Jim Reed's Blog, page 12

NOVELS DOODLED ON STICKY NOTES

  Jim’s story is on Youtube: https://youtu.be/1JY4xTtMFGc or read it here:

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Life, actually…

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NOVELS DOODLED ON STICKY NOTES

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Some people doodle their thoughts, then wad and toss them. Being a keeper of things, I tend to save my own doodles for later examination.

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Here are four stories I have doodled and archived on sticky notes.

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You are now my sticky-note judge and critic.

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STICKY NOVEL NUMBER ONE:

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PREMEDITATION

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Molly was curious to know why her dreaded teacher, Mrs. Philbin—the one who always looked like she’d just bitten into a lemon and chased it with a green persimmon—was so cruel to her.

What makes a teacher act like this? she pondered.

Molly couldn’t get Mrs. Philbin’s behavior out of her mind, so she made one covert and desperate attempt to spy on the cruel teacher. Just one more time, to see whether she had misjudged her, to see if she had any redeeming qualities.

One night, peeking into the teacher’s kitchen window, Molly observed Mrs. Philbin biting into a lemon and holding ready a green persimmon.

THE END

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STICKY NOVEL NUMBER TWO:

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SCRUNCH

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“This is the life,” he said to himself, as the sunny beach sand scrunched between his toes.

“It doesn’t get any better than this.”

He was right.

For the next fifty years, nothing got any better.

THE END

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STICKY NOVEL NUMBER THREE:

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GIDDYUP

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Back in the before times, he had driven a horse and buggy for thirty years before finally purchasing a Model-T automobile.

One day, the brakes failed.

As his Model-T hurtled toward a fence, he shouted, WHOA!”

THE END

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FOURTH AND FINAL STICKY NOVEL:

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SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

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The day after the Liberators brought Democracy to the people, the people were heard to cry out, “Hey, why isn’t everything perfect now? You and your Democracy!”

Some of the people yearned for a powerful yet benevolent leader who would provide for them, Democracy or no Democracy.

Since they had not experienced Democracy, they did not miss it.

THE END

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You are now free to write your own one-page sticky novel.

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Be not afraid

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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  https://youtu.be/1JY4xTtMFGc Jim Reed Podcast - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcastDirect Link - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/media/2023-07-30_novelsdoodledonstickynotes.mp3

THUNDERING ANTS, SCURRYING GIANTS

Listen to Jim on Youtube: https://youtu.be/fV9U72LhsvI

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Life, actually…

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THUNDERING ANTS, SCURRYING GIANTS

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I am stooping at eye-level beside our kitchen counter, closely watching dozens of tiny ants encircling a dab of insect attractant.

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I could be doing more important things. But at the moment I am transfixed by these indigenous creatures. They are mysterious and inscrutable. Their  unknown intent drives them to act in ways I do not understand.

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I feel like a child again, recalling endless summer days of play and study, study and play. I imagine impossible adventures. I wonder and observe the critters around me. Sometimes I wish I were small enough to engage them.

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Tiny versions of myself scurry up blades of grass, briefly acknowledge a passing scurrier, disappear into the shadows, make way for the next traveler.

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What if the ants were my human size, what if I were their size? Would they be observant, or just too big and too busy to take time? What if ant-sized me had to run for my life to avoid a huge descending foot?

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Do ants even know I exist? Does a guardian ant relate mythologies to its young’uns, tales about near-miss encounters with beings too large to see?

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And, in my case, are there nearby things so humongous that they become invisible? Like thunder? Is thunder the vibrating result of a sky-sized stomp by an entity I cannot see?

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As I gain years and wisdoms I pay less attention to unexplainable things. If a Leviathan calls me by the thunder do I shrug it off and continue my daily rounds, just like the ants?

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Am I a rolling thunder to these minuscule denizens? Have they shrugged me off, too?

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Arising with a groan from the effort of changing from kitchen-counter stoop to bipedal strut, I leave the ants now. They have their world and must protect and maintain it. I must do the same with mine.

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But it is nice to stop to smell the roses now and then…and notice an impossibly small critter running harmlessly amok among the fragrances

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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https://youtu.be/fV9U72LhsvI Jim Reed Podcast - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/Direct Link - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/media/2023-07-23_thunderingantsscurryinggiants.mp3

 

KA-THUNK! A FEW BUMPER CAR MEMORIES

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary at https://youtu.be/9KD5YnM0wQI

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Life, actually…

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KA-THUNK! A FEW BUMPER CAR MEMORIES

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The very idea of Bumper Cars cheers me up, eggs me on, drives me beyond the negatives and the irritants of daily life Down South.

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Seriously.

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I have not seen or driven a bumper car for some sixty years, but I recall the experience so vividly. Why is that?

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Nowadays people all around me frequently use the term Bumper Cars in their daily anecdotes. I wonder whether they have ever boarded a bumper car, whether they know what it is like to be six years old, knocking about and pretending to drive without a proper license.

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What it was like to be inside a vehicular collision without getting hurt. What it felt like to crash into strangers and still smile and wave and share a laugh.

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The bumper cars of my youth still roll about, popping up now and then to help me describe a confusing situation, a perplexing encounter, a humorous melding of crisis and comedy.

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Maybe my bumper car memories serve as an anchor when life is perplexing or disorienting. When I make my way through crises large and small, I tend to beam down into the driver’s seat and just enjoy the ride.

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Knowing deep down that that’s about all the true solidity I can ever expect of life, life and its invisible and mysterious book of rules.

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Life may be vague and perplexing, but maybe that is as it should be. If we ever figure things out, the quest will be over. What will we do with our time?

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Should we become all-wise and all-knowing, what excitement will we find when we awaken from our beautiful bumper car daydreams

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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https://youtu.be/9KD5YnM0wQI Jim Reed Podcast - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcastDirect Link - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/media/2023-07-16_kathunkafewbumpercarmemories.mp3

 

HEALING HANDS AND ASPERGUM DREAMS

 

Life, actually…

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HEALING HANDS AND ASPERGUM DREAMS

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In today’s true tale, Jimmy Three is ten years old, some seven decades ago.

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As Village Elderdom wends its way down the years, it becomes easier to time-travel to the way-back country of youth—youth and its barely-containable energy.

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This morning Jimmy Three is gazing into the metal mirrored medicine cabinet of his childhood bathroom. He searches for the Aspergum container. Brother Ronny has a fever and Aspergum is decreed the curative of choice.

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Jimmy Three is fascinated by, fearful of, mysterious shelved unguents and salves and multi-shaped pills and spoonable fluids, cardboad boxes housing bandages, tapes and cushiony pads. Cellophane wrappings and flexible-tubed pastes hide behind mild-mannered mercurochrome and ouchy merthiolate.

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He dares not touch the castor oil bottle because it retains memories of squinched-face gulps during sickbed episodes. He is fascinated by Alka-Seltzer wafers because dissolved they taste like embittered soft drinks. Why can’t I drink them even when I’m not ill, he wonders.

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Tooth powders and toothpastes rest side by side. Denatured alcohol awaits emergency chigger bites, Vicks VapoRub is there in case stuffed-nosed colds lurk. Vasoline soothes and slides. Menthol cough drops heal sore throats—and they make guilty-pleasure candy, too.

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Jimmy Three is amazed by Mother’s knowledge of what to do with each of these dozens of medicinal wonders. She tells tales of her own mother’s country-bred wisdom about which plant, which herb, which tree bark, which paregoric, which asafidity cure is best for each malady, each emergency.

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Now, living in a small village separated from much of nature, Jimmy Three’s family relies on over-the-counter and mail-order solutions to daily medical urgencies once scooped from yards and hillsides.

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Aspergum is today’s drug of choice. Even if brother Ronny’s fever runs its course naturally, Aspergum at least distracts him from the demi-reality of fever dreams and giant calming hands descending to his forehead. Those hands pretend to be testing his temperature, but their real purpose is to assure him that comfort and care and love are always nearby, in this tiny bungalow in this long-ago village.

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This long-ago village that will persist in time till final memory fades, making  way for the next family, clearing room for another generation to find its own special paths to love and healing

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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  https://youtu.be/5EQc4PGyCmE Jim Reed Red Clay Diary Podcast - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/Direct Link -  https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/media/2023-07-09_healinghandsandaspergumdreams.mp3

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CALL ME ALABAMA!

Life, actually…

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CALL ME ALABAMA!

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A DOWN-SOUTH ANTHEM

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Alabama is a state of mind.

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No, I take that back.

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Alabama is your state of mind.

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Alabama is my state of mind.

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Look at the map.

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There is no logical border.

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If logic prevailed, Alabama would be panhandled-with-care to the Gulf and barely miss the Mississippi River to the west and stick-toed in the Atlantic to the east.

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The Alabama state of my mind is…

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Alabama is a truncated

Arbitrarily-bordered

Mixture of Appalachian

Foothills and Gulf beaches

And Tennessean

Valleys and Southern

Pines and black dirt

Flatlands and red

Clay banks and

Human-formed mounds

And dinosaur-chalked

Banks and ‘gator

Swamps and

Cricks and meandering-barged rivers

And angel-haired falls and bluebird

Nests and mosquito bites

And chigger itches and ancient

Warrior-ghosts and

Dirt-poor moonshiners

And proud farmers and

Vegetable-stand pickups

And blue highways

And washboard roads

And scorching sun and

Humid rashes and

Fields endless fields

And full-moon-activated

Cemeteries and

Tombstone graveyards and

Midwife shacks and

Breezeways and clapboards

And wild blackberries and lazy

Cows cud-ding and calves

Cuddling and hay bales and

Barn lofts and suckling puppies

And strutting blue roosters

And water moccasins

And synchronized

Twilight fireflies and glistening

Stars so close you can

Touch them.

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Alabama in my state of mind is

Far-off 3:00 A.M. train

Whistles and howling dogs

And skittish deer and roadside

Tire carcasses and skulking

Buzzards and dearly departed

Armadillos and skunk-fragranced

Air blended with sweet honeysuckle and smothered

With kudzu and life-saving

Breezes interspersed with

Gasping-for-air heat.

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Alabama in my state of mind is

At her best

When you close your eyes

And remember how

Good she was when you

Were young, how wise

She became as you yourself

Wised up and how good she

Can be whenever she

Re-claims her fairness

Of spirit, whenever she

Gets back to

The earth, gets back

Down to earth,

Remembers her hard-working

Closely-tied families.

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In my state-of-Alabama-mind,

Alabama is at her best

When she’s all potential and

Hope and strut…at her

Best when she remembers

Her humble beginnings…

At her best when she

Gives up the chanting

And pays attention to

The babies and the infirm and the

Poor…at her best when

She recalls how wonderful

It is to be paid tender attention to,

To be well-paid with tender attention

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Y’all come visit. Stay as long as you like.

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See how easily we embrace you

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How lavishly we feed you

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How generously we share stories with one another

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See what we are really like

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/021bu0seOSY

 

SOMEWHERE IN TIME A LITTLE BOOKSHOP BECKONS

Life, actually…

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SOMEWHERE IN TIME A LITTLE BOOKSHOP BECKONS

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My little shop of fond memories awakens all the senses

of those browsers who are open to the experience.

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Listen: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/somewhereintime.mp3

or Read On…

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The FRAGRANCE of the books, the documents, the letters and diaries and postcards and posters and scratch-and-sniff paper blends with the SMELL of seasoned wood, old Bakelite, hot Christmas lights, ancient tobacco-soaked bindings…

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The remembered TASTE of metallic coins and antique Pez and fresh MoonPies and acrid fingertips licked in order to turn to the next chapter mixes it up with cane sugar memories…

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The crackling SOUND of old envelopes being opened and volumes sliding along dusty shelves and floors creaking beneath the soles of quiet booklovers and the clicketyclack of keyboard keys researching the genealogies of antiquarian tomes and the music from the old Victrola scratching its way into your vinyl memoirs is everchanging in this eclectic and confusing time capsule…

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The SIGHT of artifacts overlapping 500 years of generations and leather leaning against vellum leaning against pulp paper leaning against anguished illustrations leaning against conflicting, ever-recycled fads and fashions and styles astounds and entertains the imaginations…

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The TOUCH remembers everything…what your tongue and fingers remember from childhood–back when you tasted and touched all within reach, storing the information for later…

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A young couple drifts through the store, smiling at that, thumbing through this, ingesting first one thing, then another. The woman sneaks away from her partner and leans over the counter with a conspiratorial smile, asking, “What music is that?” playing through the speakers. I smile back, because I know what has happened, “The score from the film SOMEWHERE IN TIME.” She nods knowingly and almost floats over to her companion and hugs him tight.

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This music has that effect on people. John Barry’s soundtrack is so romantically evocative and sad and nostalgic that those in the know  always recognize it.

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As a matter of fact, every item in the store meets this SOMEWHERE IN TIME criterion.

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If you’re alive and alert, each object will gently jolt you, guiding you to the Past or the Future or a parallel Present.

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Your bliss awaits you

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©  Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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FIDGETING AND SALVATION EVERY SUNDAY

              Hear Jim on Youtube: https://youtu.be/h_g4-iO1bBY

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Life, actually…

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FIDGETING AND SALVATION EVERY SUNDAY

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In memory fresh, I am fidgeting and squirming here on a varnished hardwood church pew in the Forest Lake neighborhood of Tuscaloosa.

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Time is leaping a seventy-year chasm and taking me back to Sunday morning sometime in the 1940s. You know—the ’40s, just yesterday to us long-timers who are still around to remember.

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I am trying to be patient this day. As the multi-tuned untrained-but-sincere voices of the congregation blend precariously with intonations from the burgundy-robed choir, I can only think of what is coming next.

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Thinking about what is coming next is what gets me through the holy services this humid morn.

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Fidget. Squirm. Scrawl with pocket knife-sharpened number two pencil in the margins of my parents’ pre-Thermo-Faxed paper program, printed especially for today’s services.

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Check the cracked face of a bandless wrist watch found just this week on the Northington Elementary School recess playground. The watch still works and I can keep up with time as the second hand spasms away the seconds.

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I feel the vibrations from overlapping singers and wavering organ notes as they wash over me and attempt to regain my wandering attention.

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The program scratchings completed, I now carefully examine backs of necks in forward pews. Some are freshly shaved, some are scraggly, others are pockmarked or wrinkled or graceful or baggy.

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May I can write a poem about backs of necks some day.

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Reverend Bronnie Nichols now bids the congregation to rise, an apparent effort to rouse dozers and alert offering-plate deacons.

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Everybody behaves during this hour of a Sunday morning, except for a baby or two. But isn’t that what babies do?

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Playmates are scrubbed and quiet, unlike their rowdy selves a few minutes from now when they are discharged into the wilds of childhood.

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I’m happy to stand up. It is something to do. And it means I, too, will be released into an extra-churchy world any moment now.

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But Brother Nichols is not done with me yet.

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Everybody sings verse after verse of an elongated hymn designed to press guilt upon unbaptized attendees who are supposed to rush to the front to be saved from perdition. Brother Nichols will not cut short the overtime singing until somebody responds to the pressure and reaches out for dispensed holiness.

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I am relieved when a teared-up churchgoer finally inches forward to please the preacher and the saints on high. This takes the pressure off of me. Maybe another Sunday will be my day to confess and repent and relent.

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Not today.

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We sheep are eventually released, but not until Bro’ Nichols has shaken every hand and patted every shoulder as we all pass through the front door.

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Now blessed and cleansed, I can stop fidgeting and start salivating. After all, the next thing up in my small life is fried chicken and apple pie and endless hours of playground hollering and jumping and laughing, and nursing the occasional boo-boo that will surely occur.

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But the boo-boo will heal quickly under the influence of a morning of overflowing righteousness.

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And in less than seven days I’ll be fidgeting and squirming all over again, just prior to salvation

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©  Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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https://youtu.be/h_g4-iO1bBY Jim Reed Books Podcast - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcastDirect Link - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/media/2023-06-18_fidgetingandsalvationeverysunday.mp3

PLaza 8-2932

Hear Jim on youtube:  https://youtu.be/iVp3MXibUNw

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Life, actually…

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PLaza 8-2932

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     The first phone number I ever knew by heart was the number my father and mother acquired when a rotary-dial receiver was installed at our little asbestos-shingled home on 26 Eastwood Avenue, back in 1944.

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The number was 2932. That’s it. 2932. No area codes, no “first, dial 9 to get an outside line,” no winding a lever to ring up an operator, no “pound” keys or *’s or other secret combinations.

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Just publicize the number 2932, and you could receive calls from anywhere in the world.

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Later, as the phone company became more successful and the population increased, an “8″ was added to the beginning of our number. From then on, you had to remember to dial 8, then 2932.

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I can still hear the mechanical clicks and clacks as the rotary wheel advanced and retreated with each number.

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A sure sign of additional progress was the day the phone people increased the digits again, so that the number became 758-2932. I guess the hyphen was placed there so that the number could be memorized in increments, much as your social security number is broken up. Or, during one spell of trying to seem more cosmopolitan, the phone company wanted us to dial PLaza 8-2932.

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That, of course, went the way of postal zone numbers, which were replaced eventually by ZIP codes, which were increased from five digits to nine digits—with the obligatory hyphen in between the five digits and the four digits.  Apparently, Ma Bell wasn’t sure we subscribers could remember a long stream of uninterrupted numbers.

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So, most of my life, from 1944 till now, I’ve had implanted in my brain the numerical sequence 2932, and its prefixes. It was the one number I never had to program into one of my newfangled automatic-dialing telephones, since I could dial it (excuse me, PUNCH IT) practically in my sleep.

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Well, we kids grew up and left home my, parents grew elderly and eventually died, and, not so long ago, 2932 simply disappeared from the phone lines of Tuscaloosa, the phone service discontinued. No need for a phone in a home now long emptied of its occupants.

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Some nights, when I’m tossing and turning, tormenting the Sandman with insomniac ravings, I get the urge to get up, go to the phone, and access 2932—in case I’ve accidentally tripped back in time, just in time to catch my mother’s cheery voice in the midst of singing a household song as she meanders among her flowers and plants and dusty keepsakes.

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Reckon I’ll just have to keep such imaginings to myself, lest they come and carry me away prematurely to a place full of extension phones I can’t use to dial out except on Sundays and special occasions

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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  https://youtu.be/iVp3MXibUNw Jim Reed Podcast - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcastDirect Link - https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast/media/2023-06-04_plaza8-2932.mp3

THE ONLY FATHER OF ALL MY DAYS

Life, actually….THE ONLY FATHER OF ALL MY DAYS.Most of us don’t get a chance to select our given names, mainly because, as infants, we can’t articulate the words needed to make a suggestion for a good name. .So, we live with what’s given us..My name is James Thomas Reed, III, which means that my father and paternal grandfather had the same name. It just kind of trickled down to me. My grandfather was called Jim, my father was called Tommy, and I am Jim..

My grandfather built a house in the tiny coal mining town West Blocton, Alabama, around the turn of the century. On Easter Sunday in the year 1909, my father, Tommy, was born in that house. Since there were seven or so brothers and sisters ahead of Tommy, grandfather Jim placed the infant in an Easter basket and announced to his brood that the Easter Bunny had delivered this pink, noisy package.

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Back then, kids believed that sort of thing.

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Now, to know my father, you’d have to know the people he admired, since men in his generation weren’t much for sitting around telling you about themselves. No, you just had to look about and pay attention to the men whose lives they emulated.

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In my father’s case, I can remember who some of his heroes, both literary and real, were:

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Sergeant Alvin York, who never accepted a dime in trade for the heroism he’d shown for his country in World War I.

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Preacher Josiah Dozier Grey and Uncle Famous Prill, the heroes of Joe David Brown’s Birmingham novel/movie, Stars in My Crown, men who never wavered from belief in family and neighbors and principles. They were forerunners of Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson and other strong Southern heroes of fiction and non-fiction.

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Harry Truman, who dispensed with nonsense and tried to do the right thing, even when it was not popular. He was in a long line of no-nonsense leaders, such as John L. Lewis and Eric Hoffer, people who thought for themselves and never followed a posse or a trend.

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Jesus Christ, who, like my father, was a carpenter, and a principled man.

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And so on.

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Now, it’s important to understand this one thing about my father—to look at him, to be around him, you’d never know he was a hero. He was a working-class, blue-collar, unassuming person you’d probably not notice on the street, unless you noted that he limped from an old coal mining injury received when he tried to save another man’s life. It was his very invisibility that made him a true hero, because he did the kind of thing that nobody gets credit for: he loved unconditionally and without reward. That’s right. He was a practitioner of unconditional love for family, the kind of love that seeks no return, no attention.

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You would have embarrassed Tommy Reed if you had tried to thank him for his acts of kindness, because you were not supposed to notice. He gave money in secret to relatives in need. He grimaced and bore silently the abuse of those who forgot to appreciate or thank him. And he never announced his good deeds. You just had to catch him now and then in an act of kindness.

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His heroes were all men who didn’t need adulation.

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What my father did need was a hard day’s work at an honest job, a few moments of privacy after a good meal, time to read a book or watch television with a child or grandchild on his lap, and an occasional hug from his 50-year wife, my mother.

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You could do worse than have a father like Preacher Grey and Joel McCrea, Uncle Famous and Juano Hernandez, Gregory Peck and Atticus Finch, Brock Peters and Tom Robinson, Eric Hoffer, John L. Lewis, Harry Truman, Gary Cooper and Sergeant York, and Jesus.

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Do they make ‘em like that any more? You bet they do, but you won’t know about it for a while, because they don’t have press agents. What they do have is the appreciation that takes years to grow and make itself known, the appreciation we come to have after we, too, have been called upon to commit an occasional act of unrewarded kindness.

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Take another look at your father. Who are his silent heroes? Who are yours

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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OF MICE AND Y’ALL

Catch Jim’s youtube podcast:

https://youtu.be/J3LSHJocack

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Life, actually…

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OF MICE AND Y’ALL

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Another tiny Down South ant is invading the kitchen these days.

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The routine is fairly predictable. Each ant invasion over the years seems to begin with a few lone scouts. Then, let the onslaught begin!

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Every grouping of ants is a mite different from each previous grouping. This particular ant is medium-sized, a nervous flutter accompanying all movements.

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Previous mini-invasions of our old home have included squirrel hordes, various beatles (Don’t call them roaches. Nobody likes to talk about roaches!), an occasional tiny mouse and, once, an itinerant rat.

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I won’t even begin to talk about normal neighborhood critters such as pigeons, doves, mosquitoes, snakes, lizards, raccoons and gypsies. We don’t think about these much, since they maintain their lives outside the house.

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They have their countries, we have ours. Treaties all unsigned.

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But the ants are kind of fun to watch.

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Before I succumb to inevitable family requests to chase the ants away, I covertly peer at them. This peering is easy, since the shiny kitchen counter is white with lots of crevices and cracks and caulked hideaways.

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I appreciate the notion that ants don’t know we exist. They simply ply their activities of daily living, just as we have the unfounded belief that humans are superior to all other beings.

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Mice, on the other hand, are more disruptive to our placid routine behaviors. They are cute, chubby and picky—not all bait is considered gourmet. Most bait is ignored. There must be a mouse memo that stipulates what human food to pass on.

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Anyhow, back to the ants. All ant visitors are tolerated for a time, until they go away. Nomadic they are. We don’t know why they leave us. Maybe they are bored. Perhaps they are tired of Ritz Crackers crumbs and lettuce shards. Maybe they find better food elsewhere. Or it could be that they are offended by the ant-chaser fluid I set out for them.

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What I like about ants is their variety. Each swarm looks different, acts differently, clusters differently. I also like the fact that, while they outnumber us they never seem to want to bully or dominate us.

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Or conquer us.

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I wonder what life would be like if other species behaved in such a manner

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.