What Would Mark Twain Say?

My father was an optometrist, and everybody knew it because I was always making a spectacle of myself. Dear Old Dad had a collection of glass eyes that he kept in a drawer in his shop, and I purloined one of those glass eyes to showoff to my girlfriend when we were in 7^th grade. I had it worked out in advance, whereupon I asked her if she’d like to see me wash an eyeball. She said yes and I commenced to fake twisting one of my eyeballs loose from its socket and placing it into my mouth, where I sloshed it around, using my tongue to effectively pop my cheeks out, while my girlfriend went, “Eeeew!”

What she did not know was that I had slipped my father’s glass eye into my mouth, and when I felt my eye was sufficiently cleansed, well, I peeked that glass eye out between my lips and my girlfriend let out a squeal that could be heard in Bangor, Maine. She hates me still.  

So naturally, I was drawn to Mark Twain’s frivolous little peace of literature that featured a glass eye, a portion of which we shall share here…

“Now ol’ Miss Jefferson, there was a good soul. Had a glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, who hadn’t any, to receive company in; but it warn’t big enough. Miss Jefferson had a number seven and Miss Wagner was excavated for a fourteen! So when Miss Wagner warn’t noticin’, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up maybe, or out to one side and every which way, whilst t’other one was looking straight ahead as a spy glass.  Oh, one little wink, and that hand-made eye would lay-over.  Well grown people didn’t mind, but it mostly always made the children cry.”

Happily, as an impressionist of Mark Twain, I was able to work ol’ Miss Jefferson right into my programs in full confidence and comfort that my father and my old girlfriend would approve. So just here, as is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mr. Twain…

“Well, she was always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead light on the company empty, and making everybody so uncomfortable, because she never could tell when it hopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have to hunch her and say, ‘Your game eye has fetched loose, Miss Wagner dear’ -and then they’d all have to sit and wait till she jammed it back in again -wrong side out as a general thing. Well, wrong-side out didn’t make much difference anyway, ‘cuz the glass eye was sky blue on the front side and gilded on the back side; so when Miss Wagner would get excited, it would give a whirl, and flash yaller and blue and yaller -No, it warn’t a Jefferson, it was a Hagadon is what it was!” 

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO

To begin, let us call nuclear weapons what they are, “Weapons of Mass Annihilation.” Call them what we will, their very name strikes terror into our hearts as their presence presupposes an unleashing of enough radiation to poison our air, our soil and our seas…

Those of us who might be vaporized in a nuclear blast will be the lucky ones,

as those who survive will face an ignoble end. So let me be the first on my block to shout out, “DRAW DOWN NOW GOTDAMMIT!” The United Nations will follow, including the United States and Russia, also the seven remaining nuclear armed countries, totaling 13,000 nuclear weapons gone forevermore.

We the people are not warring tribesmen in this 21^st century, it is only the politicos who threaten to use nuclear weapons. We can no longer allow politics of power and military technocrats to jeopardize our very existence. We either DRAW DOWN NOW or face the possibility that next month, or perhaps next winter, there very well could be nothing left alive on Earth but cockroaches, and maybe one final performance of Beach Blanket Babylon. Let us make our shout heard loud and clear: “DRAW DOWN NOW GOTDAMMIT!”

When we shout this mantra to guilty parties, and this means you, Mr. Putin, they will hear it coming from every direction, and well, please do accept my congratulations in advance for ridding the earth of this nightmarish threat.

As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mr. Twain: “There has never been a just war, never an honorable war -on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change.  The loud little handful, as usual, will shout for the war. The pulpit will, warily and cautiously, object -at first; the great big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is not necessity for it,’ then the handful will shout louder.
             Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities; thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. There are no holy wars, only alleged holy wars, and I have noticed, God is on both sides in this war, so history repeats itself. All war must be the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.

Well, before I had chance to be in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away.”

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO

What Would Mark Twain Say?

My first visit to a dentist here in the Village of Incline, was to see the intrepid Doctor Cherry away back in 1983. I had heard that he was very good at his craft, and that he sometimes practiced pulling teeth on iron rakes. While in the waiting room I read the license that hung on his wall and was surprised to see that we attended the University of Oregon about the same time. Just then, Dr. Cherry popped his head into the waiting room and said, “It won’t be long.”

You know how it is, when you meet someone about your own age, you always think they look older than you. So I was sure Dr. Cherry must be a few years ahead of me, and when I took a seat in his dental chair I mentioned, “We were at U of O about the same time.”

He looked closely at me, and asked, “What did you teach?”

We became friends, and I learned from Bill, well, let’s let Mark Twain tell us…

“The dentist who talks well -other things being equal -is the one to choose. 
Dr. Cherry for instance, tells anecdotes all the while and keeps his patient so interested and entertained that one hardly notices the flight of time.  For he not only tells anecdotes that are good in themselves, but he adds nice shadings to them with his instruments as he goes along,
and now and then brings out effects which could not be produced with any other kinds of tools at all.  All the while he is plowing down into a cavity and has discovered a nerve that he only visits at intervals, according to the needs of his anecdote.
          The suspense grows and you can hear your heart beat as his voice diminishes to a murmur.  Then with lightning suddenness the “nub” is sprung and the drill drives into the raw nerve! The most brilliant surprises of the stage are pale and artificial compared to this.”

While boating out on Lake Tahoe, Bill would instruct me on what things were best to eat and drink to preserve my teeth. I was tempted to protest, “Sounds like the only way to keep my teeth, Bill, is to eat what I don’t want, and drink what I don’t like.” But I held my tongue. Bill proved to be the best dentist, and even better friend.

As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mr. Twain…

“Dr. Cherry invented an instrument, combining the properties of the screw, the lever, the wedge, the hammer, and the incline plane.
              A patient came in and sat in the chair. One turn of the crank, and out came that tooth! Its roots were hooked under the patient’s right big toe, and his entire skeleton was extracted with the tooth. They had to send him home in a pillowcase. But no matter, Dr. Cherry got a patent on that instrument, yes, as a turkey de-boner.”

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO

What Would Mark Twain Say?

Public speaking is one of mankind’s greatest fears. A young lady once told me that she would rather have a coyote gnaw on her arm than to have to speak in public. This does not have to be. Once you understand that the public does not care to hear a message, but would love to hear a story, it’s like wrapping your dog’s medicine in a treat, and the public speaker need only wrap her message in a story.

        As our mutual friend Mark Twain tells us, “A good story should have a little humor in it. The comic story is English, the witty story is French, and the humorous story is American. The English and French stories depend upon the matter for their effect, where the American story depends upon the manner for its effect. 

Here’s an example of an English story…

In the course of a battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate, proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannonballs were flying, and presently one of the latter took the wounded man’s head off—without, however, his deliverer being aware of it. He was hailed by an officer, who shouted:

“Where are you going with that body?”

“To the rear, sir—he’s lost his leg!”

“His leg? You mean his head, you booby.”

Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking down upon it in great perplexity. 

“It is true, sir, just as you have said. But he TOLD me it was his LEG!” 

(It’s enough to make you want to renounce joking and lead a better life.)

  No, the humorist’s job is merely to show us the good-natured side of the truth. And the humorist is not looking for a laugh. The humorist is looking for a nod of acknowledgment, or the hint of a smile. There is a vast difference between the comedian and the humorist.  The comedian’s job is to make us laugh, and laughter is good for us, it’s like massage on the inside, it’s like money in our pocket because it cuts down on the doctor bills. But laughter, without a thread of philosophy woven into it, is but a sneeze at humor, genuine humor is replete with wisdom. Yes, the humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular. So don’t be afraid to use it while public speaking. Tell your story from the heart, and it will be well received.  

As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mr. Twain: “If a piece of humor is to last, it must do two things, it must preach and it must teach. If done effectively, that piece of humor will last forever -which is thirty years.”

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO

What Would Mark Twain Say?

Yet again, Switzerland is rated as the best country in the world to live. You might want to challenge that ranking, and ask, “Why? In all her years of neutrality all she has given us is a coocoo clock.”

I’ve only been there once myself, and only briefly to ski in the shadow of the Matterhorn at Zermatt, where I fell in love with the top of Europe, the Virgin, the Jungfrau.

Mark Twain had a similar love affair upon his 1891 encounter with the Jungfrau…

“The stranger’s first feeling, when suddenly confronted by that towering and awful apparition, is breath-taking astonishment. It is as if heaven’s gates had swung open and exposed the throne.”

As good fortune would have it, I broke a binding on one of my ski boots, and was sitting in the snow trying to fix it, when a pretty lady stopped by to offer a hand…

“Do you speak French?” she asked.

“No, I don’t speak French, I’m sorry.” I confessed, somewhat deflated.

“Well then, do you speak Italian?”

“No, I don’t speak Italian either, I’m so sorry. 

“Well then, what are you doing in Switzerland?” 

She was so nice and helpful, and I was ready to shoot myself. As it turned out, she spoke just enough English to help me get my binding fixed, whereupon we skied together, shared fondue in the lodge together, and soaked in her hot tub together at the end of a perfect Zermatt day.

Having now lived in the High Sierra for several decades, I can attest to the fact that mountain people are some of the best people on the planet. They love to ski, skate, hike, and are quickest in the world to stop and inquire when someone needs a helping hand. Even I, the Grinch who stole Christmas, has been heard to ask, “Hey, can I help you with those chains?” On the hottest day of one summer, I found myself first in line at a road construction stop, and I asked the lady with the stop sign if I could offer her a cold beer. She smiled and informed me that she was not allowed to drink on the job, but…she just happened to be on break.

I smiled, cracked a cold one for her, and she downed it in one draught. We both had to laugh and regale in the gregarious atmosphere of living in the mountains.

As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mr. Twain…

“This is a good atmosphere to be in, morally as well as physically. After trying the political atmosphere of the neighboring monarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe air that has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come among a people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to be taught in all schools and studied by all races and peoples.”

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO

Have you ever thought that maybe you had special powers but did not know how to tap into them? Well you do. We all do, some to a greater extent than others, and Mark Twain was one of the most gifted of all vision-seers. He was in tune to the possibility of two or more people transmitting the same idea back and forth…

“The world was without an electric telegraph for several thousand years; then Professor Henry, the American, Wheatstone in England, Morse on the sea, and a German in Munich, all invented it at the same time.” 

And now, Elon Musk says Neuralink’s first human patient is able to control a computer’s mouse through thinking. 

The strangest thing that has ever befallen me took place inside the Clemens home in Hartford. We were shooting a documentary, and while they were setting up the lighting in the billiards room I wandered aimlessly through the rest of that beautiful domicile.

As I was about to enter a downstairs bedroom, and was reaching for the doorknob, my hand instinctively withdrew, without my knowing why. I would learn, that was the room where Susy died, his daughter of 24 years of age, his light that went out. My hand knew I did not want to enter that room, when my head hadn’t a clue. I attribute that phenomenon to his guiding hand, not mine.

Mark Twain examined the ephemeral science of mental telegraphy in an essay he published in 1878…

“When it was three in the morning in Nevada it was six in Hartford, where I lay awake thinking about nothing in particular; and just about that time his ideas came pouring into my head from across the continent, and I got up and put them on paper, under the impression that they were my own original thoughts. I am forced to believe that one human mind can communicate with another, over any sort of distance.” 

According to Twain, there are no coincidences, merely instances of mental telegraphy that go unexplained. And so we often hear the common expression, “I was just thinking about you!”

Twain goes on to extrapolate, “The telegraph and telephone are going to become too slow for our needs. We must have the thought itself shot into our minds from a distance. Doubtless the thing which conveys our thoughts through the air from brain to brain is a finer and subtler form of electricity, and all we need do is find out how to capture it.” 

So yes, there are gifted vision-seers. I’m not one, but I believe Mark Twain was one.

As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mr. Twain…

“Thirty yoke of oxen could not have pulled the belief out of me that I was one of the favored ones of the earth, and had seen a vision while wide awake.”

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO

What Would Mark Twain Say?

Having snuggled comfortably into the 19^th century as an impressionist of Mark Twain, I maintain a semblance of comfort through eye-to-eye contact. As an example, I had the luxury of watching this year’s Super Bowl on television with 30 or so old high school pals who shouted their prophesies above the humdrum of the paid announcers…

“Reba McEntire is going to hold that last note like a grudge, just watch! Take the over and watch the game a richer man!” (And he was right.)

Riding a time machine back to 1874 when the super-information highway was the Mississippi River, our mutual friend Mark Twain is said to have been the very first person in the world to apply a typewriter to literature…

“They say The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first partially typed manuscript.  It was a Remington, and it threw me into such fits of profanity that I found I was losing my morals, so I gave it to Howells, who hadn’t any morals.” 

We have to believe that Tom & Huck might look a little different to us today if Twain had access to artificial intelligence. And too, Twain’s good friend William Dean Howells might have been a little better off.

Add to that, Alexander Graham Bell bequeathed to Twain the first telephone in a private residence, but he took it out when he didn’t get any calls…

Personally, I have an aversion to AI because it has no thumbs, and I don’t pay much attention to anything that does not have, or had, thumbs. Besides, with not much time left on this curious planet, I’m confident I can get along quite well without AI helping me close my last chapters.

But getting back to Twain’s experience with the typewriter, he wrote from Florence in 1904, “In the beginning, a type-machine was a curiosity. The person who owned one was a curiosity too. But now it is the other way about: the person who does not own one is a curiosity.” 

Over his professional life, Mark Twain was a heat-seeker. He dreamed of being a titan of industry, and thank goodness he failed in those dreams, or we might never have met A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

As it is, the 18,000 published pages Twain left us are a product of his entrepreneurial excesses and failures. Then there is the dedication of his loving wife and editor, Olivia, and finally, we have the father of American literature.

As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mark Twain…

“After a year or two I found the type-machine was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. He was reluctant, for he was suspicious of novelties, but I got him to believe things about the machine that I did not believe myself. He took it home, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.”

Audio: https://anchor.fm/mcavoy-layne

Were it not for some surprisingly fruitful results that I have observed recently, I would consider online dating to be a laughable endeavor. No, it wasn’t that long ago that Mark Twain gave us Adam’s account of noticing Eve: “If she could quiet down and keep still a couple of minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. In that case I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature – lithe, slender, trim, rounded, graceful; and once, when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was…beautiful.”

Alright, there weren’t many chances for online dating in Adam’s day, nor Twain’s, and I am such a chicken-heart, I could never get up the nerve to try it myself, so I admire folks who can, and do.

Twain met his future wife at a small reunion of the Quaker City excursion, and when scheduled to leave the next morning, he positioned himself on the horsedrawn carriage in such a way that when the horse jumped forward, he fell out onto the driveway and bought himself three more days to recover and woo Livy. Good move. He would say about her after 34 happy years of marriage, and her promotion to glory… 

“She had a heart that was tropically warm. It is in the heart that the riches lie.  A loving heart is riches, riches enough, without it, intellect is poverty, and Olivia possessed a heart of finer metal than any gold that was ever mined or minted. So blessed be that moment that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit. If ever there was a man who had reason to be thankful for divine providence it is I.” 

I once met a girl in a Honolulu Tiki Bar, that I was sure was going to be my future wife. When she asked me what I did for a living I told her I was a clown diver in a water show and rode a tricycle off ten-meter towers into swimming pools. She excused herself to the powder room and I have not seen her since, though I continue to wait for her call…

As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mark Twain, this time from his Diaries of Adam & Eve…

This is Adam at Eve’s grave: “After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; at first I thought she talked too much; but now I am sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. It was better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her, as wheresoever she was –there was Eden.”

Audio: https://anchor.fm/mcavoy-layne

What Would Mark Twain Say?

How nice might it be, were we able to earn voting power. Yes, one vote for everybody, two votes for high school grads, three votes for college grads. The Constitution says nothing against it. As it is, I drive a good friend to the polls and we split the ticket, he being a graduate of Harvard Law School. Under an Earned Voting Law, I would be inspired to go back to college and graduate to pull even with my pal and avoid getting clobbered at the voting booth.

Also, a third-party “Alliance Ticket” might be helpful. This party would be dedicated to getting things done through cooperation and compromise sans animosity or acrimony.

So what might Mark Twain have to say? 

“I don’t vote for politicians, it only encourages them. Well look at it, look how difficult it is today to find a politician with morals and ethics high enough, that he will stay bought.” 

Okay, so let us safeguard our enfranchisement. How ‘bout a simple competency test on governance to weed out those who don’t know the Constitution from the Lord’s Prayer. What keeps our republic afloat is good citizenship. We all need a moral compass to help us reject exclusionary and violent ideologies. Do I hear a second? Yes, Mr. Twain…

 “In political independence I have found a spiritual comfort and a peace of mind quite above price.” 

Agreed, a third-party Alliance Ticket will serve to inspire our body politic to become a more ethical and moral institution. We might need the help of an army of historians, educators and journalists to lift us out of our present predatory two-party malaise, for we live in a house divided, and we know what Abe Lincoln had to say about that…

Our mutual friend Mr. Twain has some words of caution that might be helpful in the organizing of an Alliance Ticket…

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” 

Also, there is this Twain caveat, “To create man was a quaint and original idea; but to add the sheep was tautology.”  

So whom might we dragoon to head-up this Alliance Ticket? I would do it myself, but I have this carbuncle that is just killing me. No, we shall leave the filling of these wide-open seats to you, the gentle reader. Meanwhile, let us accept our present system as an obligation to do what is just, and kind.

Finally, as is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mark Twain…

“No country can be well governed unless its citizens keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. This atrocious doctrine of allegiance to party plays directly into the hands of politicians of the baser sort, and doubtless it was borrowed, or stolen, from the monarchial system.” 

Audio: https://anchor.fm/mcavoy-layne

What Would Mark Twain Say?

Back when the Niners were training pre-season at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, I would ride my bike over there to watch them scrimmage. This was 1956 or so, and at 12 years old I quickly got to know their names by their faces…what fun!

One bright St. Mary’s morning our center, Frank Morze, knocked a contact lens right out of the eye of linebacker Matt Hazeltine. Play was stopped and we kids were invited out onto the field to look for that contact. Knowing exactly where it happened, I found it, and Matt Hazeltine insisted I join the team for lunch there at the college. Wow!

I sat between Matt and Frank, but it was Frank who took an interest in me and asked all kinds of questions about my grades, my girlfriend, even my bike. He was a true gentleman.

Fast forwarding 30 years, I was training for the Hawaiian Ironman, and in my exhilaration of beating my personal time racing up Mt. Rose on my bike, I threw my arms into the air like they do in the Alps, sailed off the road onto the rocks, and flatted both tires.

So I stuck out my thumb and was happy to accept a ride in the back of a pickup. The driver was a big guy who asked through an empty window, “What are you doing up here?”

I told him and he boasted, “I used to play football.”

“Oh yeah? What team?

“Forty Niners.”

“When did you come up?” I asked with growing interest.

“Fifty-six or so.”

“You came up with Frank Morze?”

He shot a look at me through the empty window, swerved a little across the line, and shouted back, “I AM Frank Morze!

Frank took me right to my front door while I rattled off the names of his teammates from those days so long ago.

“He shook my hand and said, “You remember more of my mates than I do, son.”

“And you were the best center the Niners ever had, Frank.” I extoled.

“Thanks, kid.” And he gave me a broad smile.

So here was a Forty Niner who showed a kindness to the same kid thirty years apart. Though Frank has since been promoted to the gridiron in the sky, I hope he will take comfort in knowing he is remembered as an all-star gentleman all these years later…

As is our custom, we shall leave the last word to Mark Twain…

“There are a few matters of peculiarity here on earth which I wish to describe.  One of them comes from the diary of Methuselah -on baseball: He that bore the club did suffer the ball to be flung at him divers times, but did always bend in his body and so save himself, whilst the others spat upon their hands. Yet he failed to avoid the next ball, which cracked his skull. I shall visit this sport no more, as the game doth lack excitement.” 

Audio: https://anchor.fm/mcavoy-layne