Laughter

By MARGO JOHNSON

The sound of laughter reminds me of our kitchen table when I was young.

My dad was funny, corny, quick, and uncontrollable with his humor. My older sister could have been a Carol Burnett clone. Those two made our meals an experience in unsophisticated laughter.

We talked about some serious things, mainly my parents’ business which was really a family business. My two sisters and I spent many hours in the newspaper office, listening to my mother make sales calls, my dad and the printers in the back shop cussing, shouting over the rumble of the press and the clatter of linotypes.

Our jobs varied from sweeping up metal shavings in the shop, dusting in the office supply area, cleaning the sink and toilet with printers ink in every corner of the stinky Lifeboyd soap smelling bathroom, delivering papers, sleeping on stacks of newsprint, proofreading the stories before going to press, to greeting customers into a world most did not understand.

Laughter was also heard around the office, along with anger, shouting, pleading, complaining, and of course cursing. But very little quiet would ease tension. Even at home, noise was unending when the five of us would sit around the table eating goulash and recalling our day, reporting on how many inches of advertising were on the runsheet, what tragedy would be on the front page of the next edition, and of course, sarcastic jabs that would lead us into a fit of giggles and retorts.

After leaving home, it took me almost 20 years to realize how food tastes better when flavored with laughter.

Simple meals, some tasty, most mundane, would come to life, and would be eaten in a den of laughter, washing away the harshness of hard work, and the fear of failure.