WhatFinger


Jimmy Reed

[em]Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher. This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled [strong]The Jaybird Tales[/strong]. Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).[/em]

Most Recent Articles by Jimmy Reed:

A Wretch Like Me

If ever a man understood grace — the undeserved, unearned mercy and favor of God — it was John Newton. After several voyages across the Atlantic, aboard sailing ships packed with terrified human beings, bound to one another and soon to be bound for life to slave owners, he experienced the impact of God’s grace, became an evangelical Christian minister, and spent the rest of his life striving to repay God’s grace by preaching about the opposite of slavery: freedom through salvation.
- Monday, February 6, 2012

Hunnud Pussent

In reading and writing, I found rhyme and reason, but not in arithmetic. As best he could, my mentor, Jaybird, explained it. Although illiterate, he had been taught by life’s most demanding teacher: experience. His wisdom filled many gaps in my education.
- Sunday, February 5, 2012

Who’s Colored?

My boyhood mentor and best friend, the old black man called Jaybird, had a wry sense of humor, the kind that derives from worldly wisdom and keen insight into human nature. In a joking but serious way, he often pointed out that no racial friction would exist in this country if folks of different color didn’t resort to prejudice, bigotry, and hatred, but learned to laugh at each other’s frailties, foibles and follies.
- Monday, January 30, 2012

Second Chance From V. J.

That woman despised me for returning my date to the girls’ dormitory after curfew. She even went so far as to write me a sarcastic note stating I was no longer allowed to enter the dormitory, and if a co-ed living in Quigley Hall would stoop so low as to go out with me, I would have to send another man to fetch her, someone whose conduct was “more becoming a gentleman of the university.”
- Saturday, January 28, 2012

Justice Will Be Served

Access to money and power leaves few men uncorrupted. Consider the perpetual panoply of political prevaricators who prance before voters when elections are in the offing, describing themselves as dutiful doers of the people’s will. Lexicographer Samuel Johnson more accurately described them as “unnumber’d suppliants” who “crowd Preferment’s gate, athirst for wealth, burning to be great….”
- Monday, January 23, 2012

The Evil Thereof

One-eyed Deacon hauled cottonseed to the oil mill. Between trips, he helped me with my after-school chore — hammering together the metal ties and buckles that were used to bind cotton bales.
- Saturday, January 21, 2012

Neither Should He Eat

At the beginning of each semester, I instruct college freshmen to write a composition entitled “My Game Plan.” I use it to diagnose writing strengths and weaknesses and to learn about students’ plans for the future.
- Monday, January 16, 2012

Contemporary Caleb

Old Testament Caleb was a courageous warrior. When Moses sent him and eleven others to inspect the Promised Land, he returned fully confident that the Israelites could drive out the iniquitous inhabitants, a view not shared by his cowardly cohorts. Caleb exhorted his tribesmen not to fear the overwhelming odds, but the Israelites ignored him and believed the wimps.
- Saturday, January 14, 2012

Ablation!

Ablation is a scary procedure, especially if what is being ablated is the heart. When my cardiologist said I had an abnormal heart rhythm — atrial fibrillation, he arranged an appointment with a colleague whose specialty is ablation.
- Monday, January 9, 2012

Once You Get The Hang Of It

This story has been around awhile, but bears repeating. Satan was auctioning off some of his tools. Among them were hatred, jealousy, envy, laziness, pride, arrogance, greed, lust, and violence. He raked in premium prices from buyers eager to use the tools in dealing with other people.
- Saturday, January 7, 2012

You Tell Me

On Sunday, the first day of the New Year, the preacher encouraged us to be optimistic in 2012. Ask yourself, he said, in your life what deflated optimism the most last year?
- Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Inside Tips

Comedian Redd Foxx’s instructions to his barber were always the same: “I want it fried, dyed, and laid to the side.” My barber, Larry, wishes his customers were as easy to please as Redd Foxx. Some of his homeliest patrons think they are God’s gift to women and demand that he perform countless cosmetological contortions so that their coiffures will complement their image of themselves as charming Casanovas.
- Saturday, December 31, 2011

Do The Hard Part First

New Year’s resolutions are easy to make, but as the months roll by, keeping them becomes increasingly difficult.
- Monday, December 26, 2011

Good Will Toward Men

That cold Christmas Eve, Jaybird leaned on the porch rail, looking across land he had worked for seventy years. In moon-blanched stillness, the stubble-strewn fields were taking their winter rest.
- Saturday, December 24, 2011

The Final Journey

Three wise men, kings from the east, journeyed to a distant land, found Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem by following a star, and laid precious gifts at His feet. Their names were Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar.
- Monday, December 19, 2011

Please God

My college composition students and I share a problem: How to use commas in a consistently correct way. Of all marks of punctuation, it is the one most subject to personal interpretation. Even though I’ve taught writing for many years, and have gone around for decades telling folks I am a writer, commas still confuse me.
- Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Prince Of Peace

I have always been awed by Albert Einstein’s contributions to the advancement of mankind, especially in the field of physics. Although he was one of the most prolific intellects who ever lived, he attributed his successes, not to his intellect, but to his inexhaustible curiosity. He once said, “I have no particular talents; I’m just inquisitive.”
- Monday, December 12, 2011

Best Christmas

Purlean and Ug Upton owned a mom-and-pop store, and paid top dollar for pecans. Few folks knew his real name, but one look explained “Ug.” A mule kicked him on the cheek, and his jaws no longer matched, giving his face a frightful twist. The blow also affected one eye, which focused momentarily and then roamed, which scared me stiff.
- Saturday, December 10, 2011

Sleeping Giant

Enduring the Great Depression’s hardships toughened my father. When the price of cotton, the crop his family farmed on fifteen acres, plummeted overnight from one dollar to five cents, he dropped out of school at a young age and joined his brothers in seeking any kind of work, just to keep the family fed.
- Monday, December 5, 2011

Croak, Son, Croak

“Son, why didn’t you sing in church today?” Mama asked. “You have always loved to sing Christmas carols.”
- Saturday, December 3, 2011

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