THE TWELVE-MONTH TORNADO MEMORY

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Listen to Jim: http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/somewhereintime.mp3 

or read on…

I was raised in an asbestos-shingled two-bedroom bungalow at 26 Eastwood Avenue in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

If the address doesn’t have a familiar ring to it, maybe this will help: The house is two blocks from the intersection of 15th Street East and MacFarland Boulevard. If that doesn’t have a ring to it, maybe this will help: The intersection was hit by tornadoes just one year ago, and virtually everything in sight was damaged or wiped out.

Except for the little asbesto-shingled two-bedroom home on Eastwood Avenue.

I don’t know why our home was spared. Brother-in-law Larry Partrich has repaired the damage and still stays there when he’s in town. Several other homes on the same street are still standing. Nobody died. And nobody knows why.

Being brought up in Tuscaloosa was a wonderful experience, but one thing we lived with in T-town was the reality of storms—primarily tornadoes. Each year of my life we’d have storms and storm warnings. We knew lots of people whose property was slammed, whose lives were altered by these impartial acts of Nature. It was something we just took for granted.

We knew that, should we live long enough, we, too, would be hit by nature, humbled by its terrible beauty. And, judging from the behavior of everybody we knew and knew about, we also knew that, if devastated, those of us who survived would come back and just keep on keeping on.

People have done this since time began.

If you live at the edge of a volcano, you just arise each day, thankful that this wasn’t the day it erupted. If you live on a faultline, you know that time is merely borrowed and that some day an earthquake will rattle your brains. If you reside in a dry forest you are happy that today isn’t runaway-inferno day.

If you live on Planet Earth, you remain thankful that today is not the day a meteor hits you, a solar flare stir-fries you, the finger of an unknown god squashes you, a bolt of lightning decides you are a good conductor, Fate decrees you expendable…

After the storms of last year, I drove through the remains of that nearby Tuscaloosa neighborhood where I played, worked, dated, dared, dreamed, acted foolishly and wisely, and otherwise lived the first 27 years of my life. I was horrified. But I was grateful, too…grateful for all the years I’d spent writing about those early years, describing the streets and inhabitants, waxing nostalgic about my times there, carefully memorizing each location I ever visited. 

Storms can erase the mere physical presence of a town, but they can’t touch or alter my fond memories, they can’t change the fact that the real town is still  here, in memory unshakeable. If I ever see you in Tuscaloosa, I’ll be glad to tour you through the actual town, the town that’s in my heart 

(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

TO TELL THE TOOTH

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Teeth aren’t much fun to write about, but my Muse compels me to let my fingers do the talking today, and they seem to be talking about…teeth.

Listen to me: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/totellthetooth.mp3

Or simply read me:

THINGS ABOUT TEETH IN MY LIFE

1. My late Dad made this funny sound with his teeth after every meal, thfttt! It was annoying and funny and, ultimately, quite meaningful. Ask me to send you the story.

2. I used to write a column for the University of Alabama at Birmingham Dental School, called, TO TELL THE TOOTH (actually, the final name was THE WISDOM TOOTH, but I always liked this one better). This was way before you were conscious (in the early 1970’s). It was a Q&A  column in the Birmingham News. Since apparently no-one ever read it, I didn’t receive any Q’s, so I made up the questions myself, then conferred with dental faculty to provide answers.

3. Toothpicks are a way of life in my South, so they provide great spectator sport. My brother Tim and I used to love watching poofed-hair women at Red Lobster pick up toothpicks at the cash register and walk out making our Dad’s sound. Sometimes, to make gentle fun of them, we’d stick five or six picks between our teeth and make a great show of sauntering out, pretending to be the good ol’ boys we never were. thfttt!

4. Almost everyone lies to dental hygienists about how often flossing occurs. I like Jay Leno’s approach. Right before his teeth-cleansing session, he eats a couple of Oreo cookies. He would have enjoyed my and Tim’s company, had he been our buddy back in the day.

5. I used to be a Mad Man (a public relations practitioner) forty years ago. First thing I learned was how to show more teeth than I could possibly possess, when smiling at clients. We had to act nice all the time. I still wish that just once, I’d had the courage to stuff my mouth with Oreos before one of my client meetings.

6. The most excruciatingly painful fun I ever had was having my teeth worked on by dental students—it was cheap but time-consuming, since each step of the process had to be double-checked by dental faculty. Way back then, I lay there, a prisoner of the torture chair, mouth filled with gauze and cotton, observing the students’ gaffs. One self-confident student would carefully wash his hands, then poke them in his pocket, rattling change and keys, while he tried to figure out what to do next. Then, he’d wipe his nose, run fingers through hair, cough into his hands and jam them into my mouth. My gutteral protests were never heard…besides, I wanted to make no enemies, since I’d be seeing him and his fellow students several more times.

7. As a kid, the scariest thing I ever read about teeth was a passage in the book DIARY OF AN UNKNOWN AVIATOR. It described how the earliest parachutists (imagine being the first person ever to use a parachute!) learned their skills. It was important to be able to find the ripcord instinctively, once you leapt from the plane. Someone suggested that no matter how dark it is, no matter how stressed or disoriented you are, you can always find your mouth with your hand…thus jumpers would bite down on the ripcord, confident that at the right  time, they’d be able to grab the cord and make a safe landing. What they had not anticipated was the missing teeth that resulted.

8. The most honest observation I ever heard about teeth came from my then-early-teen daughter Margaret, after she and her friend Jessica returned from their first trip to the Alabama State Fair: “Dad, I’ve never seen so many toothless people!”

Assuming that you and I can only deal with so much tooth at one time, I’ll stop here and urge my Muse to take a nap. If she doesn’t obey, I’ll get her back by writing a story about how she takes her teeth out just before each naptime

(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

IGNS OF THE TIMES

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Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/ignsofthetimes.mp3 or read on…

 

What’s missing from this picture?

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As children of the kudzu, we used to make up our own games, spending hours entertaining ourselves, laughing, jostling, snarling, giggling…just plain having fun at no-one’s expense.

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On a good day, when I connect with someone else who is ready to take laughter seriously, I still make my own fun.

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For instance, I look at signs along the way to someplace else.

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Better still, I look for what’s missing in signs along the way, trying to guess what the real message is.

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Here’s one sign:

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FAMILY LAR

This one took a minute…what is a family lar?

Ummm…oh, I see–it’s a FAMILY DOLLAR STORE sign that’s missing letters.

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What else?

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AMPU HOUSE

Hmmm…I’m afraid to guess because it seems a bit medical-rehabby. But, oh, I get it. It’s CAMPUS HOUSE, some kind of religious facility with alphabetus interruptus syndrome.

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Here’s another:

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ANNA’S LINLNS

After a while, I figured it to be ANNA’S LINENS with besmirched letter.

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There used to be a store chain called DOLLAR TREE, which I always read wrong. That’s because the sign was set up this way: 1 DOLLAR TREE. In the grand tradition of Free Enterprise, it always popped into my head as I-DOLLA-TREE (IDOLATRY), or the worship of merchandise that stores like that carry.

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And here’s one that still throws me, usually printed on the side of juice containers:

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CONCENTRATE

Which causes me to sit and stare until I find the rest of the statement, “made from concentrate.”

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So it goes.

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You can make up your own games. Send me the IGNS OF THE TIMES that you spot along the way

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(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

 

 

The passe past posse disremembers the future

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Listen to Jim: http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/passeposse.mp3

or reed on…

When it comes to being respectably respectful of the concept of Time, we multitudes are subdivided into a dizzying array of thought-camps (or posses), herewith (below) being a few:

1. The past is passé posse: 

The past is passé and deserves a quick brush-off so that we can relish the present and brag about how much better the future will be because We are here and ready to take over.

2. The past was better posse:

Everything good has already happened and the future is going to hell because it’s being commandeered by those younger whippersnappers.

3. The future will be better posse:

We must look to the future, since the past and Right Now are so screwed up. We will be saved by a Sacred Happening or by Scientific Progress or by right-minded leaders (benevolent dictators). 

4. Everything was always bad and the future will be, too, posse:

People are no damned good and they’re getting worse.

5. This is the best of all possible worlds posse:

“This is the best of all possible worlds.”—Candide

 

 

(There’s Good everywhere and all you have to do is focus on that precept and hold on for dear life.)

 

 

6. The Yin and Yang will prevail posse.

There will be good times, there will be bad times.

These are good and bad times.

There were good times and there were bad times.

7. The enemy is Us posse:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”—Walt Kelly (Wherever we go, there we are.)

8. We can brainwash the world posse:

“The dice of the gods are always loaded.”—Emerson (from a Greek proverb)

(Just put us in charge and we will “educate” everyone to think Our way, thus guaranteeing prosperity and peace for all.)

9. Beware the Posses posse:

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” —Brian Schell (Be wary of anyone with The Answer.)

“Anyone who says differently is selling something.” — Westley (If it seems too good to be true, it is.)

I’ve doubtless missed a few categories, but the exercise is remarkably repetitive through the

generations—each “aha!” moment is, upon examination, fraught with traps and dead-ends and bad punchlines. What is the real answer? How will we learn to respect the past, the present and the future simultaneously? Will we ever?

Perhaps if the Elders and the Present Youth and the Descendants would join hands and work together, we would once and for all see past/present/future as one and the same. We’re on the same ship at the same time in the same galaxy, and the sooner we stop one-upmanshipping one another and just consider life to be one big fat family reunion, the sooner we’ll be able to take a deep breath and get on with the business of Being a better world 

(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

 

 

 

 

ONE AIRBRUSHED REALITY DAY AT THE BOOKSTORE

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Listen to Jim: http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/airbrushedreality.mp3

or read on…

I’m in the right-hand lane on 20th Street heading to the shop.

A van pulls abreast to the left of me, pointed in the same direction.

In the passenger seat of the van is a young woman  staring straight down 20th, only her vision is blocked by the hand mirror in which she views herself. In her right hand is a small artist’s brush with which she dusts her face in rapid, skillfully coordinated motions. In the process, her lovely skin is covered by a fine beige powder that serves to hide her distinguishing marks, such as moles, pores, birthmarks, discolorations, scars and any trace of eccentricity.

She slowly becomes as smooth-complected as the life-sized mannequin at Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories.

The van takes off and passes by and I am left to wonder about the airbrushing ritual. Does the young woman continue dusting her neck, shoulders, chest, armpits and all points south of 20th Street? Is she now a living beige mannequin ready to face the day? Could I identify her in a line-up, since she’s all smooth and featureless now? Is she happy with her newborn self? Should I airbrush myself and would anybody notice my lovely new complexion?

This seems like a lot of trouble, the things some of us do to remake ourselves each day, but I do understand it to some degree.

I spend each day airbrushing my comments and opinions and behavior, based on what I need to accomplish. Eating is important, so I brush over my suppressed retort when someone is rude—so that I can complete the sale and continue feeding my family. I tamp down my political opinion when someone rants a thought I don’t share. I hold back a funny remark when I sense that this particular customer is bereft of humor or spirit. I avert my eyes when someone unconsciously bends down to peruse a book and displays an intimate tattoo or bit of string underwear. I pretend deafness when someone spouts outrageously personal asides to a companion shopper. I hold my breath when it’s clear a customer hasn’t bathed or brushed for days—once they leave, I sigh and spray so that the next customer won’t have the same experience. I listen patiently to the extended tale someone spins in order to impress me or make me want to buy something they are trying to push.

And so on.

Like Zelig, Woody Allen’s fictional hero, I can shapeshift and airbrush as much as possible when it’s important to do so.

But it’s also so much fun to relax and chat freely with customers who are obviously open to verbal intercourse, receptive to ideas and remarks, relaxed within their own skin. When this happens, I can be myself and not be judged, the customers can be themselves and feel safe, and for a few moments, we can all put aside our airbrushes and get on with pleasuring ourselves with the dialogues of the day

(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed http://www.jimreedbooks.com

We’re IN the in group now!

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The Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau now honors  Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories in their new Birmingham IN guide. Pick up your copies of the IN guide at Reed Books & Vulcan Park and Museum & The Birmingham Store (2200 9th Ave North 35203) & the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

SPREAD THE WORD!

http://www.jimreedbooks.com