Everybody's Got A Laughing Place

Everybody’s got a laughing place

a laughing place to go ho ho.

Take a frown, turn it upside down

and you’ll find yours, I know ho ho.

My Laughing Place is under the cedar tree down front on the Bay .

A place to take my children when they were little.

There’s a picture around here of my father and me and Joe, down there when he was very small, sitting on the beach, digging in the white sand. Nearly fifty years ago.

It has been a frequent place over the years. For whatever. Laugh or cry. Sad or happy. Think. Anticipate. Remember.  

My Laughing Place beckoned several times a day October through January during the risky wait for Cleveland. One nitro walking down, one sitting on the log under the cedar or standing, one walking back up to the house. Don’t need the nitro anymore: MLP cured that.

Several pines are there, tall and block the view from the house but they earn their living, everything that grows down there holds on to the land during storms. Palms and palmettos. Tall reedy grass. Weeds. Water oaks my father planted. 

That deformed old cedar. After every hurricane there’s damage to trim off. This side is bad enough, the Bay side is hideously beaten. But it’s the main thing about My Laughing Place. Stand under. Lean against. Sit under.

Like last night, Sunday evening. Contemplating, meditating. Remembering. Week's Mind. Not melancholy, bit wistful. Sunsets do that. Sunsets, dusk. Who stood there a hundred years ago today? Alfred. Mom and Pop. Maybe my father was there: July 1911 he would have been one month old. Who’ll stand there in July 2111? I’ll be there. My Laughing Place.

Everybody’s got one.

TW+