I Wanted to Laugh

He looked so comical in that get-up I just wanted to laugh. But laughing at Billy ain’t recommended. He ain’t much for being laughed at, that’s for sure. He can laugh at YOU plenty, but you best not laugh back. He’s been that way since he was a youngun’. I reckon he took after his Grandpa on his daddy’s side. Now there was a mean man. Sure he took care of his womenfolk, if you call not drinking, not swearin’, not chasing around taking good care, but he was never one to abide anyone just a’sittin’. No matter if you’d just hoe’d corn all morning and needed a rest, he expected you to keep moving. And he’d tell you about it, too. Woman, he’d say, get in there and get us some dinner. You best not be slouching around here, not when I’m hungry. Like I said, that man was mean.




But back to Billy. He’d got freshened up and put on his church clothes to go to old Miss Olive’s funeral. But he’d put his work hat on, and his work shoes, and that red bandana in his shirt pocket, and if he didn’t look a sight, I don’t know what does. But I didn’t laugh, least not out loud, else I’d be hearing it from Billy all the way to the funeral home. I just volunteered to polish up his church shoes for him, and to iron him a hanky. He said OK, I though you could take the hint. But then I didn’t know what to do about the hat. He didn’t have but two hats, his work hat and a wool Stetson that he wore to church in the winter time. In the summer he just went bare-headed. But somehow he seemed to think a hat was required at Miss Olive’s service, and that wool hat would sweat him to death in this heat.