Jim Reed's Blog, page 32

DEEP SOUTH ANTHEM

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/021bu0seOSY

or read his anthem below:

DEEP SOUTH ANTHEM

Alabama is a state of mind.

No, I take that back.

Alabama is your state of mind.

Alabama is my state of mind.

Look at the map.

There is no logical border.

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

…

…

The Alabama state of my mind is:

…

…

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.

… …

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.

…

…

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.

…

…

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

***

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

See how easily we embrace you

How lavishly we feed you

How generously we share stories with one another

See what we are really like

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY

THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/iu6MNvxvxSg

or read on…

THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT

Children of the Deep South Soil, this is a special report from one Village Elder.

See whether you can immerse yourself in these flashes of long ago joys. See whether you will be inspired to file away and cherish your own lifetime extension of happy treasures.

Everything I say is true and actual.

Driving west from Birmingham, I pass by a ramshackle breezeway home where one wizened whittler quietly shapes his lap sculpture on porch steps, pausing only a moment to look at me and wave a smile before I disappear into the red bug ladybug mist. 

Further on, the West Blocton exit illuminates vivid times where deep inside I still play on Rose Lane, birthplace of my father. The family house is gone now, but part of me is still running around the backyard, next in line to use the outhouse.

Tuscaloosa approaches, and there I am suddenly standing barefoot on clay, recalling times when kinfolk still lived in a breezeway dogtrot house on the North River. I can still taste crystal water dipped from the front yard well, feel its coolness, experience the nurturing of people genetically connected to me.

Good times and fond memories during my time here on Planet Three bounce all over the place.

On the way to T Town, there is the Brookwood exit, where the hope and play of childhood remembers me as a tad adventuring into the woods of Peterson. Nearby homes of grandparents and cousins are my tether, guaranteeing I won’t be lost for long during tiny explorations.

The Birmingham to Tuscaloosa Breezeway Dogtrot memory machine is merrily out of control.

Somewhere hereabouts is Hurricane Creek, where water moccasins and giggly girlfriends play side by side during weekend picnics. Not too far away is Lock 13, a marvel of technology and noise and clanking metals.

All these places intermingle in my childhood playground, and it’s good to call on them when I need to escape the computerized and politicized world for a bit.

Sometimes I recall them, sometimes they recall me right back.

If you can imagine my extensive and erratic Alabama lifespan as a plot of land, you could measure it from Cuba on the Mississippi border to western Jefferson County, from north Birmingham and Northport to Montevallo just south of here.

My forays outside this region are instructive, but there is never any place anything like sweet home Deep South Alabama.

And home is where I still dip into the past to dredge up washboard roads, fossils jutting from chalky riverbanks, sputtering swimmers at play, rolled-down windows, stick shift roadsters, long rope swings, barbed wire fences, pines and scraggly bushes, teetering tree houses, corrugated tin roofs, makeshift bows and arrows, wandering hobos, haunting train whistles, arrowheads here and there, infinitely observable ant beds, penny candy, sparklers and fireflies in the dusk, mysterious attics and damp basements, whispery gossip and tall tales, pet frogs, yodeling playmates, bubblegum cards, and always and forever the homebase, the center of the known universe, my family, my bunk bed, my endless dreams at the end of hard play days.

You children of the Deep South soil, cherish what time you have, pay attention to the tales of elders, protect the young’uns, and hold fast to your fond memories. They might come in handy here and there, now and then

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY

THE HISTORIC BIG SANDY CREEK WATERMELON SEED SKIRMISH

Hear Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast:  https://youtu.be/9rkRZIgcDGQ

or read his story…

Deep South Tales Both Actual and True

THE HISTORIC BIG SANDY CREEK WATERMELON SEED SKIRMISH 

Uncle Sam’s big shiny-toothed smile is directed at me one scorching summer afternoon. He stands waist-deep in icy water, waiting for me to take my next deep breath.

It’s the longest deep breath I’ve ever held.

I’m standing barefoot and swimming-suited atop a time-smoothed boulder on the banks of Big Sandy Creek near Tuscaloosa, just a few years after the end of World War II.

My life hangs in the balance as I try to make an important decision.

I must decide whether and when to jump into the coldest cold water in my  known universe. Big Sandy is always chilling to the senses, way colder than any other creek or stream anywhere around, making it difficult for most of us kids and relatives to tolerate it for long. Will I enter or will I retreat?

I take one more look around me, looking for a sign, but all I see is cousins and aunts and uncles and parents. They are all preoccupied with the duties of summer—skimming pebbles across running waters, spreading blankets on the red clay ground, opening picnic baskets and spreading snacks and goodies about, shooing flies and gnats away from body and edibles, playing tag among the pines, hiking up swimming trunks that are soggy and descending, heaving a large watermelon from the water, sunning themselves on grass and stone.

I can’t hold my breath any longer. My toes are twitching, curling in anticipation of slamming into barely tolerable  temperatures. My hesitancy hordes a secret, and that secret is the fact that I do not know how to swim and that I would rather Uncle Sam did not learn this fact. He’s been known to toss kids into water just to see whether they know how to swim or whether they are skilled at sinking like stones.

There has got to be a way to avoid becoming one of Uncle Sam’s experiments.

Splat!

That’s the sudden sound of a small dark missile bouncing off my right temple. I snap a sideways glance just in time to spy Cousin Jerry squeezing a watermelon seed between thumb and finger, aiming a second volley at my head.

All my attention is diverted. I jump off the boulder onto the bank and run toward the watermelon slices that Mother has just laid out for us. Jerry is chasing me with his cocked and loaded seed, and I am in survival mode, grabbing a slice for myself, munching into the red sweetness in order to retrieve two seeds.

I turn to Jerry, whose seedy bullet has just missed me, giving me the two seconds I need to spurt a seed at him. A nicely aimed hit to his shoulder. The Big Sandy Creek Watermelon Seed Skirmish begins!

Soon, several of us kids and adults are ducking and shooting seeds and generally laughing ourselves silly.

This is my kind of war. Nobody wins, nobody loses. We just have a good time jumping headlong out of our hot summer day routines. The rewards are immense—we eat some really good watermelon, we run ourselves ragged, we express our happiness and camaraderie in a harmless and memorable manner, and some of us even venture into Big Sandy Creek.

Those of us who can’t swim keep Uncle Sam at a distance. Those who know how to swim have a great time with uncles and aunts and kin.

The day is a happy one, and Big Sandy Creek remains fresh in memory to this day, though I never returned to the scene of the battle. I don’t know what happened to the big smooth boulder. I don’t even know whether Big Sandy waters remain to this day the coldest in the universe.

I do know this. To this day, I do not know how to swim. To this day, seedless watermelons seem not quite normal. To this day, I would give much to enjoy just one more golden afternoon cavorting with loved and lovely family members during a harmless war, the kind of war I wish everybody knew how to wage

 

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY

TEMPTATION IS WAY TOO TEMPTING

Deep South Memories from a Red Clay Diary…

 Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast:  https://youtu.be/KBpBESt1RmY

or read his memoir below:

TEMPTATION IS WAY TOO TEMPTING

After spending ten years as a new member of my species, I begin to realize that I am in way over my head.

Way back yonder—right now, inside my diary—in the 1950s, everything seems so new, so fresh, so exciting, so…tempting.

Fortunately for me, I have my family and playmates and neighbors and teachers and relatives to keep me in line. Mostly. They are here to protect me, show me the way, warn me when I venture too far off-track, mend me when I crack or bruise or break.

This protective dome of caring and nurturing is keeping me alive and well till I can strike out on my own, which won’t be for another few years.

But the temptations remain.

When I am all alone and no-one is looking, I still am not really all alone. I keep picturing two funny and scary characters who people my world: upon my left shoulder smolders a tiny laughing, horned and pointy-tailed little red devil who eggs me on when I want to misbehave or bend unwritten rules or snap commandments in two. Upon my right shoulder resides a tiny angelic whispering little guy who whispers goodness in my ear, who pulls me back from the brink of sin and misbehavior.

These small beings are real enough in fertile imagination to balance me in my lifetime tightrope walk. Much of the time. And they fill in when I meander through solitude.

Characters like the devil and the angel formed themselves out of B-movies, comic books, Sunday school dogma, radio dramas, and stern adults who look out for my safety.

In these 1950s I don’t get away with much, at least until teenagedom encroaches and those temptations take on a hormonal power that cannot be ignored.

Now, some numerous decades later, I no longer see the angel and the devil, I no longer enjoy the safety of my long-gone grown-up protectors. Now I am fully aware that I am on my own, that I must answer to myself when I stray or when I have unacceptable inclinations. I am my own boss…which means I cannot blame anybody but myself for infractions, I cannot delegate guilt or regret to anyone but Me.

Dang! Being a grownup means I don’t look like a kid anymore. But it doesn’t mean that I am not still a kid deep within, a kid enjoying the idea of temptation, if not the reality of it.

I have become the avatar of all those families and playmates and neighbors and teachers and relatives who jump-started me. I feel free and confident and ready to face the snarkies and the meanies…most of the time.

But I keep an imaginary swatter nearby just in case the shoulder critters return one day to once again take over and confuse me. I never forget to thank them silently, these real and imaginary people who ushered me across the darkened chasm. These beings who slapped me together, patched and instructed me, brought me safely from way back then to right now, to this very minute.

Who kept me around just long enough to impart my fragile wisdom to an unexpected reader…You

 

© 2019 A.D. by Jim the Reed

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY

 

THE FAR AGO AND LONG AWAY REUNION OF THE SPIRITS

THE FAR AGO AND LONG AWAY REUNION OF THE SPIRITS

Far ago and long away, I dreamed a dream one day.

The time is far, far ago, but it is ever fresh in memory. Some of the best times of my life were spent in Peterson, a village between Tuscaloosa and Brookwood, a stripped-out mining town. In Peterson resided my maternal grandparents, as well as various aunts and uncles and cousins, and back then, some many years ago, all us kinfolk liked nothing better than to converge and reunite and party together on a Sunday afternoon.

Now this may not be you young’uns’ idea of partying, but it was everything we knew to do, in order to have a good time. The time is long away, but here’s what a McGee reunion felt like:

Dried butterbeans under a tree in Uncle Pat and Aunt Elizabeth McGee’s sideyard. No, we didn’t eat the butterbeans except one time, and once was enough. What my uncles did with the butterbeans was use them instead of chips, to sit on the ground and play poker. The summertime buggy and humid heat was barely noticed, because the Games and the Slow Roast were the thing. Two games went on simultaneously. The poker game—in which all the winner got was a bunch of dried beans—and the baseball game on the radio. You see, back then, nobody had portable radios, so the Big Game emanated from one of the old cars in the family. One uncle would pull his car near the Game and leave the door open so we could all hear the big plays, the excited crowd, the crisp snap of wood against hide, the terse shouts of the umpire.

The Slow Roast was right next to the game—big hunks of pork turning over an open-pit fire, smoking up the surrounding woods and forcing all humans who care about eating to salivate involuntarily. Cousin Patricia reported six decades later that, after we’ve eaten, Uncle Buddy reveals that it is goat meat—not pork.

This was Division of Labor stuff back then. The men were in charge of staying up all night, tending the cooking, biding their time with poker and baseball, and trying their best to set sedentary examples of good behavior for dozens of run-amok kids. The women did everything else.

Mind you, this was the post-economic-depression era when all men worked hard at hard-time jobs, when Sundays with family were their only respite, when for a few hours they could pretend to be hotshot gamblers and master chefs and wizened tribal chiefs.

Meanwhile, cousins and their playmates were free to roam wild in Uncle Pat’s woods, chase after and be chased by spiders and snakes, attract redbugs and ticks, laugh out loud and wrestle, play their own baseball game in the nearby cornfield, pretend to be feral Tarzans and Noble Savages and in general let out all that energy that had been pent up during the week.

The women would cook and wrangle kids and socialize and gossip and knit and darn and set tables and wash dishes and collect detritus that the men would later dispose of. Both men and women would share in the arduous task of making gallons of ice cream on the spot, emptying ice and salt into buckets while older kids took turns cranking and cranking and cranking, their only motivation being the sweet taste of fresh peaches absorbed into the creamiest ice cream you could ever imagine.

Everybody knew their responsibilities in those days, nobody hid from helping out, everyone came to each other’s rescue when a bruise appeared, all accidents were tended to in gentle good humor, all conflicts were mediated and peacefully settled, all passions channeled for the good of the one-day commune.

At the end of the long day, each family would sit wearily and happily in automobiles waiting while relatives leaned close to the rolled-down car window and said 45-minute lingering goodbyes to each other. Nobody wanted to leave the scene, everybody had to, and, regardless of how tired and spent and scraped and bloated and bugbit each of us was, we couldn’t help but think about the next reunion when we’d do it all again.

Yep, far ago and long away, I dreamed a dream, a dream that still seems true when I look at the results of those strong and handsome adult relatives who set such powerful examples for us kids. The truth is in watching those kids today, now elderly kinfolk with their own kids and kids of kids, each year once more holding a reunion and passing down the generations a rich appreciation of tribe and family and genetics and mutual support.

It’s all still there, and the next reunion is next month, and I’m salivating already

 

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed

 

IMAGINEERING THE MAGIC CEILING

Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/ZFH9D77DfBE

or read on…

Deep South Memories, Both Actual and True…

IMAGINEERING THE MAGIC CEILING

I am lying flat on my back in the living room of my childhood home, staring at the hard-plaster ceiling and contemplating the cracks that zigzag here and there, going nowhere in particular.

At this moment I am just Me as a kid, back here in the 1950′s when this scene—actual and true—is taking place.

Alone in the asbestos-shingled bungalow I share with two parents, two sisters, two brothers, I am enjoying the silence of the moment and doing what I do best: ruminating and cogitating and fantasizing and thinking real hard.

I am rarely alone in the house, so times like this are special.

Right now, I am wondering where my inspirations are buried. Over the years, I have hidden things so that I or some futuristic person might find these things and gleefully re-experience them someday.

For instance, there is a note squirreled away between insulation  and roofing in the back of the house. I can no longer get to this note. It is a message to myself, but I have no idea what this message contains, because it has been so long since I hid it there back while the add-on room was under construction.

In the back yard is yet another secreted treasure–-a small box with important but now forgotten objects that I want to dig up. However, I am unable to locate the spot because the hand-drawn secret map to this burial site has gone missing in the chaos of childhood.

I blink blink and stare harder at the ceiling cracks, massaging ideas and poems and stories in my head, not yet brave enough to set them down on paper. After all, only Writers can accomplish this, and I dare not call myself a writer.

These compositions will float and flourish for decades until the day comes when I will regurgitate them in the form of columns and books and blasts and blogs and podcasts. Some will remain hidden. Some will inspire others…some will find Appreciators.

Some will simply exist…waiting.

Finally, life intervenes and motivates me to arise from the floor, dust myself off, grab a snack, pocket a pad of writing paper and a pencil, and leave the house before any family members return. They might not understand the significance of my lying afloor and appearing to be doing not a thing in the world.

Another hidden note: I alone know that these few minutes have been busy and activity-filled and reanimating for me. I know, too, that those in the family who are not imagineers will think me idle.

But I also am aware that there are younger, upcoming fellow dreamers among them  who may yet blossom and expose their hidden treasures to Appreciators, too. Who may gaze deeply into the plaster cracks to see what lurks there, what hibernates there.

Appreciators who will have not a clue as to how much floor-time goes into crafting a work of art into something visible and alive

© 2019 A.D. by Jim the Reed

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY

NOWHERE NEAR TALL AND STRIKINGLY HANDSOME

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

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY

COMING BACK THE OLD WAY

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

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY

IS THAT YOUR REALLY TRULY NAME?

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

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY

 

PURPLE AND PINK MOTHER

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

WEBSITE

REDCLAYDIARY