The Clown House

 

This house across the creek has always been known as a party house.  When I was a kid, I used to sneak down to the pier to witness the wild goings-on.  The parties always involved a lot of alcoholic beverages and that typically led to late night skinny dipping. And while it was usually too dark to really see anything, it was always a laugh when the drunken adults went skinny dipping in sea nettle infested water.  Because jellyfish stings are bad enough when they brush an arm or leg.  Can you imagine what it feels like wrapped around an intimate body part?  I've never seen anyone try to climb in a boat faster.

 

Of course these parties sometimes started in the afternoon, and they were always loud.  I remember one afternoon, my cousins and I thought it would be fun to shoot off our cap guns while we hid behind the trash cans on Pepop's pier.  We'd shoot off two or three caps then sit and listen.  The partiers turned down their music and said things like, "Did you hear that?" "Is someone shooting?" and then they'd turn the music up and start the party again.  A few minutes later we'd shoot off the cap gun again.  This went on until we got bored with it.  

There was one time that the party was going on in the early evening and there was a lot of foul language going on.  Sound travels pretty well on water and it was not hard to understand fully what was being said.  On that day, Pepop was fed up.  He grabbed his shotgun, marched to the pier, shot into the air and hollered over to the party.

Pepop: Keep it down over there and watch your G- Damn mouth!

Home Owner: Sorry Mr. Jackson!

Pepop: I don't have a problem with having a good time but the G- Damn language has got to stop.  I have my grandkids here and I don't want them listening to that shit!

Home Owner: Sorry Mr. Jackson, we'll watch what we say, Sir.

Pepop: See that you do because I don't want to here anymore of that G- Damned language!

I don't know that he even realized his bad language (but to be fair, he never uttered the F- word).

At some point one of the owners added the clown head speaker to the roof.  The parties eventually subsided, but the clown head is still there (and was actually repainted after the tornado).
While the parties are over, I still have the memories of the screams of the men and women when their naked bodies hit those swarms of jellyfish.