Birmingham Arts Journal (2026)

21/09/2025

Life, actually…

FLYING MONKEYS R US

Ages and ages ago, legacy author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote these words:

“All speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.”

What in the world did RLS mean?

As a child back in days of yore, I understand this utterance in my own imaginative way.

Running through unmown grass in humid summertime fields, I yell, “Watch out for flying monkeys!” causing my playmates to duck to the ground half-terrified and half-laughing. The idea of flying monkeys comes to life for a split second. Of course there are no flying monkeys but our designated leader makes us doubt this fact. Luckily, a kind of reality-based common sense prevails and we realize that flying monkeys are not going to happen. For now.

So RLS knew we kids of earth live in two worlds simultaneously, a world where we can believe the unbelievable just for fun. And later, as adults, this honed skill means we can believe the unbelievable at our convenience.

But somewhere in the caverns of our minds most of us do not lose sight of the fact that the idea of flying monkeys is merely a useful tool, employed to distract ourselves from realities we either don’t understand or don’t want to face.

We humans are a playful species, alternating our time between things we wish were true but aren’t, and things we know all too well to be truths that stolidly won’t go away.

If I can’t deal with the idea of some awful truth I race to find the flying monkeys.

Flying monkeys I can deal with

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

O WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, EXCEPT FOR THE SMOG AND THE FOG AND THE BARKING DOG Posted on September 7, 2025 by Jim Life, actually… . O WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, EXCEPT FOR THE SMOG AND THE FOG AND THE BARKING DOG . When I’m worried and I can’t sleep I count my blessings…but only in between e...

14/09/2025

Life, actually…

SOMEDAY I’LL GET AROUND TO READING A BOOK

“I’m thinking about getting back into reading,” a customer says thoughtfully. He is slowly stretching his hand toward a provocatively-titled book. He never quite touches it, as if doing so would signal a commitment. He withdraws his hand and his thought.

“I don’t have time to read yet,” explaining that work and school and media constantly get in the way of something extra-curricular and frivolous like taking time to read.

I try to hide my nerdy dismay at the thought of never reading for pleasure. My disapproval will in no way be helpful.

Each day at the bookshop words like these issue forth from the mouths of customers and patrons and browsers and tire-kickers and booklovers and bookdeniers.

“Oh, man, I have read every book in that series. Now I’m re-reading it until the next sequel comes out.” This from an enthusiastic fan of bookworld. She lives for each page. She is excited about it.

So, these are two of the extremes I encounter at my shop. There are gung-ho readers and there are impotent non-readers. That’s the world I live in.

Now and then I attempt to inspire a nonreader. I’ll open a Robert Service title and read lustily, “There are strange things done in the midnight sun…That would make your blood run cold…But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.” Sometimes this does the trick. A true story about cremation that scares you and makes you laugh at the same time. Some great writing!

If a nonreader is wavering with signs of curiosity I’ll hand him a Calvin and Hobbes collection, “In my opinion, we don’t devote nearly enough scientific research to finding a cure for jerks.” Calvin says that.

Or, a page from Dylan Thomas will sometimes perk up a bored browser, “Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

How can anyone deny the childhood wonder evoked from this passage?

And there is always Ray Bradbury, thank goodness: ”Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hand away.”

Best to quote Atticus Finch if all else fails: ”The one thing that doesn’t bide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

Hey, these are cheap thrills. These passages and thoughts are sleeping between white pages, awaiting resuscitation.

Once in a while, once in a blue moon, every now and then, just when the stars are in their proper places, I do manage to slip into someone else’s imagination a drop or two of inspiration. And even more rarely, the nonreader begins to show signs of curiosity, signs of interest. Most rarely, a reader is reborn.

And my work is done for the day

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

O WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, EXCEPT FOR THE SMOG AND THE FOG AND THE BARKING DOG Posted on September 7, 2025 by Jim Life, actually… . O WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, EXCEPT FOR THE SMOG AND THE FOG AND THE BARKING DOG . When I’m worried and I can’t sleep I count my blessings…but only in between e...

07/09/2025

Life, actually…

O WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, EXCEPT FOR

THE SMOG AND THE FOG AND THE BARKING DOG

When I’m worried and I can’t sleep I count my blessings…but only in between each annoyance.

If you don’t have a care in the world you won’t be interested in today’s thoughts.

My groans are only for the ears of you fellow travelers who toss and turn, turn and toss through much of the night.

I twist to the left to settle into just the right position for sweet sleep. Thinking about sweet sleep pops me wide awake and reminds me of the things I forgot to do today. Must pick up bug spray. Must gather laundry. Must purchase milk.

I pull the pillow over my forehead and recall playing hide-and-seek with my eldest granddaughter so many years ago. Can’t help but smile.

Then, warily peeking at the alarm clock reminds me of how many hours are left between now and bill-paying time. Must remember to pay that one annoying bill…zzzzzz…

Again I am startled awake by fireworks on the nearby mountain, just as a cozy dream about marshmallows begins to enmesh me.

I roll to the cool spot on the bed and pretend to sleep, but the unholy and disorganized pile of detritus in my writing room reminds me I have to spend some time sorting and straightening. This could happen any year now.

Now I am recalling a pleasurable time when reciting a favorite poem before a rapt audience was all the thrill I required at that moment. My smile returns.

Just in time for the red devil on my shoulder to jump and remind me about a special book order I forgot to complete at the shop yesterday. Dang! I’m awake again.

Multiply all these worrisome factoids several score and you have a graphic profile of my latest semi-sleepless night.

The good the bad and the meaningless magnify and prod. The pleasant ideas whiz by.

The good news is that just as sunlight peeks through the curtains, everything seems to arrange itself, my worries slide into some kind of appropriate order, and the next second teases me with the prospect of have a hopeful day.

Within minutes all insomnia is forgotten. A hot shower shocks me into my comfortable routine. And before I know it I actually toss all neuroses and start pretending myself into having a jolly attitude.

Tonight’s bedtime is the least of my worries. Until it occurs

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE Posted on August 10, 2025 by Jim Life, actually… . ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE . Down here in the Deep South, I am a witness to this day and age. . In fact, you are also a witness to our times. . Whether reluctant or not, you and I bear w...

31/08/2025

Life, actually…

THINGS I SAY TO NO-ONE IN PARTICULAR

“Argh!”

A full-throated scream echoes off the walls of grey-mortared buildings on Third Avenue North.

“ARGH!”

This time the scream is louder, the sound grittier.

I hear lots of things outside the bookshop each day, so many that I tend to become only half-aware after all these years.

“ARGH, AARRGGHH, AAARRRGGGHHH!” The voice is no longer ignorable. I have to verify that everyone is safe.

With great protective reluctance I go to the door, open it, peer onto the street.

“Argh!” is coming from the mouth of a rapidly-moving pedestrian who has already passed by. She rails at the invisible humid breeze.

I am relieved that there seems to be no danger lurking. Customers and merchants are secure. Anguish resides only within the tortured walker.

The arghs grow faint. My breathing reboots. The day goes on.

I’ll never know what caused these particular arghs, but I do recognize them.

They are merely amplified versions of the comments and asides with which I flavor each day.

Little pangs that verbalize themselves as, “Besmirched! I wonder what it’s like, being smirched,” I mutter to no-one in particular. “Dang! why did that guy do that dangerous turn in the road?” Again, I’m talking to myself. Or maybe I’m hoping some eavesdropper will listen in and offer me explanation or comfort.

My arghs may enter the world as complaints, enjoyments, critiques, cusses. But, even though I seldom commit an unadulterated scream of pain, I do shout quietly at the imperfect world. A world I would deem perfect if only it would re-form itself as some entity designed to exist solely to pamper me.

Not going to happen.

Thus, I just wander through life, wishfully hoping for fulfillment, realistically doing what I can to earn admission to an impossible heaven.

Argh seems to be part of an international language. When someone ARGHs, I do get a sense of the possible meaning behind the utterance. And the utterer understands me for a split second also.

Maybe this Cro-Magnon argh language is what we will eventually adopt in order to wade through the increasingly cluttered and disassembled showers of words and images thrown at us each day.

Argh!

There, I said it again.

I feel better already

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE Posted on August 10, 2025 by Jim Life, actually… . ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE . Down here in the Deep South, I am a witness to this day and age. . In fact, you are also a witness to our times. . Whether reluctant or not, you and I bear w...

24/08/2025

Life, actually…

THE EYES OF A BILLION BEHOLDERS

“There’s nothing on the back of this picture,” one bookshop browser comments. She is rummaging through stacks of old family snapshots adrift in a basket. She glances up dismissively and flips the image aside.

“Who would want to keep pictures of people they don’t know?” she inquires of the world at large.

Who indeed, I wonder. Who would want to enshrine images of random humans living random lifetimes? I hope to get a word in edgewise when she approaches check-out time.

“Looky here,” her playmate for the day speaks up. She’s gazing at a proof sheet of wedding pictures. Black-and-white women dressed in one-day party garb. Uncomfortable men in rented tuxes. Punch bowls and clear glass cups and decorated cakes surround them.

“Whose wedding is this? Why are they in the store?”

I can’t help but answer, “We don’t know whose wedding this is. They are here because their family threw them away.” I let that soak in.

“But why would somebody trash their own family?” she wonders.

“Well, we adopt these thrown-away photographs, these unknown and un-identified folks because they ARE family.” I know this sounds corny but it’s true. “They are part of the World’s family.”

The browser is still picking out old baby pictures, snaps of somebody’s grandmother, shaken prints of kids and dogs and pedal cars. None marked for posterity. All tossed.

She muses, “I just threw away a lot of old family albums because I don’t know anybody in them.” She pauses half a beat and wonders, “Should I keep these things? Where would I put them…” her voice fades and she stands there, her arms full of imaginary lifetimes.

Whenever I feel I’m preaching too much I simply say something like, “If you are ever on your way to a dumpster to get rid of scrapbooks, snapshots, postcards, letters, diaries, documents and so on, just drop them by the shop. We’ll make sure they get into proper hands.”

She listens and decides to think about it later.

People have all kinds of opinions about the things they discard.

Your trash may be my treasure. And vice versa no doubt.

Archivists preserve things you and I wouldn’t dream of retaining.

You and I save stuff archivists might shun.

It gets worse, it gets better, depending on what you do next.

Combing through the lives of discarded people gives me a chance to appreciate them one more time—or for the very first time. A chance to tell them, perhaps posthumously, that they did matter. Mattered enough to become fond memory icons in obscure old bookshops and ephemera emporiums.

A chance to return to life for at least a few moments. Historic markers of how important they once were to those who practiced the art of saving and cherishing small lovely memories

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE Posted on August 10, 2025 by Jim Life, actually… . ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE . Down here in the Deep South, I am a witness to this day and age. . In fact, you are also a witness to our times. . Whether reluctant or not, you and I bear w...

17/08/2025

Life, actually…
HELPERS AND YELPERS MINGLE ON A SODDEN SUMMER AFTERNOON

Waiting and watching, watching and waiting. That’s what I spend much of my time doing these days. Waiting rooms, drive-through lines, queues of all kinds, seem to dominate the time allotted for living my life.

If I weren’t a writer I’d let all this hurry-up-and-wait business get to me. But, once I realize that I must wait and wait and wait to obtain what I need, I just take a deep breath and scan my whereabouts to see what’s what, to see what I’m missing.

Shifting from foot to foot at a barbecue counter, I patiently await tasty delights. I enjoy the fragrances, the avid carnivore diners, the slow-moving servers, the hickory smoke, the code-word shouts from the kitchen.

One customer enters the eatery to pick up his order. The barkeep turns from the to-go window apologetically announcing that “We ran out of baked beans. Would you like other sides?”

The customer emotes, explaining that he placed the order hours ago when they surely had plenty of baked beans. The server furrows his brow and tries to appease. No baked beans to be had.

The fuming customer exchanges hand-wringing words by phone, apparently placating a demanding companion who insists that baked beans must be had, or else…

“How long will it take to cook up some beans?” Now the customers transitions into a diplomat negotiator.

“It would take at least 45 minutes.” The barkeep is being as patient and helpful as possible.

Customer fumes a moment. “Naw, we have to make the game on time. Can’t wait…” he ponders. “What other sides you got?”

“Banana pudding, potato salad, cole slaw, etc.”

Fussy phone voice reluctantly decides on potato salad, making sure the world must know that this is a life-changing decision she is being forced to make against her will.

Customer goes outside to await the new order. Barkeep brings my order plus condiments. We fist-bump and I’m on my way out.

At the curb the pressured customer is waiting. I try to make small talk. “Those must be special baked beans. What are they like?” He is only interested in mouthing off about the outrageous service. “Well, restaurants are complicated places…I guess they have good moments and bad moments,” I chuckle.

The customer doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, but I put in the order hours ago. They just have lousy service.”

I figure he’s going to repeat this rant, with sidebars, for the rest of the evening. I can imagine a swollen chorus once the phone voice adds her two bits.

This story could be the most important family tale for weeks to come, in a land where other people’s transgressions are always bigger than our own

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE Posted on August 10, 2025 by Jim Life, actually… . ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE . Down here in the Deep South, I am a witness to this day and age. . In fact, you are also a witness to our times. . Whether reluctant or not, you and I bear w...

10/08/2025

Life, actually…

ABANDON HOPELESSNESS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

Down here in the Deep South, I am a witness to this day and age.

In fact, you are also a witness to our times.

Whether reluctant or not, you and I bear witness to what is going on, witness to what is not going on, witness to what should never go on, witness to what could go on if things were in place and functioning wholesomely.

The following is unsolicited thoughty advice. Advice that may lie fallow, advice that may make sense, advice useless to you, advice maybe just maybe useful to you.

To all who serve as witnesses to Life: Write stuff down as it comes up. Record it. Squirrel it away for future consideration. Share your point of view. Share someone else’s point of view. Share an observation. Share what you think you missed. Share what you are not sure of. Share your fears and hopes.
Just having someone to tell something to is important.
Hunkering down and hiding is an option, but an eventually regrettable option.
Wiping the mouth of a drink container with your sleeve before drinking sanitizes and makes everything safe. Well, you used to think that, but it doesn’t make much sense anymore, does it?
A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down? A spoonful of artificial sweetener makes the medicine seem to go down…but deep down inside we know better than that.
HERE ARE SOME OPTIONS TO PONDER:
Some see resistance and rage as the solution…
Some see compliance and acceptance as the solution…
Some see covert protest as the solution…
Some see calm recommendations for betterment as the solution…
Some see sulking and complaining and whining as the solution…
Some see avoidance and hunkering down as the solution…
Some see rolling over and playing dead as the solution…
Some see rolling over and dying as the solution…
Some see individualized addressing of each issue as the solution…
Some see endurance and passivity as the solution…
And so on.
Ignore the options that seem useless and unproductive…
Select the ones you are willing to address and bring effort and dedication to…
Then, get busy saving whatever worlds you feel are worthy of salvation
.
© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT Posted on July 13, 2025 by Jim Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/iu6MNvxvxSg or read on… . Life, actually… . THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT . Children of the Down South Soil, this is a special report from one...

03/08/2025

Life, actually…

BORN WORTHWHILE WAY DOWN SOUTH

A lean and lank shirtless wanderer walks purposely down Third Avenue North on an almost-hundred-degree afternoon. The sun presses down, the concrete radiates upward, the breeze secludes itself.

Inside the bookshop a lean and lank fully-clothed browser scans shelves purposely beneath the pleasurable AC air, within earshot of a mellow jazz piano.

Outside, the unbloused nomad stops at a corner trash receptacle and leans in to scrounge for edibles. Barring food, he is also alert for things pawnable. There is half a pack of fries. He fetches it quickly and gracefully, munching as the search continues.

Within the bookshop a few feet away, the book enthusiast opens a volume and instantly reads,

“Alone in the night

On a dark hill

With pines around me

Spicy and still…”

The reader is surprised and mystified. He reads further. He will not allow this moment to fade.

On the other side of the front wall, the shirtless man’s skin glistens as he twirls in the light and continues his strolling quest for nourishment. The wadded paper fry-pack is poetry in his hands.

Inside, the half-smiling bookperson feels oddly nourished by the words of Sara Teasdale. Food is out of reach, out of mind.

The lone bookshop proprietor peers over his counter, watching customer and poacher simultaneously, one within breathing distance, the other through the large plate glass window.

For an instant, the shopkeeper feels like a peeping tom. Then, his writerly instincts remind him of his duty to permanently record these two lives, these two gestures in time.

So that you and I can witness.

So that we can attest to the significance of these otherwise invisible angels

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT Posted on July 13, 2025 by Jim Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/iu6MNvxvxSg or read on… . Life, actually… . THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT . Children of the Down South Soil, this is a special report from one...

27/07/2025

Life, actually…

CRISPY FRIES, LEMON MERINGUE AND THICK GOOEY ICING

Here’s something I like about Down South.

I was raised on country food, soul food, junk food, down-home food.

Guilty admissions about my lifelong Down South diet: If it is breaded, crunchy, overcooked, crusted, sugary, salty, spicy and just plain bad for me, I tend to love it.

I know, I know…this kind of eating is not endorsed by healthy, evangelical, disapproving whole-food progressives. They want me to live longer and more miserably by ingesting only those tasteless things that are good for me.

That phrase, Good for Me, is the red line that rankles and holds me back from doing the Right Thing.

I am not yet a complete idiot, but I am approaching complete idiocy. The sane part of me knows that the good-fooders are correct—I should be eating what they eat. And, of course, I do eat properly most of the time. Maybe I’ll live an extra two hours because of this.

But Temptation is so…Tempting.

I just have to revert to childhood now and then and eat everything that is holy and unhealthy.

Sacred food is essential at times: I tend to eat the icing and forego the cake. I chomp on the meringue and try the lemon maybe later. I munch the crunchy fries quickly, before they turn mushy. I crave the grooves in Ruffles. I always eat one too many seasalted cashews. I vow to stop at one Buddy Bar, then fail. A whiff of hot dog produces catsup dreams. Triple-buttered-and-salted-and-peppered grits are the only grits worthy of consideration.

Are you following me?

All this stuff will eventually kill me.

But I’ll go out with a pleasured smile on my face.

What would that smile look like were I to die while eating kale?

Scary thought, isn’t it

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT Posted on July 13, 2025 by Jim Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/iu6MNvxvxSg or read on… . Life, actually… . THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT . Children of the Down South Soil, this is a special report from one...

20/07/2025

Life, actually…

MARKING TIME WITH BOONDOGGLERS

Wasting time is the most productive thing I do in my little corner of the world.

When I consider a book for possible acquisition, I look as if I am not doing anything at all. I hold it, stare, turn it over, riffle, check copyright page, sniff for contaminations, and so on and so forth. To the casual observer I am merely frozen in place, book in hand, doing a lot of nothing. You know—I’m that old guy having an old guy moment.

I seem to be a boondoggler.

At my writing desk in my writing room, I stare motionless at surroundings—walls, pictures, ephemera, fixtures, displays, bookcases. If you catch me in the non-act, I seem to be stop-motioned and absent-minded.

I am thinking, I am thinking, I tell you! Busy busy.

When a droner drones on, I am gazing deeply as though attention is being paid. In fact, I am sometimes somewhere else, though my alert body tells a fib. If the droner is infatuated with the droning, my diverted self will not be noticed.

Honest, we authors and artists are doing our best work when static and mulling.

By the way, the actual production of a ponderment seldom takes more than a few minutes. A fully-formed story may just stream through my fingers onto keyboard keys and produce a six-hour work of art in two minutes of typing. This may feel like cheating to you, but it is no more mysterious than cooking an omelet or laying a brick.

Most of the time, I don’t get caught not paying attention until the very end. When the droning ends and my only reaction is to say, “There is a dab of chocolate on the tip of your nose. Thought you’d like to know,” the droner suddenly realizes nobody was listening.

I don’t mean to offend, but this is the way it is, here in Boondoggle Land

© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT Posted on July 13, 2025 by Jim Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/iu6MNvxvxSg or read on… . Life, actually… . THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT . Children of the Down South Soil, this is a special report from one...

13/07/2025

Life, actually…
THE BIRMINGHAM TO TUSCALOOSA BREEZEWAY DOGTROT
Children of the Down 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 waterlogged 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 Down South Alabama.
And home is where I still dip into the past to dredge up washboard roads, fossils jutting from chalky riverbanks, sputtering swimmers and treaders 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 Down 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
© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

GOOD FATHER DAYS Posted on June 15, 2025 by Jim Listen to Jim’s podcast: https://youtu.be/lRTZ9p37RpI Life, actually… . GOOD FATHER DAYS . Today is Good Father Day. Tomorrow is Good Father Day. Every day is Good Father Day. . Good fathers come in many forms and packages. . Here’s my toast to: ...

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