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http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/themerryadventuresofsaintleibowitz.mp3

or read Jim’s story below:

The Merry Adventures of Saint Leibowitz

“Ewww…”

First word that comes to mind when I see what I see at Dollar Tree this morning.

“Ewww…”

I’m examining a small sealed cardboard box labeled “Brunswick Chicken Salad with Crackers,” which is “Ready to Eat.” Ready to eat? How could something sealed in a can, possibly for years, be Ready to Eat?

The expiration date or “Best By” date is fourteen months away. What could possibly make this food product last so long? In my refrigerator at home, this would come to look like swamp residue in a week. The manufacturer must know something I don’t know—maybe that as a consumer I’ll probably eat anything if I’m hungry enough. And today I am hungry.

OK. Let’s look at the package again. “Pre-mixed Chicken Salad (thank goodness they mixed it for me–I’m so weak from hunger and lack of willpower) Ready to Eat with Five Buttery Crackers (Ritz-like crackers…Ritzy crackers?) and Convenient Spoon.” Wow! They even thought to enclose a spoon, not realizing a truly hungry consumer will eat with fingers or even toes if desperate enough.

Oh, and the small potted-meat-size can within the box “Now has an Easy-Peel Foil Lid.” Gosh, I don’t even have to carry around a can opener for my quick snacks.

I fear reading the contents label, but I do note that the main ingredient is “Cooked Chicken.” I do hate it when the chicken is raw.

So, here I am, wanting to eat something, anything, so I can meet my deadline and get on with the day. The Bumble Bee Seafoods company of San Diego has gone to all this trouble to rescue me.

How could the contents of this can possibly taste good? Well, at least I can eat the crackers should the chicken smell funny. And, of course, I’m only wasting a dollar if nothing turns out right. And also, I don’t ever have to eat this stuff again.

I recall the large sealed Civil Defense can at my shop, retrieved unopened from a bomb shelter and manufactured to have indefinite shelf life contents. The container is more than fifty years old and the crackers within still edible, according to one of my customers who actually opened one recently.

“Dear Family, in case you find me lying in shock beneath of pile of fast-food wrappers, allow me to document the adventures leading up to this possible outcome.” That’s the note I’ll leave on my body in case things don’t work out. This little story will suffice.

Being a brave sort at times, I tear open the little box, unseal the crackers, peel back the lid and bid farewell to Saint Leibowitz, the patron saint of all post-disaster sealed food containers

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/prepostapocalyptic.mp3

or read Jim’s story below:

The Pre-Post-Apocalyptic Bookshop in the Remaining Universe

As I pass the densely populated bookshelves in the darkening shop at end of day closing time, my fingers brush the spines and cause the books to call out their titles to me, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Brave New World, 1984, The Road, Alas, Babylon, On the Beach, Cat’s Cradle, The Time Machine, and on and on and on.

This evening, all the post-apocalypse tomes seem to be vying for my attention, longing to have their messages heard, wondering why their powerful preachments were read, enjoyed, discussed, then tossed aside without resulting in a changed world, a more peaceful universe.

Each book sets forth ideas that could teach us a lesson, make us more dedicated to protecting humanity, cause us to keep our guard up and advance our belief in the welfare of children and grandchildren, neighbors and kin.

But not much happens among humankind in the static cosmos. Sure, creation at large continues in flux, supernovae come and go, black holes slurp up everything, planets are destroyed and born, but we upright mammals seem to be wandering in circles, trapped in cycles of greatness followed by depression followed by hope followed by despair…

I suppose there is another genre of such imaginative fiction—the Pre-Apocalypse tales. Interestingly, this particular category includes every other literary work in existence, for we always live on the edge of the volcano, waiting for the next Apocalypse, the next Shift.

Since we uprights don’t seem to have the skills to alter our own destiny, we just wend our way through each day, sometimes achieving wonderful things, often making things worse…strange suspiring animals who wish we could be greater than we are.

Pre- and Post-Apocalyptic stories at least afford us an outlet that gives us the illusion of sharing our fears and searching for the good that lies sometime buried within us.

Here in the twilight aisles of the last bookstore in the universe, my browsers and I encourage one another, carefully re-arrange the deck chairs, and make every precious moment seem everlasting and hopeful

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s blog:  http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/autumnattemptstomakeacomeback.mp3

or read his story below:

Autumn Struggles to Make a Comeback

“I’m too old to grow up.”

–Amos Halftrack

I am floating horizontally, belly down, my face craned straight ahead to navigate the warm waters, making sweeping motions with my arms in order to move forward—only I don’t know where I’m headed, since there is nothing in sight but water before, aft, above and below. The fluid is tepid and comfortable, and there is no fear of drowning, even though in my waking life I cannot swim a stroke.

This recurrent dream is all I have at the moment, as I flail about in slow motion, hoping to surface soon and search for a shoreline.

I awaken in my own bed in my own bedroom under my own sheet, flat on my own back, staring at the white plaster ceiling, and the dream has evaporated. I slowly focus on the day, scanning the streaks of sunlight crossing the walls, feeling the diminished humidity of a pre-autumn morning as it struggles to brush away the high temperatures of a sweltering summer.

My wife breathes gently next to me, the Laurel and Hardy statues on the cabinet grin next to a toy planetarium, and books are stacked randomly about the room. The mystery of the dreaming swim seems oddly not out of place, seems comfortably logical in the scheme of things. Didn’t I begin life floating aimlessly in soothing waters, unable to determine direction or meaning? Did I not eventually come to consciousness in a room designed to introduce me to the world as gradually, as pleasantly, as possible? Am I not reborn each morning, ready to de-puzzle the day and plan my twenty-four-hour journey?

I shake these primal poetic meanderings away like so many gnats, gird myself to face down the orange traffic cones and speed bumps that will surely attempt to sack my enthusiasm, and try to brave the wilds and wits both dim and funny who get in my way, on purpose or accidentally.

Laurel and Hardy make me smile for no particular reason. Books abound and comfort me. The routines and rituals of the day provide structure and simulated direction to a life I secretly know is mysterious and unfathomable, like that pleasant nocturnal swim I occasionally take. As Carl Sandburg said, “I’m an optimist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

Even optimists know that things might not turn out all sweetness and light, but that never prevents them from searching high and low for the pony

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/wanderingandwondering.mp3

or read Jim’s story below:

Wandering and Wondering Through the Latter Years 

Lying flat on my back in the wee hours of today, I suddenly pop awake, eyes widely scanning the plaster ceiling for signs of life. I take inventory. I am breathing. My heart is steady, my bones only aching here and there, my toes wiggling, my nose itching, my wife suspiring next to me, the AC belching gently, the asphalt streets outside momentarily silent.

It’s my birthday!

That explains why I shock myself awake so suddenly. I can’t believe I’ve lived another year!

Holy Moley.

Some people don’t get to live another year. Some live many years beyond their allotted time. Some squander the years they do have. Some utilize every minute in service to either making others miserable or bringing cheer and goodwill to all.

We don’t get to choose being born, but eventually, if we make it through the vulnerable formative times and go out on our own, we do have to shoulder the burden of making choices.

Will I live just for myself? Will I live for others?

Is it all worth it?

And, of course, the most important, most enigmatic, most unanswerable question of all is, Will I be the one exception? Will I get to skip death and go on trucking?

Actually, this question is not unanswerable. Deep inside, I know that I will not be the exception. But I can pretend each day to not know that. I can act as if everything’s okey- dokey.

So, what does a birthday mean? It’s just like every other form of magical thinking—it is an arbitrarily determined construct dependent upon how I define the length of a year, how I embrace a local belief system, whether I decide to endorse or reject it, whether I decide to lie about my age, how I go about carrying my years (with dignity or with whining), and how I plan to use these twenty-four hours.

The brief attention paid to me by loved ones on this day is undeserved but greatly appreciated, greatly humbling, and greatly fun.

But there is always that nagging idea that I would be a better person if I just spent the day giving others gifts and compliments and kindnesses. I have much to be grateful for—mainly, I can’t believe I’ve lived another year!

Holy Double Moley

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/rubysyachtcarriesme.mp3

or read Jim’s story below:

Ruby’s Yacht Carries Me from Then to Now

I stop by the potter’s shed to watch him thump his glistening, malleable clay, shaping it to his whim, perhaps not listening closely to what it speaks to him.

“Go gently, brother, respect who I was and make me into what I will be,” the clay pleads, shape-shifting slowly under the potter’s hand.

The potter works on, kneading and pounding and spinning the red clay mass until it begins to imitate an object he can recognize.

“I was once like you,” the clay continues. “I lived, loved, died, eventually turned to dust. And here I am, returned to your shop, filled with the juice of life, prepared to accept my fate as your next project.”

The potter pauses, barely sensing these utterances, then begins the process of finalizing this new life, re-birthing the mixture of fluid and earth, settling on its appearance and eventual usage, the puppet-master bringing to life a life already awaiting re-emergence.

As the eleventh-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam said, “For I remember stopping by the way To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay: And with its all-obliterated Tongue It murmur’d—’Gently, Brother, gently, pray!’”

Omar, writing his Rubaiyat all those centuries ago, rides with me as I pass through life from dust to eventual dust. At the age of thirteen, I first read his many Rubaiyat—or verses—and never forgot the poetic images and ponderings about the wonder and silliness of life. I refer frequently to his wit and sagacity.

Omar asks the questions that we all ask of life: Why is some pottery misshapen or cracked or unattractive, even when created by the same Maker? Who makes those decisions? Who decides what is lovely and what is ungainly?

Khayyam admits he does not know the answers, and he ultimately decides that nobody else does, either.

His entire philosophy, basically, is, enjoy the moment, eat the chocolate chip cookie now, don’t worry about the before-now or the hereafter. You can make up theologies and beliefs and templates all you want, but it’s basically a conceit or a delusion to think that you know the Answer.

Reading Omar is kind of liberating. He lifts from you the burden of other people’s temporal and temporary ideas and allows you to do the right thing right now. Hug your family, lend a hand to someone in pain, stay out of other people’s belief systems and dogmas, look to your immediate circumstances for peace and kindness.

As I sail the Rubaiyat—or Ruby’s Yacht—through life, I can still find shards of peace amid the turmoil, largely because of Omar and Ruby

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/stragglersoftheophanage.mp3

or read his story below:

Stragglers of the Orphanage Open House Day

The library basement room is filled to overflowing with wandering patrons searching for books that librarians want ousted from their shelving.

Every kind of person you can imagine is here tonight, roaming the aisles, searching for just the right volumes to take home or to auction on Ebay or to re-gift or just to collect but never read, or simply to place on the coffee table to look pretty…or perhaps even to read and cherish.

Here at the book sale, I am wending my way through the throngs, looking for a niche that everybody ignores, a corner bereft of shovers, space hoarders and aggressive acquirers. Ah! The Humor Section. Nobody looks there, so it’s the perfect spot to seek treasure. I am alone in a sea of grabbers.

Wham! Plop! Wham! Plop!

What th- Where is that noise emanating from?

Wham! Plop! Wham! Plop!

I peek around the corner of the next aisle to spy an intense woman who is stooping down to knee level, ignoring titles and subjects and authors and simply methodically grabbing one book at a time, scanning the back cover with a hand-held device, then slamming each book aside loudly and messily to make room for the next scan. Oblivious to others attempting to examine and open each book, she is working hurriedly, unsmiling and avid.

Wham! Plop! Wham! Plop!

I get it. She’s working from a Want-List of books that are sought by the hundreds on the Internet. She’ll use ISBN numbers to fill some boxes, then ship them out of state to humongous used book entities that will sell them at the rate of thousands per day.

Wham! Plop! Wham! Plop!

Most people here are having a grand time. Kids sit on the floor and read, anxious moms grab titles they hope to read in their spare time and other titles they hope their kids will read, cookbook collectors search for their favorite recipes, history buffs search for Churchill and Durant and Ambrose and Herodotus, donors look for beach reads, teens seek vampires and zombies, nerds all have their specialties…

Then there are these two guys who have cordoned off a corner of the room, where they accumulate stack after stack of books and guard them from examination by others. These are out-of-town dealers who are not purchasing these stacks of books. They are simply roping them off so that they can leisurely pick out the few they want to take with them, leaving a jumble of volumes behind. First come, first served.

Now things are thinning out a bit and I can pick up a few more books to read.

Now, as the books disappear, I look at what is left.

I am the only one who spends time in the philosophy section, so I silently converse with the oldies and make my selections.

Then, when most of the assertive customers have left the building, I carefully look for the wonders they missed, the special books with intrinsic value that cannot be detected by tattooed numbers or overly zealous grabbers.

I find them and am pleased.

I eventually leave with my trove, bidding farewell to those straggling books that will never, ever sell, those orphans who are passed over again and again…books that once meant much to someone but now are passe or outmoded or untrendy or battered.

Where will these orphans go now? What will be the final book that no-one will purchase?

When I return at the end of the sale, I will spend some time with these volumes, searching for special traits hidden to the untrained eye. I’ll find something worthwhile about them, mostly because nobody else took the time.

It’s one of my guiltless pleasures, a game I play all by myself, taking a second and third look at these foundlings to see what they have to offer an uncaring world

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/ponderingthepit.mp3

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Pondering the Pit and Listening to the Cereal

It is way back in the 1940′s right now, and I am the I who is living in these times. At the moment, I am communicating with you from here, which is a great distance, timewise. I’m in the 20th Century, you are in the 21st Century.

Interesting how the distance can be bridged in seconds, merely through these recorded words.

Anyhow, just wanted you to know where and when I am coming from.

I’m a kid and I am doing what most pre-television kids do each morning. Breakfast. Breakfast can include things like eggs, cereal, bacon, grits, cream of wheat, oatmeal, toast, biscuits, jelly, butter (oleo margarine), salt, pepper, cane sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, sausage, flapjacks…

But breakfast is also blended with everything and everybody around me. The food is just food without the flavor of family and laughter and mumbling…and stuff you can read on the sides of containers.

While the family swirls around me, I escape into the world of various packages that contain the fixin’s. I get to read about the adventures of Snap, Crackle and Pop who live at Rice Krispies…famous athletes grinning muscularly from the Wheaties box…Hopalong Cassidy looking intense at the end of a loaf of bread…Aunt Jemima smiling from a pancake mix box…Little Miss Sunbeam eternally munching on a slice…frighteningly serious doctors recommending Post Toasties as ruffage…

And then there’s the prune box. Prunes are not very exciting, but they do make a nice treat now and then. And the pits are fascinating, sporting a planetoid texture and totally inedible. But the mystery of the prune goes deeper. Inside each prune pit is a kernel, some kind of secret nut. When you bust open the pit, there’s that extra treat to munch—just like a Cracker Jack prize.

And examining prune kernels is just the beginning. While reading and chewing, I get all kinds of fun out of pondering other breakfast mysteries:  Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Why do Rice Krispies have their own language? How can eggs be so easy to break yet so durable in their long journey to my parents’ kitchen table? What is the difference between jelly and marmalade and preserves and syrup and molasses and honey? How do you get gravy out of coffee grounds? What happens to the pit and the kernel when pitted prunes are produced?  Who decides which is the butter knife and which is the slicing knife?

As I glug my orange juice and break my fast, my metabolism and brain start racing, and I am preparing for a day of school or play—either of which will produce more questions and just a few possible answers.

By the time I’m racing for the bus or the backyard, I am already a scientist, adventurer, athlete, vizier, poet. There is so much to learn about, so much to test, a million would-be solutions to the world’s problems…and I am the one who is going to start addressing them, at least until late morning when I rush to the kitchen or school playground for Kool-Aid or a carbonated drink to get me through till lunchtime.

For the rest of my life, I continue to gaze at all things new in much the same way I gaze at prune pits. What’s inside? What’s behind? What’s the story? What was the journey? What will happen next?

There is always one more thing to examine.

That’s what keeps me going every day to this very day

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to today’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/janeolantern.mp3

or read Jim’s story below…

JANE-O’-LANTERN

Trying to fight the grey day and the grey skies on Monday morning, I drop the humid laundry bags off and race from laundry door to car, hoping to dodge a panhandler or two.

“What do you writhe?” a feminine voice asks loudly behind me in the mottled parking lot.

Dang! I think. Someone’s about to hustle me.

I look over my shoulder as I hurry to make it into the car.

There’s a frizzy-grey-haired street woman of indeterminate age toothy-grinning at me. She repeats whatever it is she said.

“What do you writhe?”

“I can’t understand you,” I say, hoping she’ll go away.

I notice that her toothy grin is actually an every-other-tooth grin, since she’s missing sections of the usual white row. She grins widely again, like a happy, soulful jack-o’-lantern.

“What do you write?”

Now she points to the back of my car, where my self-printed bumper sticker proclaims    O What Fun It Is To Write.

Dang again! I think to myself. I’ve once again made a fool of myself. She wants to know what it is that I write.

I grin back, showing more teeth than her.

“Oh, I write books and stories,” I say.

“Like what?” she grins engagingly. She’s really interested!

“Well,” I stumble. “One of my books is Dad’s Tweed Coat: Small Wisdoms Hidden Comforts Unexpected Joys.”

It’s the most popular of my publications, and now I wish I had a copy with me, to give her.

She grins and glows again, appreciately, and turns to walk away. She’s satisfied with the answer.

Some days I writhe, some days I write. Seems all the same to me.

I drive on to work, thinking about her wonderful smile and wondering why all those grey people walking the grey sidewalks this morning left their smiles at home in sad sock drawers

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/tapdancingonshagcarpeting.mp3

or read his story below:

Tap Dancing on Shag Carpeting

“You have heard the sound of two hands clapping, but have you heard the sound of three hands clapping?”

Thoughts like this slither into my mind during the short periods between customers at the bookstore.

“She was aged to imperfection.”

You know, inexplicable thoughts like this—the kinds of thoughts that seem important at the time but ultimately are tossed into the napkin-note sticky-note file for later contemplation.

“You can only observe one-tenth of an iceberg lettuce salad.”

Where did that one come from?

The front door chimes and I am lifted from my navel contemplation. I arise from behind the counter and smile to the customer, “Good morning! How can I help you today?”

A woman of indeterminate age frowns, holds up a shiny book by two fingers, as if it is contaminated and ready for recycling. “I want to return this book for a refund,” she announces.

My policy is ironclad. I always refund, no questions asked. Or at least no questions required. But just for future reference, I say, “OK. Is there anything wrong with the book?”

She sneers, looks into the air—not at me—and says, “I just don’t like the way it ended. I want my money back.”

I am at a loss for words. I look for words, but they seem to have fallen out of my head and rolled under something, out of sight.

“Er, sorry,” I sputter. I determine that this particular customer has made up her immutable mind and is well beyond literary conversation or conversion. I also determine that she will probably never return. I think, too, that she has read very few books in her life and has no idea how a real bookstore operates. I am happy to refund her money in hopes that she will soon disappear and be replaced by appreciative browsers.

She stuffs the refund in her copious purse and grumbles to herself all the way to the door, her experiment with reading over and done with.

I re-shelve the book, return to my storely duties and my lone thoughts.

“She is as pure as the driven sludge.”

Where did that thought come from?

I wonder whether there are other would-be customers like her. Maybe, to paraphrase my Brother, Tim, she is part of a That Customer franchise, people who haunt old bookstores with unlikely demands, then dematerialize.

“I’m looking for a book by GO-eeth,” one customer says. It takes a while to decipher Goethe from his request. I gladly provide him with Goethe.

“I’m looking for poem,” a gruff character states. When I lead him to the poetry section, he stares blankly, arms limp, as if I’ve invited him to tap dance on shag carpeting.

“No, I’m looking for POEM,” he repeats. It takes some time to figure out that he is searching for pornography, or PORN, as it is called these days. Dang, we are fresh out or porn, I say to myself.

I gently let him down and he leaves—again, someone who will never return.

Some folks seem to be searching for Manifest Density. If there is no such thing, there ought to be.

Me, I’m just drifting with my thoughts on a normal day at the least normal bookstore you’ll ever visit, the most enjoyable bookstore you will ever visit, a bookstore stripped bare of unsavory endings and GO-eeth and porn

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Podcasts: http://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/

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http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/glowingdreamsofatommixradioman.mp3

or read his story below:

Glowing Dreams of a Tom Mix Radioman 

 Squeak. Rustle. Clunk!

It’s the sound of our mail box being opened, stuffed, then securely closed.

Today, I am first to run to the front door and retrieve the daily mail, just in case my special order has arrived.

This is 65 years ago, when we still know the name of the letter carrier, his family, his route and his schedule. He is right on time.

I run to the living room sofa and spread the trove. The newest issue of Life Magazine. A utility bill. A letter from Aunt Annabelle. And a small package addressed to Master Jim Reed!

This is it. Without waiting for permission, I carefully dissect the wrapper, emulating my mother’s care in saving for re-use any and all paper and cardboard materials. I pull out a personal greeting from Tom Mix, the cowboy star I listen to each week on the radio. I won’t know for decades that Tom Mix actually dies a year before I am born…but his franchise lives on.

Lo and behold, here is what I’ve been waiting for. A Tom Mix white plastic belt with red cowboy figures printed thereon. And it is just my size. Well, it is just the size of any small boy who owns it.

I am excited beyond all measure. Not just because I now own the belt. I am excited because this Tom Mix belt is supposed to glow in the dark! Following instructions, I expose the belt to sunlight, then rush to the nearest closet—the only daytime dark place in the house.

I pull the door tight, imprisoning myself among mothballs and suitcases and shoes and clothing. I dare to open my eyes. And there, lighting up the darkness, is my genuine Tom Mix glow-in-the-dark white plastic belt. It seems magical. I am not at all sure that I have ever seen anything that glows in the dark without an electrical plug or a battery or a hand crank.

I look around to see just how much illumination this  belt is capable of. Sure enough, I can see ghostly images of my hands, my shirt, my pants, my bare knees, and all the mysterious closeted objects I can never see in the dark.

Later, after showing off my latest mail-order acquisition to playmates and siblings and mother, after wearing the belt secured by cloth loops about the waist of my Jungle Jim khaki shorts, I have completed the chores and commitments of the day and am once again alone—my favorite place to be. Supper dispensed with, bath behind me, fresh pajamas donned, I climb up to lie abed on the top bunk of the bedroom and spend a little daydream time before slumbering.

Brother Ronny is already snoring in the bottom bunk. Flashlight and comic books are nearby. The sounds of the nightly neighborhood critters filter in through the metal window screens. Nearby houses are already dark. One bright planet, Venus, peers in through the west-facing window.

And there, within my grasp, is the Tom Mix belt. I wonder what Tom Mix would do with a glowing belt out on the cowboy prairie of the Wild West. Since cowboys don’t have flashlights back then, he probably uses the belt to locate firewood on a dark and stormy night. His horse, Tony, is settled in. He holds the belt aloft to find wooden matches. He lights kindling, feeds the flames with more wood, and beds down for the night, using his saddle for a pillow, hoping it doesn’t rain.

The Tom Mix glow-in-the-dark white plastic belt has served its purpose for the night.

Here I am, also bedded down, hugging my new belt, gazing at bedclothes faintly illuminated.

I close my eyes, drift into cowhand dreams, knowing that this has been a really great day, knowing that there may not be that many really great days to come. Hoping that there will be more wonderful days than I can possibly imagine

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Podcasts: http://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/

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