I wish I had known the inventor of the hammock because I would like to shake that gentleman’s hand.

And I’m fairly sure it was a “him” and not a “her,” because women have never sat around much, at any time, in any society. Men, however, have been hanging around since the dawn of time, I’m fairly certain, and I indulged in it here on the beach.

The link, above, seems to indicate that Europeans were unfamiliar with the hammock before the Spaniards got to the tropical isles in the New World, and saw Native Americans there using what was the original La-Z-Boy recliner.

Also, I had forgotten their use among warships, where they were prized for keeping sleeping salaries from being tossed to the deck in rough seas.  And then there’s the camping/hunting concept of the hammock, which gets a person off the ground in areas were predators/bugs might be able to get at a person sleeping on the ground.

Me, I was indulging only the recreational aspect of it.

The condo building here on the beach in Long Beach has a hammock rolled up in a storage area near the door to the sand, and the owners of the place have fixed a couple of chains around two palm trees, and we can hook up the hammock in one minute and be in it the next.

It perhaps is not a good device for social interaction, because a person tends to drowse off while in a hammock. That sense of weightlessness helps. And if the hammock begins to swing a bit … forget about it. Out like a baby.

The only down side of a hammock I can see is that most of us need to get our heads a bit higher than our shoulders or risk neck strain. So you need a pillow or maybe a wadded up garment under your head.

Other than that … a hammock is practically perfect.