4ro3NBY

or read his story…

IS THAT YOUR REALLY TRULY NAME?

Just for the sake of idle chat, let’s ponder something imponderable.

What if we traverse the spectrum of times past and re-embrace the concept of naming people the names they earn the moment we meet them?

Here’s a list of people I know or notice. Their names jump quickly to mind, even before I know their legal monikers. Even if I never learn their legal monikers.

Liz of the Leaping Mind.

Quick Eye Jack.

True and Actual Ernie.

Jimbo Dumbo.

Patti Patient Spouse.

Riley of the Written Word.

Quiet and Holy Mommy.

Pal Powerful Presence.

Joan of the Thoroughly Spun Tale.

Witty Quip Frank.

Mandy of the Roving Eye.

Sassy Leg Becky.

Susie Stoic.

Regina of the Power Mom.

Fiona of the Forlorn Face.

Jim the Scrabbler.

Speedy Mouth Mary.

Bill of the Orange Grove Kayak.

I have a name for everyone who saunters through my life, a name that names itself, a name over which I have no control.

So, when next we meet, why not reveal to me my real name, the name you harbor but never say aloud? If you wish, I will do the same for you.

Mind you, if these unspoken names are naughty or not nice, why don’t we refuse to utter them? And if we are being truly really kindly, why don’t we re-think them and come up with names that reflect the best or most fascinating aspect of one another?

This is not something worth starting a war over. But it is a tiny and harmless opportunity to re-assess and find common ground midst the confusions and contusions of a world gone partly mad

© 2019 A.D. by Jim the Reed

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/JDUuun_koV0

or read his story below…

PURPLE AND PINK MOTHER

(In sweet memory of Frances Lee McGee Reed, 1913-1997 A.D.)

You would have enjoyed knowing my mother.

Mother was, among many other delightful things, a piddler.

In my generation’s mind’s eye, a piddler is someone who piddles around, doing things that are very important to the piddler but of almost no importance to anyone else.

After knowing Mother for all her 83 years, I came to understand and appreciate piddlers, and indeed I’ve become a piddler myself.

When she was alone, Mother loved nothing better than to piddle around in the yard, talking to the flowers and plants, chatting merrily with any animals that happened to stray into her line of vision, and exchanging pleasantries with folks who caught her eye.

She would trim, dig, plant, rearrange, fondle, dust, and wash anything at all that she came in contact with in her yard.

On days when she couldn’t get outside, Mother would piddle around inside the house, doing much the same things that she did outside, except that when house-bound, she would write notes and letters and cards. Much of the time these notes and letters and cards, jotted down on any scrap or pad that presented a paper surface, would be addressed to herself—notes about things she needed to do, notes about her feelings of happiness or anger and frustration, notes about things she hoped other people would do, notes about her hopes, notes about her small despairs.

Other notes would be left around the house and inside just about anything, and they would be notes about what she would like to do in the future, or notes that she hoped her family would read someday, or notes describing things she did not want our family to forget.

She left notes on the backs of hanging pictures and photographs, so that we would not forget who and what they were all about, and she never abandoned her firm belief that each and every note, each and every scrap of paper, was just as precious as all the wonderful stuff she accumulated.

Mother never willingly threw anything away, much to the joy of some of her children, much to the horror of some of her children.

Mother’s home was a time capsule, and she always hoped that somebody would come along and appreciate each and every bit of paper and odds and ends as much as she had appreciated them.

So, not too long after her death, we five brothers and sisters gathered at our childhood home and began unsealing Mother’s time capsule. We spent our brief hours enjoying and reminiscing and mourning the one and only greatest piddler of all time.

Soon after Mother’s funeral, I dragged myself out the front door of our home some fifty miles from where I was born. In the middle of winter I made my way halfway down the sidewalk before I realized that for no reason at all our Japanese magnolia tree had pink-and-white-and-purple-blossomed itself into full beauty.

A piddling tree that seemed infused with the sweetness of Mother’s soul.

Pink and purple were Mother’s favorite colors, you know.

Thanks for another note, Ma

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/znMtUXb3ZSA

or read his words below…

ATTENTIONING THE CHAPERONES

I am racing westward toward the daytime setting Moon, throttling forth in a gasoline-frenzied vehicle designed to provide me with a sense of being in control of life and limb.

A captive of the internal combustion engine, a victim of manufactured needs and media-induced desires, I am aquariumed in this metal and plastic pod, preoccupied with steering wheel and pedals, focused on….what?

My intensity snaps for a moment when I glance above the asphalt pathway to see something startling and poetic and, well, quite beautiful.

In the full-on daylight sky, the Moon is hovering unnoticed. What is it doing up there? Moonlight is relegated to nighttime, isn’t it? But there it is, right before my eyes, busily being The Moon.

Suddenly, all the focus and neurotic forward thrust of my barely visible life does not seem as important as it was a few seconds back in time.

Hey, look! There is a Moon to behold!

Why isn’t everybody gazing and smiling at this large hunk of cosmic rock? Why are we not pulling off to the side of the road to stand outside our thrusting cages? Why are we not daytime moonstruck? Why are we so intent on these Earthling errands and chores when there is something so miraculous and benevolent right there, just for our enjoyment and puzzlement?

I’m still the ancient geezer with the wonder of a small child trapped within me. Time to nurture that part of me that remains open to the universe.

I can see the moonlight, even though it is drowned out or diminished by sunlight. It is there all the time, awaiting the attention of dreamers.

And in between times, when the Moon is not in the afternoon skies, there is the Sun to ponder—an orb so bright it cannot be observed directly. An orb so bright all I can do is pay attention to everything it illuminates, everything that reflects its light.

The Sun is all that keeps us going. Respect must be paid.

I snap to attention and continue my journey.

The beauty of the setting Moon is that it remains calm and available. The beauty of the moonrace is that it is unwinnable, thus always there to tease out our wadded dreams, smooth out their wrinkles, allow us moments like the one I just experienced.

The Moon and the Sun dance for our pleasure and inspiration. Time to reward them for their company, their constant companionship, their guardianship over us all.

They make good chaperones.

Time to blink at the Sun and wink at the Moon, just to let them know

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

Listen’s to Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/nOYfwszMCy8

or read his story below…

ROMANCING THE HEART OF THE ARTIFACT CITY

Ten years ago, the Red Clay Diary splayed open beneath my writing hand. Here are some of the notes and scribbles therein. Let’s go back to Then and forget Now for a few seconds…

A day unlike any other day, but curiously familiar…

OUTSIDE THE SHOP

It’s like a bolero out there, everybody choreographing their unique dances in rhythm with life…

Remon grabs another of his many daily smokes outside my shop, on the way to the smoking parking lot, where so many others leave their cigarette filters…relics for future archaeologists to uncover and puzzle over.

INSIDE THE SHOP

Everybody brings baggage, everyone has a story—even if unconsciously so…

Geoff drops by and donates a brass-and-velvet theatre stanchion, so that I can place some psychological boundary between myself and the occasional hovering customer.

Carolynne picks up copies of the latest Birmingham Arts Journal to spread the gospel of art and lit.

Randy decides to read Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald. There is hope!

ACROSS FROM THE SHOP

I can see the parallel businesses and activities going about their cycles…

Rhonda soaks the cooling sun and smiles her wisdom, surrounded by shoes and leathery artifacts.

The Matron of Metering carefully prepares penalty notices for people who don’t know the rules and mysteries of Downtown Parking.

A customer donates a bag of wonderful old books.

MEANWHILE, BACK INSIDE

The imaginary reality of each customer swirls about them, influencing the way they see the shop…

Kid customer purchases an enormous football-shaped balloon and a Wimpy Kid title.

A grown-up attorney takes the life-size Marilyn Monroe stand-up home with him, along with Bradbury.

Another kid customer buys a flashing red disco light for his room, to go with a Star Wars novel.

Outside, one pedestrian ogles the Leg Lamp and model train and Piggly Wiggly head and Laugh-In switchboard and Red Lady statue in the display windows.

Yet another purchases a wind-up bunny astride a tricycle, and a Peter Rabbit book.

One customer selects century-old postcards and comes back for more.

Somebody else stays in the front corner for five hours and reads ancient love letters and diaries from within my grandfather’s old post office boxes. Her bliss is unmistakable. The names of my relatives in Peterson, Alabama are on each box.

A Regular ushers and tours her friend through the shop.

Giggles emanate from the back of the store. Collectible books entertain them.

One girl seeks and finds Gulliver’s Travels and carries her smile home with her.

And so it goes.

You go climb Mount Everest.

I’ll remain here in my shop. I suspect I’ll have much more fun

© 2019 Jim Reed

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/g9xzjWamgC8

or read his tale below…

TODAY THE NUMBER 3 DOES NOT EXIST

This very morning, I am boldly going where no person has gone before: the land where 3′s do not exist.

Beaming down to the post office parking lot, I list to the right while left-hand-toting a red-and-white polka-dotted bag filled with books wrapped and ready to mail to distant lands.

It’s a several-times-weekly trek that is sometimes routine and predictable, sometimes surprising and quite funny.

Some mornings, I startle the dozing postal clerk from her nap. That’s when no-one else is on duty or patronizing the place.

She is always on automatic at first, rapid-firing the required routine script provided by absentee bosses, “GoodmorningmayIhelpyou?” Then, once she sees that it is only I, the elderly gentleman from the bookstore, she manages a smile and even, when prodded,  a bit of small talk.

The postal clerk, as demanded by the Postal Gods, continues the script, just in case someone is viewing her through dispassionate cameras. “Anything liquid, explosive, sticky or dangerous in these packages?” she asks (actual words are different, but this is what I understand is being meant).

I tap the computer button several times to awaken it and verify that I am not a terrorist or sneaky felon of any kind.

She diligently weighs and sticky-labels each package. She has learned long ago that rather than wait for a patron to double-check her keyed-in address to verify it is identical to the label provided, she just quickly taps the “this is incredibly accurate” button and gets on with the processing. Much to my relief.

As the receipt begins printing, she frowns, leans closer, and notes, “The threes are not working on this machine.” I laugh and make a lame joke about a world without threes, she smiles slightly as best she can, then hand-inks 3′s wherever they are missing on the tape.

I wait, acting as patient as possible, since she has enough to deal with in this strange little branch that is missing half its ceiling tile, that sports vinyl peeling from the walls…this little branch where service windows behind her are papered over so that patrons cannot see what goes on within the mysterious sunless bowels of the building.

Threes are not the only objects missing. Unkempt displays and puzzling signs sit bedraggled and forlorn, some out of date, some indecipherable. The floor tiles and stanchions are situated much the same way that Disney World controls crowds—even when there is no other customer about, one still has to walk the curving line and wait at a certain point to be summoned.

It’s hard not to laugh, not to feel sorry for the painful rules governing each postal employee. And, after chatting with her day after day, I learn bits and pieces to the silly-ruled life she has to tread while at work.

She always smiles when I mention approaching postal holidays and breaks. I always smile when she smiles, feeling that I have mustered a ray of light to share with her during these brief-enough encounters.

My books eventually get mailed, I gather up re-three’d receipt and polka-dot bag, wish her a good day or a good day off, and make sure I leave her with a big grin. My harmless but effective gift.

As I leave, another, less friendly, patron arrives, primed for battle with plans to make the clerk’s day a little less pleasant.

I duck and weave to avoid hearing the ensuing encounter.

I head for work and prepare to make intense customers slow down and relax, and slow-mo customers to focus their attentions on the things they really wish to purchase but are too shy to verbalize right away.

I am now beamed in.

I beam and get on with the remainder of the day

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

 jim@jimreedbooks.com

www.jimreedbooks.comhttp://redclaydiary.com/

www.redclaydiary.com

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

or read on…

TAKING A LIGHTLY EDITED DEEP SOUTH DAY OFF

I am strolling, trolling the aisles of a sacred site, what I call the Cathedral of Books.

I pause for a moment, close my eyes, and try to remember what the poet Juan Ramon Jimenez once said:

“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”

I have cruised thousands of book lanes in my bookie life. How can I make this particular moment different and memorable? What is the opposite of browsing?

I close my eyes. I extend my right arm straight out to the side. I feel the spine of an invisible book. I tell myself, This is the book with which I will surprise myself today.

I pull the book to my chest, hold it close for a moment, then raise my upper lids and look down to see what’s being cradled.

A title I’ve never read. Hmm…

I am ready to feel the heft and texture and fragrance of an object produced by an olden bindery. Upon close inspection I note that a  modern publisher has reproduced this book to give the first impression of early times. It is actually a recent copy.

I excitedly examine the title page inside, then the back of the title page to see who has loved the author’s work so much that it has been re-animated for this century’s readers.

Then, two words jump at me. Words that cause fear and loathing in the heart of any lover of prose and poetry. These most disturbing words are just below the copyright data on the back the first title page:

“LIGHTLY EDITED.”

I close the volume. I consider whether to purchase it, then hide it away from all possible prying eyes. I feel I am in the presence of a sacred object that has been vandalized.

Why would anyone LIGHTLY EDIT an ancient author’s prized work?

My imagination gets the worst of me and I suddenly envision great literature LIGHTLY EDITED.

The Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Then, he took a day off.”

Mustn’t burden the reader with extraneous information.

Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael. I got to go sailing and saw a big whale.”

That’s story enough. Our readers have to get back to whatever it is they do when they are not reading.

Goodnight Moon: “Goodnight, Moon. The end.”

LIGHTLY EDITED.

Someday, when books I have written are discovered at some obscure yard sale, will the electronically internetted cyborged purchaser pick them up, unopened, tie a silk ribbon around them, arrange them artfully on a coffee table with an old pair of wire rimmed eyeglasses atop, then abandon them till they become dust repositories?

Till they once again wind up in a thrift bin or another yard sale?

I pause again, affectionately pat this orphaned and transmogrified work of art, extend my sympathies and condolences.

Then, I continue trolling the aisles for an unedited copy of this work, one unsullied by abridgers eager to remake the world in their own image.

That’s the version I’ll gladly read on the next day I take off

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

 jim@jimreedbooks.com

www.jimreedbooks.com

https://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast/

Hear Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/bT4QEuUC2z4

or read on…

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DEEP-SOUTH CHICKEN CAPER

This incident actually happened to me one childhood day while I lay abed in my family’s Tuscaloosa garage apartment. My mother and grandmother were fussing about, conducting activities of daily living. Suddenly, a neighborhood free-roaming chicken appeared through the open screen door and a moment of chaos and joy ensued. As proof that all of life is poetry, or at least poetic, here is the poem that emerged from my memory…

.

PLAYING CHICKEN

.

Once upon a time or two

when I was less than three

A chicken jumped into my bed

and gave a fright to me.

.

She fluttered up and cackled ‘round

the room for all to see,

She made me cry, she made me laugh

and clap my hands in glee.

.

Granny chased her with a broom,

Mama shoo’d her loud,

The chicken left us with a zoom

and flew up to a cloud.

.

Later, when I saw her pecking

all about the grounds,

I cackled and she laughed at me.

We both made funny sounds.

.

I waved and smiled and whispered,

“Come back another day,

so we can scare each other

into having fun at play.”

*

See what I mean? To this day, my life remains a poetic journey in progress.

Thanks for hitching a ride for a moment

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

 jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

www.redclaydiary.com

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s 5-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/m3DRw3ggYuA

or read on…

*

This story happened a long time ago, but I re-visit it every few years