When I began writing again this past December, my intention was to shed light on good things and good people. Isn’t there enough angst already? Yesterday, an idea lit my corpus callosum like a pin ball machine hitting 100,000 points. I’ll write about the funniest people I know. They are everywhere…you just have to look and listen. So here is a teaser paragraph from the series which I’ll post from time to time, until I exhaust my supply of funny people. Send me stories if you like and refresh my memory.

My brother-in-law lives near the edge of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. His 56-year-old hair lives on the edge of a Bon Jovi mullet mingled with a Lynyrd Skynyrd southern fried hippy frazzle. And his pine barren laid back demeanor along with the 70’s hair masks the fact that he is one of the funniest people I know, while belying his career choice which is distinctly blue-collar lunch-pail, a heavy equipment operator for several New Jersey road and development contractors. Tom asked me to sketch an addition blueprint to his house and asked me to “box out” the southeast corner of the living space next to a staircase. I asked, “What’s that boxed out area?.” Tom replied, “I’m putting my lemon tree there.” Since New Jersey weather won’t support citrus, Tom built his house around a lemon tree. Think it actually produced fruit! Tom had an early sixties vintage Ford Comet in his garage and at various times has driven old pickup trucks worthy of tree-lined dirt roads on Duck Dynasty. Which can be a problem in one of the most densely populated states in the U.S. New Jersey actually requires that your turn signals be visible and that your exhaust not be visible. Continued