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Christmas Comes But Once A Day 

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CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A DAY

Christmas DOES come but once a day!

I can't keep it out of my mind.

My mother was a Christmas mother. Every holiday provided the excuse she needed for bolstering her own spirits and the spirits of those around her. Our little family on Eastwood Avenue in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was a Christmas family because of Mother.

You see, Christmas was the very thing we needed most to counteract the dead of Winter, to bring light to the longest nights of the year, to give us a chance to once again believe in the idea of Spring. Without the idea of Spring in mind, how could we possibly have survived the Winter?

We kids and Mother decorated everything that didn't move, and some things that did. Our pet dogs Brownie and Sissy might be seen running through the house decked in wreaths or gossamer aluminum icicles. The windows would be sprayed with fake snow. The plastic candles with big red bulbs shone through the fake snow to provide just the right glow to passersby.

The Christmas tree had to be somewhat democratically selected by the entire family as we trudged through the cold woods near Uncle Pat McGee's home in Peterson, Alabama. It wasn't really a Christmas tree if it didn't have to be lugged through what seemed like miles of forest to our waiting Willys automobile. It wasn't really a tree if we didn't later find pine or fir needles in our underwear, if we didn't get our fingers sticky with resin that couldn't be removed voluntarily. It couldn't be called a Christmas tree unless half the needles had fallen off by New Year's Day. Those needles were necessary to remind us in the middle of July--when we were still finding them under the sofa and in our socks--that, yes, another Christmas just might come one day.

Every part of Christmas was special to Mother and us kids. We got the tree up and decorated as early as possible and sometimes did not take it down till February was threatening to occur.

And every decoration counted, every decoration was sacred.

There were cheap plastic Baby Jesuses and velvet-clothed Santa Clauses, bakelite angels and glassy angel hair strands, small ceramic Snoopies and brown-paper handmade stars, miniature mangers and stockingcapped elves, tin whistles and school-pasted wooden shards with glitter applied, strung popped popcorn necklaces and varnished mummified cookies.

Mother's fireplace mantle was fully and carefully decorated and arranged with a mixture of kids' handcrafted stuff and store-bought doodads. The front and back doors were decorated, the lawn was bedecked, even the bathroom door was all Christmassed-up.

Christmas was a yearlong idea, a monthlong project, an intense array of garlands and gewgaws, clutter and array. So much was put into Christmas that the images stayed with you all year long and in fact all life long.

Every and each time I smell ginger or apples or vanilla or pine or baking dough or roasting pecans, Christmas comes back to me in a second. Each time I pass an ornately dressed bungalow in a tiny neighborhood, it all comes back. Every time I hear the old carols, whenever I look up in the frozen winter to see a bright star or two, whenever I see the gleam in a child's eye, Christmas comes back to me.

Christmas comes but once a day.

When the very idea of Christmas, the very idea of unselfish giving, the very idea of warm family gatherings and sharings...when these things die from our lives, won't we all die a bit, too? When the soul goes flat from lack of sweet remembrance, the world will be declared flat, too.

Thanks to you, Mother, I can hold on to Christmas even when there's nothing visible to grab hold of

--Jim Reed

WHEN YOU'RE SNUG ABED AND TRYING TO SLEEP THE NEARLY-LONGEST-NIGHT-OF-THE-YEAR and you begin to drift raftless through the years and the years of holidays gone past, holidays gone dim, holidays occasionally bright and warm and tacky with the carnival-design colors and trappings that kids love and cherish and hold their breaths over, I hope you will take a moment to remember the best Christmas or holiday you ever ever ever had and allow yourself to slip into it and dream the sweet sweet dreams of a four-year-old who just knows that every kindly fable and each and every sweet tale every adult ever told any kid is absolutely true and verifiable if just for that one moment when the tale is first told.

And I hope this brings a comfortable smile to your lips despite the Grinch-like characteristics society thrusts upon you.

For one sweet moment, simply defy reality and be a safe, secure and happily sugarplummed child and remember you--the once and future real you--and how you once were and how you still are, somewhere deep deep deep down inside

--Jim Reed

WHEN YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING SO STRONGLY SO UNRELENTINGLY SO INNOCENTLY THAT YOUR BEHAVIOR DEFIES ALL LOGIC ALL CONVENTION ALL COMMON SENSE all cynicism, then you have the gift of purity that can only be defiled by an unkind word a thoughtless gesture or one moment of insensitivity.

Remember when you believed so deeply in Santa Claus that you would confide only in him--in him only--your innermost desires? Remember when you believed so deeply in the omnipotence and honesty of Santa that not only did you confide in him your wishes but you at the same time, honoring the magic secret between yourself and the old elf, would not dared not could not tell anyone else your secret--not even your parents? Remember what it was like to keep such a tightly held secret so pure that, because your parents did not know what you and Santa had discussed, you therefore did not receive on Christmas morn the gift you wanted? Remember how you never blamed Santa Claus for not bringing the gift you desired, since Santa did after all tell you that he'd try his best but couldn't promise?

You looked the other way on behalf of Santa because he was sacred he was honest he bore no grudges he did no evil he was you know Santa Claus, after all.

How long has it been since you believed in something that powerfully? And isn't it amazing that because you held those beliefs as a child, Santa still has some power over you?

All logic all evidence aside you still want to believe in Santa Claus and the idea of Santa Claus and somewhere deep deep inside you, don't you think you do still believe in him?

Because if you ever stopped believing in such wonderful ideas wouldn't the world do its final bit of perishing in the heart and wouldn't the world just be another planet in the technical and mathematical universe, bereft of all soul and heart and sincerity and just full of cold debris and detritus floating around with no particular purpose?

Santa is the glue of the hopeful universe--Santa and his counterparts deep in the beings of children since time began

--Jim Reed

THIS IS THE HOME STRETCH. It's the time of year when all your feelings get jumbled together and you really don't know what to feel except nervous, excited and oh I don't know, maybe even thrilled.

You know you want to get a lot of good stuff for Christmas, but you also know that you shouldn't feel too excited about just getting instead of giving...you know you want to give something to people you love or people you want to impress or people you know are probably going to give you something back, but you also know that there's something vaguely sinful-feeling about just wanting to give for the sake of what you're going to be given.

You read all those stories about Christmastime charity and how nice it is to give of yourself and your time and even of your money to those who won't ever be able to repay you, but you also would like to get a bunch of nice things that remind you of the best Christmases you ever had.

You always want people to kind of read your mind and give you just the perfect gift that takes you back to your best years, but you don't even know how to express this to them and so you just go on feeling like the best part of Christmas is the anticipation, the wanting part...not the actual getting and giving part.

You may even remember the few times in your life that you secretly gave something to someone who needed it and never ever let them know that it was you who did it. You remember the mixed feelings you had about that--how you knew it was blessed to give anonymously, but also how you wished you knew for sure that you were going to get credit for the deed in some celestial Big Book in the Sky.

You also know that you will never know for certain whether you'll get credit for deeds like that, and it's that special tension created out of this confusion that makes you much more alert and wired at this time of year.

And best of all, you also know deep deep down inside you that the best Christmases you've ever had or ever will have are those Christmases that exist in your memories and in your future hopes.

As the Grinch learned almost too late, Christmas happens whether or not there's lots of getting and receiving and gimme-ing.

I hope this helps you know that there are others who are ambivalent about Christmas and about the spirit of giving and getting. And know this, too: the best part of you is the part that is willing to admit ambivalence and is willing to struggle to walk the tightrope that carefully and precariously balances you between total selfishness and total martyrdom. You just happen to be human

--Jim Reed

YOU CAN ALMOST FEEL THE HOLIDAY SEASONINGS COMING UPON YOU, EVEN if you are a Grinch, even if you are a Scrooge, even if you aren't even Christian or Jew or Muslim.

Somehow, the silent and humid darkness manages to creep in between everything and affect you, in between the jangle bells that jingle the nerves, the jingle bells that jangle the nerves, the electronic carols, the lyrics about people longing for another time, in between the strains of escalator music, down under the heat vents outside the big stores where street people huddle to suck up the warmth, deep down into the basement where newborn puppies try to open their eyes and figure out what's for lunch, down under the cars where mechanics probe oil pans to ready the metal monster for its annual homeward trek.

You can smell spices even if they aren't there, you can feel the cottoned snow on your fingers even if it is only Alabama-80-degree-cotton snow, you can glimpse in the eyes of overstimulated kids the anticipation--just how will grandma like the crayoned gift you've worked on, just how does that fat guy get down a chimney when there's no chimney in a trailer or an apartment or a housing project?

The season bears down on you like a heavy warm comforter, and despite the nervous merchants, the hassled salesclerks, the commercials and billboards and ads, despite the lost gift lists and the just-one-more-item-I-gotta-get panic, despite the sure knowledge that the season isn't the same for everybody, you can still pick up from the very chilled breath-puffs in the air the spirit that you now need to get through and muddle by and tread softly past your troubles hoping that they won't grab you till after the first of the year at least.

Here's to all the people who'll try to find, with a little help from anybody who's paying attention, some solace and a small joy or two, even if they are inside a jail, rec-halled in a nursing home, lined up at a soup kitchen, abed in a hospital, lonely and alone in a Rolls Royce with no friends to be found.

Even if they are in a joyous state of collapse, let's hope they find some comfort in knowing that the world is full of people who despite the oncoming disasters that we can all dream up, are still able to pause once in a while and find peace, even if it has to be deep inside rather than outside and in plain view, even if it's just seven times a day aimed toward Mecca, even if it's for a brief moment over a cuppacoffee before the happy young savages attack the Cheerios, even if it is just for a brief and godlike moment behind your tightly closed and wishing eyelids

--Jim Reed

FOR A LONG WHILE THERE, I WANTED TO BE SANTA CLAUS. NO, I REALLY MEAN I WANTED TO BE SANTA CLAUS FOR A LIVING. NOT JUST FOR A LIVING, I WANTED TO REALLY AND TRULY BE A FULLTIME SANTA CLAUS IN A JOLLY RED FUR-LINED SUIT and I wanted to be the center of attention of all the children of the world who know anything about Santa Claus.

What a kick. To be the man to whom all children look when they still believe in the things that are really true...things such as:

IT IS BETTER TO RECEIVE AND TO GIVE IN AN EQUAL SPIRIT OF LOVING...

IT IS JOYFUL TO SPEND HOURS PICKING OUT JUST THE RIGHT GIFT FOR JUST THE RIGHT PERSON AND PERSONALIZE IT WITH HANDMADE WRAPPING AND LITTLE NOTES (instead of grabbing something from the $20-and-under counter at the drug store on the way to Grandmother's house)...

IT IS BETTER TO WAIT IN GENTLE AGONY FOR THE GIFT-OPENING THAN TO ACTUALLY OPEN THE GIFT ITSELF (once that's done, it's all over, you know)...

IT IS BETTER TO SIT QUIETLY CONTEMPLATING THE LIGHTED CHRISTMAS TREE IN THE DARKNESS OF YOUR OWN LIVING ROOM THAN TO WATCH EVERY HEAVILY-COMMERCIALIZED CHRISTMAS SPECIAL EVER MADE AND EVERY COMMERCIAL LOADING YOU DOWN WITH GUILT AND MISGIVINGS (wind up a little music-box there in the darkness and listen to some old, out-of-tune-but-grand-anyhow Christmas tune and shed a tear for the sweet memories it retrieves from your jumbled and overtaxed brain)...

IT IS BETTER TO HOLD THE HAND OF SOMEONE YOU FORGOT TO LOVE ENOUGH, THAN TO GLAD-HAND A BOSS YOU DON'T CARE FOR OR AN INFLUENTIAL PERSON YOU JUST FEEL LIKE BUTTERING UP (surprise your least favorite relative by giving forth a big hug, look straight into those lonely eyes and smile warmly like a Cheshire cat...what a glow that might bring!)...

IT IS BETTER TO SIT DOWN AND CAREFULLY, PAINFULLY BRING BACK THE GOOD TIMES IN YOUR SILENT MIND AND FONDLE THEM KINDLY, AND FORGIVE THE LEAST FORGIVEABLE PEOPLE YOU KNOW--WHAT POWER THAT GIVES YOU!

And it is better to figure out how nice something is all by yourself than to shell out tons of money on therapy and self-improvement...figure out what blessings you have that can't be taken away because they are safely tucked abed in the so-soft darkness of your imagination

--Jim Reed

THE HOLIDAY SEASON, WOUND UP TIGHT AS A CATCH IN THE CALF, is winding down now, long enough for the survivors to tally the blessings and nurse the wounded. So, here's an alcoholess toast to my blessings, and the blessings each of us carries if we'll just take time to check:

HERE'S TO the little old lady who'll be taking her holiday lunch alone at a downtown cafeteria, daydreaming of a time when she had family who made it a point to stay in touch and keep on touching...

HERE'S TO the memory of my father's large, cool hand on my small brow, checking to see if I would survive another childhood illness under tons of blankets & gummy aspirin, so long ago in Tuscaloosa, Alabama...

HERE'S TO the prisoner who'll get to see family visitors for a few precious moments, and to the prisoner who'll see only vertical shadows on the nearby wall...

HERE'S TO all our never-to-be Southern dreams of an icy white blanket of snow covering the sidewalks and making puppies dance on Christmas morn...

HERE'S TO the toothless old man in line at the Social Grill Cafeteria in Birmingham, Alabama, who asks for three servings of hot mashed potatoes and nothing more...

HERE'S TO my Mother, who taught us kids to make toasts like this without the use of alcohol or tobacco or caffeine. Wherever she is, may she be proud of the fact we don't drink or smoke or take coffee to this day...

HERE'S TO the large vacant lot across the street from our house when I was tiny, where I made so many wonderful memories, and where friends were more plentiful and loyal than they've ever been since...

HERE'S TO a handful of people in my life, who, despite widely varying interests and personalities, have never forgotten to stand by me in times of good and times of bad...

HERE'S TO the land of Alabama, where my fortunes have been made and unmade and made again, and where my roots are so deep that, should you try to move me, I'd crack at the base and wander lost forever...

HERE'S TO my Wife, for whom marriage to me has been a true sacrifice, and who is loyal and true and more cuddly than the Teddy Bear I've owned since I was one year old...

HERE'S TO my wish that you might share a dream with me, a dream of a day when all of us can look with newborn eyes at one another and relish our differences, celebrate our idiosyncracies, chuckle at our vanities & forget for a time about words & concentrate instead on the terrible longing each of us has to hold and be held with tenderness and acceptance.

Drink deep this toast and remember the good stuff and eschew the bad

--Jim Reed

_______________________________

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 bought a house in the tiny coal mining town West Blocton, Alabama, around the turn of the century—a house that is still standing. 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, my grandfather Jim placed the infant in an Easter basket and announced to his brood that the Easter Bunny had delivered this pink, noisy package.

NOW YOU JUST HAVE TO BE PATIENT FOR A MOMENT here and listen to my tale about THE ANNOYING TOY. It goes this way:

Last Christmas, my two-year-old grandson Reed received from friends of the family a beautifully crafted bright yellow purple-tired red-hubcapped red-fendered battery-operated HOT DOG TRUCK.

Now this is not just your regular run-of-the-toys-r-us hot dog truck. This hot dog truck is nine inches long and nine inches high and has clear-plastic display panels on each side which each display six small hot dogs (wieners to you, weenies to us Southerners).

In the open front cab of the truck sits a pink-faced mustachioed guy with a blue hat, orange shirt, white pants and white gloves--not to mention blue eyes

shaped like this: + +

The green headlamps, bright green bell and slogans animate everything--"Happy Hot Dog" on the front hood, "Yum Yum" on the side doors, "Chili Cheese Dog 99 cents Mustard Dog 59 cents Deluxe Combo (fries and drink) 99 cents."

Behind the six vertical hot dogs (no mustard) is a sign, "Happy Hot Dog Dancing for You." Did I mention the fact that atop the hot dog truck is a great big hot dog (with mustard snaking across the top) that looks almost real if you squint or if you're two years old?

Now, this hot dog truck toy is pretty cute and quite unusual looking, but what makes it really fun and annoying is what it does. When you throw the switch on the bottom of the hot dog truck, it suddenly begins playing loud, rhythmic and unidentifiable music, and the front purple wheels begin walking (not turning) the front of the truck in time with the beat.

The truck walks!

Then, after the tune goes on for a few seconds, the hot dog truck driver yells, "Hot Dog! Hot Dog!" in a clipped accent of some kind--could be Brooklyn, could be Hispanic. Part of the mystery, you know.

While he's yelling, his upper body shakes back and forth, he rings the green bell, and the six hot dogs (three on each side) start dancing! Then, the truck repeats this routine until an annoyed adult turns it off or stomps it.

A most wonderfully annoying toy!

Well, two-year-old Reed was afraid of that hot dog truck and wouldn't have anything to do with it, but I loved it. It was just the thing every kid dreams of having--a toy that makes you laugh while annoying all adults within hearing distance.

Even after you turn the truck off, you can still make it yell, "Hot Dog! Hot Dog!" twice by pushing a rose-colored button next to the driver, or you can make that funky music go on for a couple of seconds by pushing the violet button.

Boy, did I have fun with that hot dog truck! Nobody else did.

As we were leaving my daughter's home after the Christmas weekend, she presented me with the bright yellow hot dog truck. "No," I said. "This belongs to Reed!" She looked at me for a second and said, "Dad, I want you to have this toy." The steel in her voice made me realize that she not only NEEDED for me to remove this toy from her home, but she knew that it would make me a lot happier than it would ever make her or Reed.

I grabbed this gift and drove the five hours back to Birmingham, occasionally annoying my wife and granddaughter by pushing the rose-colored button. And, once in a while, by pushing the violet button. What fun!

Now, the Happy Hot Dog truck sits atop my bookloft counter (I'm at least smart enough not to take it home) for me to show off to annoyed customers and annoying little kids.

If you know anything about other annoying toys made by the Metro Toy Company in the Philippines, please let me know. My joy may be your pain, but what's wrong with making an old guy happy

--Jim Reed

SO THERE I WAS, CRUISING ALONG DOWNTOWN BIRMINGHAM, when I noticed the sign over the building that for half a century was F.W. Woolworth, only now it's called CALIFORNIA FASHION MALL and has a bunch of shops ranging from CHECK CASHING to WIGS to FASHION WEAR and the like.

Think about it for a minute.

CALIFORNIA FASHION MALL in Downtown Birmingham. What a concept! Little old Alabama is promoting the state of California with its cutting-edge trendy fashions, paying homage to a state a few thousand miles away.

Any day now, residents of Los Angeles will be driving along in downtown L.A. and get whiplash as they pass ALABAMA FASHION MALL. No doubt when they see the sign covering the old L.A. F.W. Woolworth building, they'll be doing U-turns and rushing in to see what cutting-edge trendy fashions those Alabamians have come up with this week.

Imagine! ALABAMA FASHION MALL.

Soon, L.A. Baptists will be poofing up their hair with spray starch and wearing macho hip-hugging jeans you see now and then in the Deep South, those polyester-frocked folk wearing pointy-tipped eyeglasses and spitting tobacco from their pickup trucks, sporting deer-hunting hats in the summer and lacquering on another layer of makeup before going to the whistle-stop cafe.

And while L.A.'uns are coming up to speed with their idea of who Alabamians are, Alabamians will be coming away from CALIFORNIA FASHION MALL wearing thong bathing briefs, shaving their heads and donning desert boots, painting their nails purple and dying their poodles pink, just like you see on TV.

This could be the start of something profound.

Hope you folks in L.A. have a peaceful Christmas around your pink aluminum Christmas trees (honest--I think that's what a lot of us believe you do!), and I hope that you get some laconic pleasure out of picturing us Alabamians fanning ourselves against a white column on the front porch while a hound dog eyes the Christmas tree which is after all just a Southern Pine

--Jim Reed

A PUZZLEMENT, TO BE SURE, IS LIFE AND ITS puzzles within puzzles. My wife works crossword puzzles as daily therapy. If she doesn't get to spend some time serially and intensely and uninterruptedly grimacing over a crossword puzzle at least once a week, her balance is awry and I am in danger. My presence is needed during these sessions only once or twice a year, when she through kindness or distraction will actually ask me for a difficult word. I'm usually wrong.

My brother Ronny is a jigsaw puzzle expert, always has been. The rest of the family is in awe of his ability to stick with a jigsaw puzzle, calmly scanning the table surface for the next exactly perfect irregular piece that will go precisely over there, completing the pepperoni slice of the large pizza puzzle we just knew would finally, for once in his life, stump him. When Christmas shopping, we never find a puzzle that conquers him. Ronny has even been known to turn a puzzle over, face down, and put it together just as effortlessly. We've given him mirror-image puzzles designed to create stress of a high order, but he works them anyhow.

Some day I craftily plan to give him two identical jigsaw puzzles mixed together in the same box, or a 20-foot by 20-foot jigsaw puzzle, if such exists. Even though the family has given him puzzles for Christmas for decades, he never complains--of course, he probably wouldn't complain, even if he quietly gave up the hobby years ago. He'd still work the puzzles out of politeness.

At least there are two people in the family who are easy to give to: a crossword puzzle book for Liz, a jigsaw puzzle for Ronny, and--make that three people--toys for me. Yes, nobody dares give me books anymore, for fear I already own everything--which I do. And Ye Gods forbid I should be interested in clothes or tool sets. No, I just like little inexpensive but eccentric toys. Any time you're stumped over what to give me for another embarrassing birthday or another Christmas, it's safe to give me a toy.

I'm surrounded by toys and books, and maybe that's why I am sometimes caught smiling for no reason at all, in the midst of the terrorist activities of family and life. Just leave me alone, looking at my windup duck riding a tricycle, sitting on the ledge in front of me next to my Reed's Rocket Nutcrackers container and the plastic nose that dispenses ugly green candy, and I'm happy for a while. Just put me next to my signed and inscribed copy of Ray Bradbury's first book, and my copy of a first-edition Walt Kelly and my copy of the unpublished work by my brother Tim and myself, HORACE THE HORRIBLY HOARSE HORSE, and I can muster a momentary smile.

Just give me a place for my stuff and I will somehow survive the obfuscation around me, just give Ronny a jigsaw puzzle and he can be alone in a crowd for a few hours, just give Liz her crossword puzzle and run for the hills, and she'll be blissful. Hope that at Christmas, you have something you can hide out in for a mo'

--Jim Reed

___________________________

MY BEAUTIFUL SANTAS

When I was a young one just trying to absorb the fact that I'd never be a Babe Ruth or an Albert Einstein or an Edgar Allan Poe or a Gregory Peck, I received for Christmas, sitting there just beyond reach of the carnival-decorated gaudy fir tree, a SPITZ JUNIOR PLANETARIUM, manufactured by HARMONIC REED CORPORATION OF ROSEMONT, PENNA.

It was a most special Christmas gift.

Just looking at it now, in my mind's eye, it has remained crystal-clear all these many years: a shiny black flexible-plastic globe bifurcated by a yellow rubber equatorial flange that represents the stellar ecliptic and incidentally holds the two half-spheres together. The black globe sits atop a white plastic observatory-shaped base, and the whole thing can be rotated round and round as well as moved up and down to simulate all the naked-eye observable movements of the stars.

To appreciate the planetarium, you had to take it into a pitch-dark, preferably cube-shaped room and slowly turn up the rheostat just above the off-on switch on the front of the base. If you did it just right and just slowly enough, you would suddenly feel yourself transported to the middle of a darkened field in the middle of the night in the middle of the planet in the middle of the universe because, all around you, there would suddenly appear stars in exactly the same positions, the same configurations, as they would appear if you actually were in the middle of a darkened field in the middle of the night in the middle of...etc.

Even if you couldn't go outside to see the stars, even if it was cloudy and raining, even if you had just come indoors from the humid sunshine, you could still go into that darkened room and be somewhere else in time and space and feel all alone in a crowd of billions of others whose names you did not know.

Just a while ago, my sister Rosi got my SPITZ JUNIOR PLANETARIUM out of storage and presented it to me and I took it home and now I sleep again in the middle of a darkened field in the middle of the night in the middle...

Whenever the demon insomnia causes my eyes to flicker open, I can see the old familiar stars keeping me silent company and reminding me that they will always be there and that any problems that seem gargantuan now are minuscule compared to the distant silent coolness and the close-up noisy fury of those suns upon suns upon suns out there. The mathematics and physics of astronomy escaped me early on, but the sheer personal poetry of the tiny points of light so large and so far away still affect me and still make me remember what it was like to be a small boy and open an incredible shiny gift that pure and lonely Christmas so many eons ago in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

--Jim Reed

WHEN I WAS SMALL--NOT TOO SMALL, MIND YOU--the world was still a magic place. I wanted to lead everyone I knew into this magic world. I thought a smashing way to do this would be to become a magician. A prestidigitator. A master of illusion. A fake fakir who could fool and entertain his superiors all at once.

Santa Claus, who still existed back then, gave me a big, garish book of illustrated magic tricks by Joseph Dunninger. I spent hours wearing that book out, trying to master the simple tricks within.

Later, one of my most cherished gifts, my Rosebud, came, at yet another Christmas: a complete paper-covered case full of Mandrake the Magician magic tricks. I practiced alone in my room, tried out the easier ones on my brother Ronny, and spent hours hoarding and cataloging these and other sleight-of-hand acts and gags, dreaming of the day I'd be able to fool everybody at will with my suave patter and my dashing Batman cape (blue on the outside, red on the inside, or vice versa--confiscated from my sister Barbara).

What I did not yet know about myself was that I was shy, painfully shy, and that my only confidence remained hidden within myself, was only apparent in my heart.

By the time I got up enough nerve to perform in front of my entire family in the dining room (even my father, though fidgety, sat bemusedly and watched my show), I was nervous but determined to go ahead with the tricks I'd learned. The easiest trick I knew, which I believe Barbara had taught me, was the one where you make an empty glass go through a solid table and land on the floor, hopefully unbroken. I actually pulled this off successfully if slowly, and went through a few other tricks I knew before the performance faded to an end.

The family had watched patiently if stoically. My fantasies had come to a head, had been realized right in my own dining room. I was satisfied and thereafter gave up magic, for I had not yet been given the gift of self-confidence and knew that I could never stand before strangers and fool them, too. I knew my family watched because they had to, because they had manners and could not help but watch, and because they loved me and would have enjoyed the show even if it had been terrible.

So, my little box of tricks lay stored and labeled by my mother, waiting for re-discovery.

After that, I went on to other hobbies, including amateur astronomy and sky observation. Now that was a hobby tailor-made for a shy person. I never had to perform. I could be alone a lot and my family would not worry over the fact that I spent entire nights on the roof of the house, peering through a telescope and dreaming my dreams, my starry dreams.

Even that hobby came to a close abruptly one day, when the Soviets launched the world's first artificial satellite and suddenly everybody wanted to become an astronaut or a star expert. Since loners have to have their own personal hobbies, hobbies that no one else they know is involved in, the skies suddenly lost their appeal as career fodder.

I faced the fact that I didn't want to be an astronomer anyhow. Facts and physics left me cold. What I really enjoyed about the heavens was their accessibility to the poet within me. I didn't want anyone to require a mathematical formula of me. I just wanted to enjoy the enormous, awesome feelings that came over me when I looked skyward, and I wanted to share these feelings with others.

Years later, I actually went to a meeting of amateur astronomers and found that they spent little time looking at stars, but much time doing calculations and explaining black holes to each other, and theorizing about the death of stars.

Sara Teasdale would not have approved, thank goodness. Do you know her poem, the one that best expresses that wonderful feeling the stars can give you if you open up to them? May I share it with you?

"Alone in the night

On a dark hill

With pines around me

Spicy and still

And a heaven full of stars

Over my head

White and topaz and misty red

Myriads with beating hearts of fire

That eons cannot vex or tire.

Up the dome of heaven

Like a great hill

I watch them marching

Stately and still

And I know that I

Am honored to be

Witness of so much majesty."

Sara knew. Sara knew me. Sara knew all about me. Through the distance of time, through the timelessness of distance, she still holds my hand and Knows

--Jim Reed

One day when I was seven years old, the world got all cleaned up and everything got a chance to start all over again.

Overnight, the multi-textured earth became one smooth, soft, icy texture, the world of colors and hues became one wonderful multi-shaded land of whites and off-whites and cream-whites and shadowed whites and faintly pinkish whites.

The world overnight cleansed the landscape and allowed clapping children to re-mold everything in their own images.

Snowmen and snowwomen appeared quickly, playing guardian to our delight.

Makeshift sleds materialized mysteriously out of old siding, ragged boards, large tubs and pans.

Footprints showed us who had been where and from where and where to, leaving traces of their makers--something that could never happen during ordinary times.

Mother took the whitened landscape that Daddy had gathered from the yard and shrubbery and, waving her large magic wand of a serving-spoon, created the sweetest, sloshiest ice cream I've ever tasted.

Large multilayered men came outside to pretend they were younger in the deepening creamy banks, and little stuffed-slug kids meandered about in pelts made of nylon and dacron and cotton and leather.

Though we could barely make out each others' faces under all those makeshift scarves, we recognized everybody instantly, because they were our transmogrified neighbors and playmates running amok upon the unfamiliar terra-infirma.

All human routine was suspended and during that 24-hour period fifty years ago, nobody seemed to hold a job, nobody had homework to do, nobody had to be anywhere else but right there on our block on Eastwood Avenue right down from McArthur Avenue and Patton Avenue and 15th Street.

Some celestial force had taken over our little village for a day and, like Brigadoon, it would not repeat itself in our lifetimes but would save itself for the next hundred-year generation that needed a quick and gentle cleansing so that the next day, when all was back to normal texture normal color normal temperature normal firma, everybody who had experienced this whiter-than-white washing of the spirit would have a memory to cherish in old age, a memory of things being just right and just magical and just totally real all at the same time

--Jim Reed

MY EARLIEST IMPRESSIONS OF THE BIG CITY OF BIRMINGHAM came from the simple act of visiting there when I was very small. My Uncle Adron and Aunt Annabelle Herrin would load us kids, their kids and my mother into their Model-A Ford and take us from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham by way of the old Old Birmingham Highway.

In my lifetime, there have been three Tuscaloosa-to-Birmingham routes. There was first the old Birmingham Highway that ran right past my Grandfather's General Merchandise Store in Peterson, then there was the newer Birmingham Highway that bypassed the older road and began the demise of many businesses along the way, including, eventually, R.L. McGee General Merchandise.

The newer Birmingham highway was made of light asphalt and ran by Hamm's Pottery and a host of other landmarks in Tuscaloosa County. Then, much later, both roads were consigned to oblivion when the Interstate 59 highway made travelling to Birmingham a lot faster and a lot less interesting.

But way back then, in the late 1940's, the only logical route to the City was via the old Old Birmingham Highway, a black-asphalt, curvaceous two-lane route that took us past Peterson into Brookwood, from Brookwood to Bessemer, where we looked excitedly for the landmarks that would tell us Birmingham was near, such as the old Wigwam Motel--you could actually spend the night in a motel shaped like an Indian teepee, though I never got the chance to do it.

Then, we would look to the far right horizon in Bessemer to see who could spot the gigantic iron statue of the Norse God Vulcan, standing atop Red Mountain. Once we saw this rusty icon, we knew we were near the end of our voyage.

Speeding along the old Old highway on a clear cold December night, you could see the near-full moon ahead of the Model-A flying high in the purple-black sky. The moon would dance over the twisting road, touching the treetops, dipping out of sight, rising instantly high up as we followed that snaking trail and rose and fell with the hills and valleys along the way.

Uncle Adron, always a speed demon, would make that Model-A feel like a roller coaster, and he would always remind us that our primary goal was to catch up with that moon.

On the way to the annual Birmingham Christmas Parade, we kids would wiggle all over the back seat in impossibly tortured anticipation of seeing the Meccas of the season: Santa Claus on a parade float, and S.H. Kress and F.W. Woolworth, where everything Santa could ever dream up would be on display.

Coming into Birmingham, my first impression was a lasting one: I had never seen so many Black people, and they were a beautiful sight to a small boy, since they seemed to be dressed up in brightly-colored outfits and stylish hats and shoes, the likes of which I had never seen in Tuscaloosa. I thought it would be wonderful to be able to dress so boldly, for bright mixtures of colors always signify to a kid happiness, good times and playfulness. I noticed that White people didn't dress nearly as well.

The big wide streets of Birmingham always seemed littered and not very well kept, compared to our little town of Tuscaloosa, but that didn't much matter to us kids. It would be unbearably cold on those Birmingham streets, but that was part of the excitement, you understand.

The parade would be gigantic, the stores brightly decorated, the city blocks long and arduous to walk, and the whole experience thoroughly exhausting and delightful. Then, Uncle Adron would pack all of us and our purchases back into the old Model-A and start the long trip back to Tuscaloosa. By then, the dancing moon and the cold stars in the purple sky would be forgotten because we could snuggle down into our musky blankets and sleep the safe sleep of children who knew nothing bad would ever happen to them as long as Uncle Adron was in charge, as long as Uncle Adron was running away from that dancing moon and aiming us all back toward Tuscaloosa and our own sweet-smelling beds

--Jim Reed

WELL, THOSE GENUINE PLASTIC JESUSES AND THOSE WARMER THAN LIFE HOLY SANTAS are everywhere now, and wherever you go, little kids are starting to get glowy-eyed, greedy and just plain as good as they can be, at least when they think about it, which is every 20 seconds or so.

On some rooftops, the mixed metaphors include Jesus, Rudolph, Mary, Santa, the Three Crosses, the Star of Bethlehem (five points, please), the Star of David (make that six points), Frosty the Snowman, the Wise Men (make that three), the shepherds, and Cabbage Patch Kids in the Manger.

Boggles the minds of those of us who think of Christmas as the sight of a dusty old Scrooge getting his comeuppance and learning to appreciate the real meaning of Christmas, which to any media-bred person today probably includes all of the above participating in some kind of Last Supper Before Gift-Opening-Time. Think of it: Santa would break the bread, perhaps, after having it blessed by Frosty, the wine changed into water by Jesus (after all, there are more Baptists down in this part of the country than there are people, and when I was a kid, Baptists didn't believe that Jesus ever drank real wine--just grape juice, you know), and a merry Thanksgiving turkey would be enjoyed by everyone except the Dove of Peace, whose mother taught him that cannibalism was wrong.

Does anybody remember the stories that really started all this seasonal warmth in the first place, the Hanukkah celebration, the Nativity idea, the longest-night-of-the-year ceremonies of Druids and lots of other meaningful gatherings that were designed to bring people together for a bit of hand-holding and hugging before the spirit lifted and everybody got back to the business of living.

Well, curmudgeonly as it might sound, there are still some quiet and peaceful and downright spiritual moments to be had, even if they have to be shared by the Christmas Bunny and the Easter Elves. Hope you are blessing and blessed and that the season will be kind to you and you to it

--Jim Reed

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DREADED NIGHT HOLY MOLY NIGHT

THERE ARE THOSE AMONG US WHO ARE FILLED WITH DREAD AT THE PROSPECT of a Holiday Season coming up. There are those among us who wait with entranced expectation, hoping the season will arrive just a week earlier for once, so that we won't have to suffer so.

The Holiday-Dreaders remember only the bad: the requirement to give a gift to someone you not only don't like but someone who never gives you anything back...the memories of frayed nerves and too much booze and too much candy and too much screaming and shouting--the kind of holiday that a Stephen King might delight in building a novel out of.

The Holiday-Delighters just know that, despite the fact that they might be surrounded by Holiday-Dreaders, this year will be different: this year everybody will be happy and mellow and smiling and hugging and just plain relaxed and pleasant for a change.

The Holiday-Dreaders know that Christmas will be a dreadful pain and they hope it will not happen this year at all.

The Holiday-Delighters know somewhere in back of their very souls that not all Christmases have been wonderful, but they persist in carrying forth the dream of what Christmas might be could be should be oh please just this one time WILL BE!

And so Christmas slowly inexorably marches our way, oblivious to the Delighters and the Dreaders, not at all aware that there will be misery and joy juxtaposed throughout the land, not at all aware of the turmoil going on in Delighters'heads--all those sugar plums and magical wistful Santas and Frostys and Rudolphs and Deck Us All with Boston Charliers...not at all aware of the turmoil going on in Dreaders' heads--all that tension and feelings of incompleteness and feelings of no-gift-will-be-good-enough in the eyes of the receivers.

Christmas will come again and go again and the Delighters will hold whatever good memories they salvage in a safe place to bring forth in the hot and humid days of July and treasure anew...and the Dreaders will try to forget it all and hope that another Christmas doesn't come too soon.

You can wait for Christmas with open arms open heart open mind open soul and find the gentle goodies therein.

You can pace the floor hating the very idea of Christmas and dreading each thought of it again and again.

Whether you decide to become a Dreader or a Delighter, you most certainly as long as you are on this earth will not be able to avoid Christmas.

Select the attitude you want and embrace it and don't let the bed bugs bite you on this next wonderful opportunity that's being offered to you as a precious gift. If you're worried about the fact that Christmas just might slip up on you and make you feel good, just use Thanksgiving as a dry run: See what good will and good wishes and an incredibly stubborn decision to have a nice peaceful disposition for once can bring you. You just might surprise yourself

--Jim Reed

WELL, ANOTHER CHRISTMAS WHIZZED BY, AND WHAT do I have to show for it?

Well, I received some kind attention and some truly marvelous trinkets.

One of my favorite Christmas stories from grammar school is the Charles Tazewell tale of the Littlest Angel.

The story of the Littlest Angel always stuck with me because of the respect it paid to the feelings of little children, the reverence with which it viewed the really important possessions of life.

As you may recall, the Littlest Angel was not happy in heaven because he had left behind under his bed the most important things in his world. Each of these objects had absolutely no significance to anyone in the world but him...and that's exactly the metaphor I've cherished all my life.

As a middleaged guy you wouldn't want to see partying naked, I still value most the small things that remind me of tendernesses long gone.

I have little doodads all over my book loft and everywhere at home, and each attentive family member knows by now that what I want for my birthday or Christmas is not a tie or a shirt or a screwdriver, but a toy or a handmade trinket that is just a little bit special and that was selected out of love instead of duty.

The rule of buying a gift for Jim Reed, should you ever be so inspired: Find something that makes you smile, then bring me your smile and that thing.

What was in the Littlest Angel's box under his bed? If you don't know,I'll tell you one day. If you do know, write me a note as a kindred soul.

What really made my morning today, though, was a little present in the mail from my big sister (I must learn not to say big, because she isn't...but I must say older sister, even though she's not old): A small handcarved wooden whistle with three distinct notes that I tooted over and over again all the way to work, enjoying each moment of pure sound and looking forward to seeing my grandkids and small namesakes salivating all over it and having a grand time.

Big sisters still remember what little brothers and small angels love most

--Jim Reed

BUY...PURCHASE...GET..GIMME...CAN I HAVE IT...IT'S ONLY...THIS WEEK ONLY...BUY NOW PRAY LATER...LAYAWAY...

Christmas is coming and it's time to turn off all the noise and visuals for a moment and cleanse the soul for a spell.

Hope your pre-holiday weekend was as gentle as mine.

I sat with my daughter and her friend and watched butterflies by the hundreds in the Callaway Gardens sanctuary and meditated on the weightlessness of beauty and rarity of silence

--Jim Reed

THE SEASON IS UPON AND SURROUNDING AND BLISSFULLY COZYING US WITH ITS SUDDEN BURSTS OF TEMPER AND GOODWILL, its dizzying waves of cold wind and warm sun, and its odd mixture of hyper-ventilated shoppers and quietly day-dreaming grandchildren by the trees.

Not only do I hope you'll smile warmly at your friends and family and unexpectedly bear-hug them and wish them well, but I also hope someone surprises you with love and spontaneously unselfish acts when you most need them this season.

I really do love you even though I can't see you and don't know what you look like.

Perhaps that's the way humans love best.

As Shel Silverstein said, since everybody looks the same and has the same status in the dark, maybe God should reach up and turn out the lights once in a while.

Next best thing to that is simply close your eyes for a while and think about what all this season scramble is supposed to be about

--Jim Reed

HE SCURRIED INTO THE BOOK LOFT, BARELY ESCAPING the 1940's time-machine he had invented to transport himself to this specific spot.

He wore a long gray overcoat and a gray suit and a gray vest and a gray-striped tie and atop all this was a Bogart-gray hat just like my father used to wear in the 1940's. Only the difference between this gray hat and the kind of gray hats we see in modern movies is striking. This gray hat worn by this time-traveller exactly matched his body, his head size, his gait. It had been lovingly selected in a department store many years ago, with the help of a salesclerk whose job it was to make sure no man purchased a hat that did not look exactly right for him. The size had to be right. The tilt had to be right. The shade had to be right. The social class to which the man belonged had to match the hat's social class and price. Thus, this hat looked right for this man and this man only.

The slender, hunched time-traveller came in out of the Christmas Eve cold and spoke hesitatingly and clearly and politely, the way your family taught you to speak at the nightly dinner table back in those days before television and video and computer games sucked the family-dinner-conversation tradition right out of several generations of families.

The time-traveller had heard that I might actually know who Willy and Joe were--you know, Willy and Joe--the G.I.'s who were featured weekly in single-panel cartoons by Bill Mauldin, the guys who gave us folks back home during World War Two some idea of what it was like to be in a muddy foxhole with a green second lieutenant in charge of your very life, the guys who showed us how to laugh in the very worst of circumstances.

He was right, of course--I did know who Willy and Joe were, and I always carry copies of their book in the shop. UP FRONT by Bill Mauldin was the first adult cartoon book I'd ever seen when my uncles brought copies of it back home from the war. Even as a four-year-old I enjoyed seeing the cartoons, and later on, when I could read the accompanying words, I wasn't at all surprised--since Mauldin had drawn characters and situations so clearly that you hardly needed to read the captions to know what was going on.

The time-traveller was excited and grateful, and he pulled out an old leather wallet with a large rubber band around it, extracted $20 from it, carefully replaced the band, and asked me to place the book inside a snapped satchel that hung from his cane.

I never saw more than one arm darting from inside his overcoat, and I suspect that he had but one.

The Christmas Eve time-traveller tipped his hat and disappeared onto the gray street that matched his gray outfit, got into his time machine, and went back to those days when he knew why he was fighting and who he was fighting, when he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that his enemy was worthy of defeat.

I worried about this frail specter for a while, since the streets of Birmingham are not always friendly toward gossamer figures with canes bearing the post-war years upon their hunched backs.

But I like to think that the time-traveller is sitting safely in a nice old armchair near a warm fire this chilly Christmas Eve, reading about Willy and Joe and remembering a few chuckles he and his buddies shared so many years ago

--Jim Reed

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS DECORATION OF THE SEASON to be broken was broken, I guess, by me. It happens every year.

Sometime during the process of getting everything done getting everything just right getting each and every little item in place if you hold your mouth just right, something gets broken.

In this case, the tinkly shattering of a glass ball caused a momentary lapse of movement.

Five-year-old Hallie stopped decorating the tree, her brow furrowed as she looked up at me first of all to see if she was suspected of having anything to do with the breaking and second of all to see if her Grammy (my wife) would scold me, for it was clear that I was the culprit.

Grammy was careful not to moan too loudly, although she always cringes when any of our old, old decorations are maimed.

We have a stack of broken Christmas ornaments waiting patiently for Santa's workshop makeovers, and I actually believe that this coming year will be the year I'll try to repair what I can repair.

However, the hollow glass ball that I just dropped on the hardwood floor is not repairable, so we'll just have to try to remember it fondly and pay attention instead to the wide array of family keepsakes that now swing from the greenness of our tall tree, the tree that's getting harder to decorate each year since we're getting older and the ornaments are proliferating.

That's one reason why Hallie is helping us this year, just as granddaughter Jessica used to help. The young ones are here to delight in the project, to brag that they helped decorate two trees this time, and to learn the process for the times when we'll be too old to do it all ourselves, Grammy and me.

Anyhow, this ritual we carry out each and every year is indispensable to Christmas, and the challenge is, we never get it exactly right--daughter Margaret would prefer we have a REAL tree instead of a manufactured one, Hallie would prefer we have three more trees to decorate, Jessica would rather the trees come pre-decorated so that she can get down to the business of anticipation, grandkids Rebecca, Reed and Ryan would rather just let us entertain them with Christmas cheer all year round, and grandkids Robby and Becky would just as soon get on with opening the gifts now, if you please. Shelby Reed is still forming an opinion.

I hope you have something nice to keep from breaking this season, some fragile object or fragile memory that you can hold onto while gazing glazed-eyed at the glowing starry sky this winter

--Jim Reed

THANKSGIVING IS JUST ABOUT THE ONLY HOLIDAY LEFT WHEN SOMEBODY ISN'T WORRIED ABOUT GIFTING AND BEING GIFTED. You know what I mean: Thanksgiving is the voluntary holiday, the holiday that doesn't require that you give a gift to someone just because they're kin or ken or acquaintance, or just because they are on the Reciprocal List, or just because you're supposed to.

Also, Thanksgiving doesn't make folks feel those silent and guilty thoughts: Just how much did they spend on this gift? How much should I spend? This is something I'd really like, but will they like it just because I do? Am I buying this because it made me feel good all inside and because I love this person, or am I giving it because of what I might get in return, or because this person has some sort of godawful power over my life? Will this relative fake a smiled thank-you when you give your gift, then silently file it away in the basement a month later? Will that friend even open the book you autographed and spent an hour selecting, much less read it? And so on.

You can always tell when somebody has dropped by the convenience store on the way over and picked up something to give, just as you can always tell when someone really and truly thought long and hard about what to give you, spent some time actually selecting it and doing some homework on your likes and dislikes in order to pick just the right thing.

This used to be a simple pleasure.

What would it take to make Christmas more like Thanksgiving?

When we were kids, we would go through one of those S.H. Kress boxes of 50--count 'em--50 different Christmas cards to find the one that exactly fit the personality of the recipient. It was no bargain to buy a box of 50 cards that all looked alike. Too impersonal. And we would never have dreamed of having our names engraved. We felt that the personally-opened, intimately signed, carefully-licked-and-sealed card would surely be treasured more by the receiver than those to-whom-it-may-concern greetings that required not one whit of personal attention. The message that was pre-printed inside our S.H. Kress cards was all-important, too. Not too gushy. Not too cutesy. And not too "Christmasy" (mustn't offend the heathens and pagans on our list).

Yes, we spent a lot of time on small things in those days, and we really believed with all our hearts that those who received cards from The Reeds would instantly recognize and cherish the personal touch and the tailored-and-hand-selected charm with which the process had taken place.

What would it take to make Christmas more like Thanksgiving?

I'm sure Santa would approve.

Thank goodness we still have Thanksgiving. We just get together and eat ourselves silly and try to look deeply at loved ones for signs of further aging and hints that somewhere still inside those now older bodies still lurks the small kids who immersed themselves not in TV and video games, but in the sheer and tiny joys of making sure each gift was exactly from the center of the heart

--Jim Reed

The month of May is a perfect time for looking back at my Christmas Eve notes and trying to reconstruct what it was like to drive the sparse streets of Birmingham toward certain home on that confusing and ever-memorable day.

Christmas Eve 2:30 pm and headed home from the book loft, heading home via what we in Birmingham call Southside, the resurrected vestiges of White Flight from the City some 35 years later, after all the Civil Rights Wars left the streets and went underground.

A woman moves past my van, smoking away in her closed-windowed car, a golden hairpin shining out against the gray misting afternoon.

It's just cold enough and gray enough and wet enough in the gray and wet town, to make this feel like Christmas--this Christmas and oh so many previous Christmases in my half-century of remembrances. In my thoughts, I drive past Najjar's Bargain Center, a store frozen in time with a diminutive octogenarian owner still sitting alone inside and listening to Talk Radio and surrounded by merchandise that's been marching in place unmoved since the 1960's, an incredible piece of living history both happy and sad.

That Christmas Eve feeling of needing to get home and get safe before anything bad happens this good and blessed day.

One day Santa Claus himself came into my loft, wearing coveralls and a bright white beard. He ambled down the hall, picked up a book called ALABAMA SCRAPBOOK, turned to my story "Private Lessons" and began to read it aloud to me and the customers. It was the first time I'd ever heard my own words being read back to me. Santa disappeared after a while, but I still see him now and than, encouraging other writers. Is he my Muse? I dunno. Things like this just happen to me and don't seem to make any sense at all, which is why they are so real to me, in contrast to the forced sensibilities I'm required to live within most of the time.

At home at last on Christmas Eve. Everybody is sane and healthyKNOCK ON WOODand that's what I need...happy healthy family in happy healthy relationships, and ain't we all so very damned blessed this spiritfilled day?

But in my mind, homeless people stockingcapped against the cold and the stares, roam under the viaducts seeking territory and tepid warmth. Dr. Tim comes by the loft to sell me something that I don't buy, but he buys a copy of my book DAD'S TWEED COAT anyhow. Why do I feel guilty about that? What is the gift I can give him? Perhaps the words will sink inside him and cool his tortured brow, this de-frocked physician who drifts in and out of my life along with all the other Dickensian characters.

Jim the computer guy proudly installs my new computer book program and seems happy for a change with himself as he leaves for Christmas home. A man is desperate to find a Star Wars poster for his son and is unhappy with himself and his wife for not finishing up a project for said son. I take his check. He leaves happy but sad.

And so I drive to the Christmas Eve home of my today family and long for the 50-year-ago Christmas Eve family that can never be Humpty Dumptied together again unless I decide to bring them back to life and love on pages such as these

--Jim Reed

OHMY! ANOTHER HOLIDAY HAS COME UPON US!

Soon, Christmas will be a jumble of memories: stockings filled with useless fruit and lots of sweet and crunchy food, relatives relatives relatives, friends, not-so-friends, nerve-shattered kids, sugar-rush post-Santa-partum-blues kids everywhere--looking under the beds & trees for just one more gift.

A trip to Chiefland Florida and a carload of stuff I just had to pick up on the Christmas trip, thrift stores in Englewood Florida, Greek restaurants in Venice and Tarpon Springs Florida, billboards out of Orlando advertising an all-nude-waitress truck stop (maybe next time, maybe never, Tuscaloosa Alabama and more relatives, real barbeque in Birmingham, foodfoodfood at Ma's house, a new microwave which means everything in Ma's house has to be moved two feet over since everything is connected to everything else, from my wife a new toy for me to play with and a new shake-it-and-snow-will-come-down-upon-it globe from my daughter who just knows how I love tacky stuff, other gifts from insincere as well as sincere family and extended family members. Wonderfully muggy cool and overcast Christmas day--the kind of Christmas day only Alabama provides regular as clockwork seemingly all of my life. Christmas cards with family pictures and Xeroxed personal what-we-did-all-year enclosures, an occasional poignant or depressing note from lonely friends, foodfoodfood, cold South Alabama air all the way down to below Tallahassee and suddenly warm Florida air as if the rest of the world doesn't know what cold means.

Too many people everywhere in Florida--what an overpopulated state!--except for Cedar Key, which just goes on being Cedar Key with 1000 people year after year after year, stale-smelling and poor-Florida-building-code motels that are cozy anyhow since we're away from workworkwork.

Oranges and lemons growing in the yards of relatives--ain't it great! and lots of love and confusion everywhere, booklooking in Dunedin in a go-as-many-places-as-you-can-in-what-little-time-you-have mode, the Dali museum in St. Petersburg--what a disturbed genius!, sad news everywhere about illnesses and deaths and separations and dysfunctions, good news everywhere about births and passages and honors and lovings, and just plain exhaustion afterwards, when we gotta get back to doing whatever it is we're supposed to be doing here in the Deep South.

Just hope you had as much vigor and fun and despair mixed together during your holiday

--Jim Reed

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THANKSGIVING, VERBENA, ALABAMA

Remembering this Christmas week will shortly become just another way to travel time.

Here I am, trapped in a year that produced just about everything that life has to offer--and dish out. And I'm still here. Amazing.

And you're still there, I hope. By the time you read this, Birmingham, Alabama will have had a couple of cold nights (we have nice Summery weather for Christmas). Firecracker maniacs will have expended mucho gusto outside our home for days prior to and after Magic Midnight. The ghost of Guy Lombardo will have been summoned via video to admiring tribes around the continent.

Somebody will have gotten quite tipsy (the cutesy word for drunk) and done something embarrassing. Some newspaper will report the name of the first baby born in town, thus making the second and third ones seem a little less important to all but doting families.

And maybe somebody will have worn a lampshade and done something silly and fun.

SPEAKING OF TIME TRAVEL: Driving to work this morning, I listened to old Bob Elliott and Ray goulding recordings from the last few days of 1959. They, too, talked about Christmas and New Year's resolutions unkept and unkempt, boring activities their audience would participate in on New Year's Eve, and other rather unrelated but lifelike bits of information. It's comforting to know that we've survived some fifty years beyond the Fifties, when everybody thought Doomsday near.

Ray Bradbury says the fact we've had the means for self-destruction and haven't used them is in and of itself reason to feel renewed hope for the human race. I just wish we had more than a thread to hang on, though.

But take heart. As Carl Sandburg said, "A baby is God's opinion that the World should go on." Let's applaud that first and then the second and third babies and so on, and hope they'll have a bit more sense than those who visited before them.

Try to visit with a young child or an old relative for a few minutes before the Season's over. Both have a much more realistic view of the world's possibilities & limitations than we do. Hug someone, quick, and make the thread that much thicker

--Jim Reed

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IS IT GOING TO BE A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR YOU? I hope so. If wishing could make it so, we'd all have a good one-if it was up to me, of course. Which it isn't. At least as far as I know. Existential, eh? Anyhow, HAPPY NEW YEAR and all like that. As my old Southern Georgia swamp friend Pogo used to say, "There's no future in bein' dead." A sobering enough thought. Should serve to make us try to do the best with what time we have.

Away with the eggnog. It's gone to my head, or wherever it is that bookies do most of their pondering.

Thanks for buying this book or checking it out of the library. I hope you like my words and I hope we exchange nice words, too. Drop a note.

The weather is chilly for us: 33 degrees with 97% humidity and about 55% humility. I'm thankful for all the well wishes and good wishes and kind notes I've received this season. It do make my humbug heart feel better for a bit.

Whenever I get an irate urge to feel cranky, I just look back at all the kind words I remembered to jot down during the year and all the kind notes others have sent me, and I get warmed up again and plunge ahead

--Jim Reed

WE'RE HANGING ONTO OUR CHRISTMAS memories as long as possible. The tree, though drooping, is still up.

Our wedding anniversary is on the 6th of January, so we aren't really through celebrating the season, anyhow. Any excuse for holding on to the good feelies.

I got an electric train for Christmas that will become part of the permanent decor of the season each year, along with other wonderful toys we've saved through the seasons.

Whenever I catch myself feeling low, I hum or whistle a Christmas tune and get a small but warm re-charge while eyes of those around me roll skyward. Life can be sweet. Hope yours is

--Jim Reed

WELL, CHRISTMAS RUNS HOT AND COLD DOWN HERE in the Deep South. The temperature in Birmingham will be below 20 for the next two nights--that's cold for us Alabamians! Will Phil (my philodendron here at the book loft) make it through the night? Will our pet finch make it? Will the water pipes freeze despite the fact that we'll be practicing the trickle-down theory of thawed plumbing flow all night?

Will I be able to get the fire started without kindling, just to make us think we're Christmas-warm in our 95-year-old house? Or will I chicken out and place a particle board log under the real one to make it burn well?

Will my daughter's car start in the morning, or will I have to grumble-start it myself? Will I think of all those people who are roughing it in a deep winter and multi-feet of snow and surviving, when our greatest challenge weatherwise in Alabama is to survive the tornadoes and not overheat our bodies and our radiators the other nine months of the year?

And will I have just the right book to cuddle if we get frozen in by one inch of snow (really- that's about all it takes to shut down the city here under the right conditions)?

Of course.

Even though I've thousands of books in my loft, I do sneak a few home every night to rummage and ruminate through. Maybe tonight will be catalog night. I'll look at what other people might be buying for themselves. Nothing in the catalogs will be as oddly divergent as the titles at REED BOOKS. Can you believe the variety? Which ones do you believe never existed? The sad truth is, they all did-hopefully, do--exist, but nobody loved them well enough to keep them handy, so they wound up here.

With any luck, you'll come to the loft and want to take some of them home for Christmas.

We the bookguardians wait patiently.

Sometimes, impatiently, too. Lord, give me patience--and I want it right now

--Jim Reed

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CHRISTMAS IS OVER BUT IT LINGERS IN MY GUT: THERE ARE things in my belly that won't get digested for days, there are things I've eaten that were wonderful going down and irritating once inside, there are things eaten that did not want to be eaten, there are digested goodies that enjoyed the pleasure they gave me as much as I enjoyed vaporizing them.

Now that the orgy is over, what to do with the other 350-plus days? In other words, what am I doing after the orgy?

Well, resolutions may be in order for millions of us, but I tend to shy away from saying them too loudly for fear someone will actually hold me to them. If I were a really above-board hale fellow well stuffed, I'd say this is what I will do in the new year:

1. Never eat anything that has a personality.

2. Walk rather than jog to the bathroom in the middle of the night (keeps me from stumbling and hurting myself);

3. Climb 27 stairs to work each day. There's no other way to get here, actually, so I'll probably keep that one.

4. Never eat more than I can hold.

5. Never hold more than I can eat.

6. Watch babies at play (at a safe distance).

7. Try to avoid changing a diaper.

8. Try not to give anybody any advice about anything unless absolutely begged to (I am beginning to attain wisdom in old age).

9. Bite my tongue or otherwise find a way to look interested while staying silent during conversations. This is great to do in the family, since I've yet to find anybody who wants me to advise or critique what they're saying. They seem content to see me as silent and eccentric father or father-in-law or son or brother or cousin or nephew or grandfather. They'll never notice that I've remained silent during their discourse on the right wines or the third DVD player or the right pre-kindergarten.

10. Go everywhere via a different route just to alert the senses. This, too, is easy, since I've always done it, to the consternation & frequent embarrassment of my family.

11. Try not to write any of this down, for fear someone will ask me why I didn't keep these resolutions or make more noble ones.

So, please as soon as you're through reading this, ignite this page or use it for fishwrapper (better still, fruitcake wrapper).

Hope you can come up with equally dishonorable resolutions for the year. If not, keep it quiet and reduce the irritation. Hope you are wishful and I wistful and wiser and happier during this, the newest and only Year we have

--Jim Reed

DOWN ALL THE YEARS WE GO AND WHERE WE STOP EVERYBODY KNOWS but nobody wants to talk about it too much.

Youknowwhatimean? The New Year will be exactly like the Old Year except for the parts that are different. The future isn't what it used to be, anyhow. Those old Orwellian and Wellsian visions of the future have passed now and it looks as if the future--which is now--is even goofier than Herbert George Wells and George Orwell envisioned. They must be glad that they didn't live to see it--that is, they would probably be glad they didn't live to see it if they could see it now. Following this?

Have to keep you on your toes, you know.

If the future has already passed, does that mean tomorrow is the present or the past? Well, depends on how you look at it. Tomorrow will be yesterday the day after tomorrow and all that.

Now, what was I saying?

Oh, yes! New Year's Resolution Time is upon us. What are yours? Here are some that come to mind:

1. I promise not to say "you know?" more than twice a day.

You know?

2. I promise not to say "wow! more than twice a day. Notice how middle-aged people do that all the time now? Especially when talking with anyone younger?

4. I promise to treat each visit with a relative or friend as if it were the last time I will ever see them. Too many people leaving me these days.

5. I promise to lose as many pounds as I gain. For me, that's progress! You know? Like, wow!

6. I promise to reveal to the world that Pee Wee Herman is the love child of Pinky Lee and Jerry Lewis. Unless, of course, I am within earshot of an attorney for Pee Wee Herman or Jerry Lewis or Pinky Lee.

7. I promise to eschew obfuscation.

8. I promise not to use a simple word when a vague or long one will do--except when I am writing.

9. I promise to hug any of my kids who will let me, each time I see them. And my grandkids. And my wife. And you, too, maybe.

So, there's my list of things I'll probably forget I vowed by the time the new year crashes onto my head. I mean well, anyhow

--Jim Reed

WORKWORKWORKWORKWORKWORKWORKWORKWORKWORKWORK.

That's what so many of us entrepreneurs do these days.

When we're not working we're talking about work.

In the case of book-types (bookies) like me, when we get hoarse and can't talk books anymore, we read and fondle them.

We have double trouble in our house, though. Not only is the male of the house in business for himself (meaning no bosses!), but the female is also an--gasp!--entrepreneur.

Most other households seem to have just one entrepreneur and the other person gets a regular salary (meaning, the other person has a boss and punches a time clock).

Cash flow is a bit more stable in those cases.

Not so, us.

Each business has its own cycle. My wife's business has either a bunch of money coming in all at once, or none at all. Same with mine. During months that are the none-at-all type, we cringe and whimper. Other months are better, and are spent catching up from the slumps.

When you're in business this way, you're scared not to work, so we, as I said, workworkworkworkwork.

Except for this past weekend.

Couldn't take it anymore. Had to get our of town, if for just 24 hours.

In the nick of time, a couple just three hours away on Lookout Mountain (in both Tennessee and Georgia) called and invited us to drive up and spend the night. We jumped at the chance, and did. A true Christmas gift!

Only when we got there, we found ourselves talkingtalkingtalking about workworkworkworkwork.

That's because they, too, are both entrepreneurs and work all the time.

It was comforting to share ideas and gripes through the night, and we all passed out from exhaustion in the wee hours of the morning after talkingtalkingtalking till we were hoarsehoarsehoarse.

On the way back from our extremely nice 24 hours in the countryside, my wife made the apropos comment of the day. "It's comforting to know that things don't get cleaned up all the time in somebody else's house, too."

She was referring, of course, to one of the signs of maturing and workaholing: we older, busier folks just don't spend as much time trying to make everything perfect anymore. The paint peels an extra year or two before we begin to worry about it now; dust gets a bit thicker before anyone gets inspired enough to grab a rag; and things grow a little greener in the refrigerator before the cleaning urge hits us.

Our dear friends are in the same fine mess we are in!

To insure their freedom from bosses, they work themselves into a happy frenzy, just as we do.

Each time I'm laboring into the night, trying to keep up with the requests and fill the orders, each time my eyes are strained and my patience wears thin, I try to catch myself.

All I have to do to get back on an even keel is remember what it was like to have bosses all those years.

Then, a kind of transcendental peace flows over me and I grin and sigh and get back to work after giving thanks to that great big Head Bookie in the sky who knows the big secret, just as I do: Life is an open book.

And some of us are here on Earth to make sure the books survive even if we don't

--Jim Reed

IT'S AN ODD LITTLE NEIGHBORHOOD, THIS avenue where my book shop is located. Inside my particular building is housed more books than any other old book place in Alabama--or Mississippi, for that matter. Reed Books has hundreds of boxes of books all numbered for ease of location. In addition to that, there are thousands upon thousands of books stacked and piled and encased in the enormous rear of the store where customers don't go...waiting for sorting and fondling and computerizing and selling. And, of course, there are thousands upon thousands of books, magazines, newspapers, scrapbooks, clippings, artifacts, posters, advertising signs and toys stacked precariously around the main part of the store...items on the floor, under the tables, leaning against the walls and the chairs, piled high not quite to the top of the 16-foot ceilings, where you can see circus posters and pinup calendars and three-dimensional movie stand-ups and everything from large iron ducks to a seven-foot-high Santa Claus, and everything else from a large stand-up of Willie and Joe to a 60-year-old life-size nude mannequin who has held up quite well over the years.

There's an entire post office in my store--a remnant of my grandfather's general store--and there's an old switchboard and old telephones and an old 16-inch turntable that used to be used in radio stations and movie projectors and grammar school desks and showcases garnered from old businesses going out of business. There are even trophies from dance contests and VFW conventions, a six-foot-high Sinclair Oil sign, stuffed animals perched high above your head if you dare to look up, and of course there are books you just don't see anyplace else around here, books long since forgotten by the oldtimers but instantly remembered once they happen to walk in: hundreds of turn of the century dime novels, thousands of mass market paperbacks from the golden age: 1939 to 1959, cases of books signed by their authors--from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD to a Kate Douglas Wiggin title--hundreds of old calendars from every year you can imagine, hundreds of pulp magazines from the 19-teens to the 1950's, military manuals from various popular and non-popular wars, ocean liner menus, early books on how to build and fly airplanes, pop-up Little Black Sambo books and other politically-incorrect items, mixed gaily with funny comic books from the days when comics were comic.

And, of course, there are all our fictional and actual heroes mixed together all over the place: Little Lulu, Wonder Woman, Nancy and Sluggo, Lucy and Desi, John Wayne, Pogo Possum, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and Fred Allen and Jack Benny, Ray Bradbury, Moby Dick, George Bernard Shaw, C.S. Lewis, Albert Einstein, Moms Mably, Anais Nin, Joe Louis, Shirley Temple, Pee Wee Herman, Billy Graham, Steve Allen, Fannie Flagg, Martin Luther King Jr., J.R. Williams, Laurel & Hardy, and on and on and on. Wherever there is something deadly serious--such as MEIN KAMPF--there is something frivolous or joyful or silly to offset it--such as Charlie McCarthy and Red Skelton.

And of course Harpo Marx is within 2 feet of Karl Marx.

This is the kind of place you call a book store simply because it's easier to describe. Actually, it's JIM REED'S MUSEUM OF FOND MEMORIES, a place where I can hide out from the aggression of the streets and the violence of the corporations, a place where I can look across the room and see Aldous Huxley and Marilyn Monroe right next to Rock Hudson and Gregory Peck, and enjoy the benevolent presence of them all, and actually get to understand them better through their images and their written words than I was ever able to appreciate them in person.

Just now, a little boy came in, looked up at me with wonder in his eyes, and said, "Hey, Santa Claus!" I told him that I wasn't Santa, but that I knew Santa personally, but this did not faze him. He decided that I was the real Santa Claus, so I took him around to the other side of the store and showed him my Scrooge door-knocker that says, "Bah, Humbug...Merry Christmas!" when you lift the knocker handle. He was suitably impressed and went away promising to be good all year round.

Hey, this is my stuff, and this is my living room, and this is my life, and if you don't like old things, maybe you shouldn't have bought this book--it's going to be old any day now

--Jim Reed

DRIFTING DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO THE NEW YEAR this Christmas season, so I guess it's time to make a few (ugh! gasp!) resolutions--just so I'll be able to snap back and itemize a list of them in case somebody asks. Let's see...what do I so resolve to do?

1. I resolve to floss daily. My wife points out that I already do that, so let's make it a bit more specific: I firmly and hereby strongly resolve to floss only my own teeth daily. I will not floss anybody else's--at least during the new year. OK, to you and other casual commentators, this may not sound like much--but that's because you haven't considered the possibilities. What if a beautiful and famous woman asks me to floss her teeth? What an opportunity I'll have to show my courage and character by refusing. Or what if somebody offers me a million dollars to floss their teeth? In this case, of course, I'm reasonably confident that my wife will encourage me to break my resolution, thus giving me an excuse to lapse once more into mediocrity, albeit a more fiscally comfortable mediocrity.

2. I promise not to fold, spindle, tear or mutilate anything. Unless, of course, some written instructions forbid me to do so. As long as nobody gives me such an order, I shall refrain.

3. I will not join the Iraqi Army unless things get really bad. I'm willing to negotiate, naturally, but only under duress.

4. I will not serve on any committee to which I am named, unless said committee is called THE COMMITTEE ON PROCRASTINATION AND OBFUSCATION, in which case I will gladly put off making a decision about accepting membership which, in the case of this particular committee, should be perfectly acceptable. I think.

I will consider--but not quickly and not seriously--suggestions about other resolutions, and I promise to give you my answers by December 31.

Meanwhile, I hope that your resolutions are at