Table of Contents
FOREWORD
by Marshall Terry
PREFACE:
WARNING: THIS BOOK COULD BE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH
LET’S HAVE ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE!
THE BOOK THAT SCARRY BUILT:
BEING IN PART A DISCOURSE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ROLE OF CHILDREN IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
TEA TIME ON THE GREEN:
OR DOUBLE-BOGEY AT 8:00
THE PROFITS OF PROSE
IF THEY DON’T WIN IT’S A SHAME:
BASEBALL AS MYTH AND EQUALIZER
OF SNAKES AND SEX AND PLAYING IN THE RAIN
MY FIRST DATE
LITERARY WORTH:
A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO ARBITRATION
TROUT FISHING IN TEXAS
ELVIS AND US
ERROR IN, ERROR OUT:
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE IMPACT OF THE WORD PROCESSOR ON COMPOSITION
LOVE AND A BRIGHT MORNING
ENVOY:
WHY YOU PROBABLY WON’T MEET THE AUTHOR
BOOKS BY CLAY REYNOLDS
OF SNAKES AND SEX AND PLAYING IN THE RAIN
Random Thoughts on Harmful Things
by
CLAY REYNOLDS
Stone River Press
Conroe, TX
OF SNAKES AND SEX AND PLAYING IN THE RAIN
Random Thoughts on Harmful Things
These fourteen personal essays by one of Texas' most prolific authors are in turn humorous, literary, informative, nostalgic and all-around enjoyable to read. Written at various periods in his life, they invite us to come to know a man who not only reveals himself as only a poet can do, but who also speaks with profundity and truth about life, its foibles, successes and failures. Whether visiting Aunt Minnie, Graceland, a trout stream, or a secluded book signing, we are always entertained and wiser for the trip.
OF SNAKES AND SEX AND PLAYING IN THE RAIN
Random Thoughts on Harmful Things
Copyright © 2007 by Clay Reynolds
Foreword by Marshall Terry
Cover Photo © Corbis
Author Photo by Judy Reynolds
Cover Design by Kellye Sanford
Electronic Version Cover Art by Ron Miller
First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as provided by the United States Copyright Law.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006938019
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Stone River Press
2468 Southline Road
Conroe, TX 77384
www.stoneriverpress.com
ISBN-10: 0-9728775-5-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-9728775-5-5
eISBN: 978-1-62579-210-5
Electronic Version by Baen Books
http://www.baen.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee!” is revised and expanded from “Foreword: ‘Coffee’.” How the Cimarron River Got Its Name and Other Stories about Coffee. Ed. Ernestine Sewell Linck. Plano, TX: Republic of Texas Press, 1995: ix-xxi.
“Trout Fishing in Texas” is revised and expanded from the original essay by the same title that appeared in Re: Arts & Letters. 17.1 (1991): 49-56.
“If They Don’t Win, It’s a Shame” is revised and distilled from the original essay by the same title that appeared in Palo Alto Review. 1.1 (1992): 56-58, 60.
“The Book that Scarry Built” is revised and corrected from the original essay by the same title that appeared in Studies in American Humor. 5 [new series).4 (1986-87 [pub. 1990]): 280-286.
“The Profits of Prose” is revised from the original essay, “The Profits of Place: Using a Lie to Tell the Truth.” Texas Journal. 19.2 (1997): 48-57.
“On Snakes and Sex and Playing in the Rain” is revised from the original essay, “On Snakes and Sex and Playing in the Rain: Folklore and Popular Fictions.” Southwestern American Literature. 21.2 (1996): 73-80; rpt. Best Texas Writing. Eds., Joe Ahearn and Brian Clements. Dallas: Rancho Loco Press, 1998: 60-70.
“Elvis and Us” is revised from the original essay by the same title that appeared in High Plains Literary Review. 10.3 (1995): 21-35.
Portions of “My First Date” appeared as a fictional piece, “Goodnight . . . Sweetheart” Texas Short Stories. Ed. Billy Bob Hill. Dallas: Browder Springs Press, 1997: 389-403.
“Love and a Bright Morning” is considerably revised and corrected from the original essay that appeared in Concho River Review. 4.2 (1990): 53-65.
FOR BETTY,
WHO ENJOYS TRIMMING MY OPINIONS
FOREWORD
by Marshall Terry
A prolific writer, Clay Reynolds has been in turn a scholar, a critic and a novelist. In his fiction he creates, and recreates, a world he knows with head and heart from growing up in and around Quanah, Texas, finding it rich in human terms.
He brings this same quality to this engaging set of personal essays.
Principled as a person, Clay knows his mind and relishes the sharing of it: what he can’t abide (hokum and humbug) and what he likes and loves (strong hot coffee, baseball).
Reading his introduction to this passionate collection of opinion pieces, I was at first afraid, as he straightens out what in our society does not need labeling as dangerous to our well-being (eggs) and what cries out to be labeled as dangerous (reality TV), that my friend had joined the company of curmudgeons who look at the world and their times and behold it all as folly. But not so; a wise, kind spirit suffuses these pieces. Whether writing of a first date and a father’s counsel or of dear kind old Aunt Minnie who cared for whoever came to her until she passed at 92 or of the first-novel author suffering through a lonely “book signing,” Clay Reynolds is not only forthright but also humane and humorous as he shares his experiences with a reader whose intelligence he respects.
And pulls you right into them. His appreciation of coffee, its modes and occasions, is definitive. And here is one of the best treatment of writers I’ve seen—those who go around thinking of themselves as writers and never write, one-book writers, affected writers, and the steady ones who tough the course. To say nothing—well, quite a bit—of the phenomenon of the Urban Myth (which of course is mostly rural).
A lively, rewarding collection. Take it with a good hot cup of Joe.
—Marshall Terry,
Author of The Memorialist
PREFACE:
WARNING: THIS BOOK COULD BE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH
“A man’s own observation,
what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of
is the best physic to preserve health.”
—Francis Bacon
Not long ago, I read—and not without some alarm—that the federal government is taking action to require a warning label on—eggs. At first, I couldn’t quite believe it. I mean, the “incredible, edible egg” is the most fundamental of foods. Nothing could be more perfect; nothing could be simpler. You can boil it, fry it, scramble it, poach it, coddle it, bake it. It’s the most versatile of foods—most vegetarians will even eat one—and it’s mostly good for you. At least I thought so. But now, I learn, an egg is potentially “harmful to your health.”
Now, I’m aware that any number of foods we commonly spend way too much money for at the supermarket carry warning labels. Poultry and pork, fish as well as many beef cuts come with a standardized label advising the consumer to pay attention to “Safe Handling” rules. These include th
oroughly washing both hands and utensils as well as cooking vessels prior to and after touching the very foodstuff that we’re planning to ingest, to be alert to correct cooking temperatures, and to make sure to properly refrigerate or freeze all leftovers. Similar or even direr cautions are at least implied in the standardized list of ingredients that the government demands be posted in tiny, almost illegible font on all food products we consume. (Curiously, no such warnings are required on fast-food. One should expect that a sign on the door of a chain food emporium might read, “Warning. The grossly overpriced and prefabricated victuals you’re about to consume contain almost no nutritional value but are packed with calories, fat, and other potentially harmful but tasty additives designed to make you swell up like a bullfrog in mating season.”)
Such cautionary labeling makes sense when you’re dealing with canned or processed meats such as the American hotdog or the ever-reliable-in-a-midnight-snack-pinch can of Vienna Sausages, which, my vegetarian daughter assures me, contain ingredients that would revolt a buzzard if the feathered diner could read them; but one does have to wonder if such warnings are necessary on a box of saltines (ingredients: flour, water, salt) or package of frozen green beans (ingredients: green beans, water), orange juice (ingredients: orange juice), a carton of milk (ingredients: milk), or common dairy products such as cheese and butter. Even a loaf of bread—that staff of life commodity—contains a full list of ingredients that, when combined with other warnings, utterly ruins the unparalleled indulgence of a bologna sandwich on white with mayo. Tuna fish, deviled ham, bacon, and even sardines have all been branded with cautionary revelations, much to the detriment of American Epicureanism.
Such notices might be useful to dieters, naturalists, and the odd hypochondriac. There is no doubt that they prevent cancer and complications during pregnancy. They probably prevent vast epidemics of gastroenteritis, indigestion, dyspepsia, as well as guilt-free satisfaction. But warnings on eggs? Are they necessary?
Some people’s cholesterol levels forbid the ingestion of henfruit, but even they must admit that it’s pretty hard to abuse an egg in some manner that would be dangerous. I have heard of folks who inadvertently got a piece of shell in their eyes or stuck in their throats, but I should think such cases are rare. A rotten egg announces itself sulfurously, so there’s small chance that anyone would eat a bad one. The government, however, apparently thinks that even a farm fresh egg represents a sufficiently significant danger to the general population to warrant a stern warning.
This leads me to the suspicion that the federal government may not have enough important stuff to do. God knows, they’re not overworked in the area of international affairs and domestic concerns such as promoting peace, relieving the trade deficit, or writing a tax code an ordinary MENSA member can understand. I’m coming around to the opinion that the only thing in our society that really needs a warning label is the government. It strikes me that almost everything government does is harmful to somebody somewhere, and usually, the harm comes from the proper, rather than the improper use of it.
The business of affixing warning labels to almost everything we eat or use seems to be a sign of illogical extremes if not just plain old “make work.” Perhaps it’s time for somebody to say “cut it out.” Maybe we should admit that it shouldn’t take a college degree for a person to cook and eat an egg in comparative safety and comfort. A teenager who is otherwise too inept to pick up his room or take out the garbage can do it. Actually, as has been demonstrated in televised demonstrations, a monkey can do it. To my knowledge, no monkey, not even a battery of laboratory test monkeys, has been harmed by eating eggs.
Monkeys also eat fruits and nuts. So can people. Is it possible that an orange or a pecan might also be harmful to one’s health? My guess is that the government has already commissioned a study of this likelihood. It would not surprise me to find out that some research institute somewhere has been given millions of tax dollars to conduct experiments and issue a report. Research institutes have to have something to do, and they’re chock full of laboratory animals eager to be tested. Doubtless, in a few short years, every peanut we buy at a ball game will come with a tiny label: Ingredients: Nuts; and every banana we select for our morning’s healthful bowl of bran flakes (Ingredients are listed in about two or three micro-font column inches and include items with syllables such as “xtrose,” “ethylene,” “oroform,” “dio,” “mono,” and “euro” and words such as “processed,” “enhanced,” “reduced,” “hydrogenated,” “laminated,” “galvanized,” and “undercoated”) will contain a label: Ingredients: Banana.
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The real question about warning labels, though, is whether or not they do what they’re intended to do, which is not only to inform but also to keep us from doing the wrong thing. The first such printed prohibitions I ever remember seeing were on mattresses: the famous “do not remove this tag under penalty of law” tag. That was a warning with some teeth in it. I have no idea why that tag is so important to what is today never called a “mattress” but has been renamed a “sleep system,” but I can assure you that every piece of bedding in my house still has its tag intact. So do a number of throw pillows and even the dog’s bed. I don’t have any idea what the penalty for removal might be, but I don’t want to risk arrest by the Sleep System Police, which is, I think, a sub-bureau of the FBI or Homeland Security. If I removed one, I might wind up in prison in Cuba, which officially doesn’t exist, according to the government.
The next warning labels that caught my attention were, naturally, on cigarettes. The “harmful to your health” signal that came out in the late 1960s seemed ridiculous to me, or at least redundant. From the time I was fourteen, my mother had been telling me that cigarettes would stunt my growth. Now, at nearly sixty, I stand just about 6’ tall and weigh none of your damned business; I don’t think they did. I do believe that smoking can cause a variety of dread diseases in laboratory animals, of course. Most of these are catalogued on every pack of smokes I buy. I do know, because it’s a widely publicized fact, that if when some research institute somewhere hooked up a mouse to a machine that forced it to breathe cigarette smoke constantly for twelve-hundred seventy-two straight months—with time off for a sip of coffee or maybe a cold beer—he developed cancer and heart disease and emphysema, and there were complications with his pregnancy. No one wants a dread disease, and certainly no one wants a complicated pregnancy. But I truly don’t think anyone was ever discouraged from smoking because of the warning label.
Other warning signs have been around for a long time. Perhaps the first one in history appears in Dante’s Inferno as the inscription over the gate to Hell. It reads: “All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here.” Like most warning signs, it was put up by the government (something confirmed by the awkward syntax), and like most, it was largely ignored, not only by the average sinner bent on eternal damnation, but by Dante’s narrator, as well. It was meant to frighten any sinners who showed up and demanded entrance, although it seems to me that if they wound up there in the first place, it was probably too late for a warning label to discourage them from coming right on in.
More familiar to most Americans are warning signs on streets and highways; by and large, they are ignored. Posted speed limits are regarded as humorous suggestions for the most part; cautions about wet pavement, icy bridges, and steep grades are generally considered to be replacements for wittier reminders that used to greet motorists:
HARDLY A DRIVER
IS NOW ALIVE
WHO PASSED ON HILLS
AT NINTY-FIVE
BURMA SHAVE
That was a warning with some wisdom behind it. In spite of contemporary replacement warning signs, drivers often take curves at ninety-five, or at least at seventy, even when the sign clearly advises that twenty-five miles per hour is the maximum safe speed. The same thing’s true of exit ramps and parking lot speed limits. People tend to take school zone speed warnings more seriously, though; from time to t
ime, they obey red lights and a few other cautions, especially in areas with a vigilant constabulary eager to increase the city’s revenues. That’s because, like mattress tag removal, a traffic violation is backed up by “penalty of law.” A hefty ticket can certainly be harmful to one’s pocketbook if not to one’s health.
This may be a path the government should investigate more thoroughly. Perhaps we should start fining people who ignore all warning signs. Eat an egg, get slapped with a fifty-dollar fine; smoke a cigarette, pay twenty bucks. Drink a glass of chardonnay while pregnant, add MSG to a plate of sesame chicken, fail to wear safety goggles and heavy work boots while using a power trimmer, use a 100-watt bulb in a 60-watt lamp, put gasoline in a glass container, or use a telephone in a thunderstorm, pony up a C-note for Uncle Sam. If our government and its bureaus are going to spend all this money to warn us about these things—particularly about things only a brainless cretin would try in the first place—we should be forced to abide by them or suffer the consequences. There should be a stiff penalty for flying in the face of sound laboratory-tested evidence. Just think of all the animals that have been sacrificed to prove that these dangers exist.
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