Originally Published in The Sierra Sun 10/27/2023, Written by McAvoy Lane
The first thing I did on my first day of retirement was to toss my Mickey Mouse alarm clock out the window. Then I started pricing marimba’s, as I have a latent desire to make some music. Also I’m looking for books to learn Spanish because it is a beautiful language and I want to get closer to some of my interesting neighbors.
And too, because I have this computer chock full of photos of interesting people and places that I encountered during my 35 years of pretending to be Mark Twain, I’m starting an illustrated memoir, The Incredible Lightness of Being the Ghost of Mark Twain.
Just this morning I came across an early PINE NUTS photo that made me smile…
I’m deathly afraid of bedbugs myself, and even turned down a chance to compete in the 1964 Olympic Games because I could not face the possibility of a bedbug nibbling on my toenails in Tokyo on the night before the diving finals. If I had another opportunity to compete in the Paris Olympics this coming summer I would not go for the same reason. I’ve heard in Paris the little bloodsuckers do not stop at the toenail, but go for the whole toe, then beg for more. But help is on the way…
Apparently, Morocco has a surplus of cockroaches, and what do cockroaches love most in this world to eat? Right, bedbugs. So Morocco is offering to send Paris boxcars full of cockroaches, trainloads full of them, until all the bedbugs in Paris are entirely consumed by the voracious cockroaches.
So then you might want to ask, “What are those Parisians going to do with all those millions of cockroaches?” Well, who loves a cockroach for an appetizer more than a mongoose? And Africa just happens to have an abundance of mongooses. I humbly suggest asking Africa to send as many mongooses as they can possibly spare. And if Africa will part with them, Bingo! No cockroaches in Paris for the Olympic Games.
But who wants a mongoose slithering between his sheets on the night before a 100-meter dash for Olympic Gold? I would suggest bringing in snakes, but when a snake confronts a mongoose, well, I’ve heard the snake always meets his maker. Yet even a slippery mongoose must have a predator, and yes, I’ve been advised by the first person I asked, it is the bird of prey, and who in God’s Green Acre harbors the most raptors? We do, the Great State of Nevada. We’ve got eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, even a Great Horned Owl, who just craves dining on fresh mongoose, if he can find one. Our Nevada raptors might not recognize a mongoose if they saw one, but once they get used to examining their slithery moves, well, it’s goodbye mongooses.
Ultimately, who better to rescue Paris and eliminate the bedbugs? You guessed it, the Great State of Nevada.
Some people only think of Nevada as a place where the word “book” is a verb. Some who visit Nevada don’t know not to split their tens, and will take the “Under” on the National Anthem in the Super Bowl when everybody in Nevada knows if Chris Stapleton is scheduled to sing the Anthem, he’s going to hold that last note like a grudge, but then, our visitors learn, and they have a good time while they’re at it.”
Actually, when you think about it…it might make more sense to just ask the Great State of Nevada to host the 2024 Olympic Games. We have spectacular venues and great sportsbooks, and thanks to the high desert, we are totally free of the dreaded bedbug…
On the 30th of September, trembling like an Aspen in Autumn, I stepped onto the stage at Piper’s Opera House in front of a packed house. What in tarnation was I about to say? I had two hours of information to cram into 90 minutes…somethings had to go, but what? I can’t remember now what I decided, but our trusted friends at PBS Reno will air a portion of it on October 15th…
I remember tossing in a last-minute off-color piece that proved President Taft wrong: “Mark Twain never wrote a paragraph that a father could not read to his daughter.” That purple piece might have bombed in Hoboken, but happily, it took wings up on the Comstock Lode.
Fittingly, we ended where it all started 35 years and 4,000 programs ago for the Ghost of Mark Twain, crossing this great land of ours, across Germany, and yes, into Russia, where we got the warmest welcome outside of Missouri.
I do remember saying, “My friends, Artificial Intelligence is not going to do it for our kids. Our kids are going to need real people to teach them history, and it will be up to you to provide that living history. Get involved with Chautauqua, it will give you another life, and one life is not enough.” Then, before I knew it, it was time for my final remarks…
“It is with profound and heartfelt gratitude to Carol Piper Marshall, God rest her beautiful soul, that my time has come to sail my little sloop up onto dry land, and haul down my colors. A very smart lady once told me, ‘McAvoy, better to retire two years too early than two minutes too late.’
“Speaking metaphorically, I am but this this frivolous little captain of a coasting sloop in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade, hailing every cargo ship that comes into sight, just to air my small grandeurs. ‘Ship Ahoy! What ship is that?’ “The answer comes thundering back through a speaking trumpet aboard a majestic Indiaman, with course on course of canvas towering into the sky, ‘The Begum of Bengal, one hundred and twenty-three days out from Canton -homeward bound! What ship is that?’
“My vanity is crushed out of me, and humbly I squeak back: ‘Only the Mary Ann -fourteen hours out from Boston, bound for Kittery Point with -with nothing to speak of!’
“You see, during one hour in the day, I stop to reflect. Then I am humble, then I am properly meek, then I am only the Mary Ann, cargoed with vegetables and tinware.
But tonight, tonight, my vain self-satisfaction rides high, and I am the stately Indiaman, plowing the great seas under a cloud of sail, laden with a rich freightage of kind words from you, my friends and fellow travelers. Yes tonight, this final night, I am the Begum of Bengal, one hundred twenty-three days out from Canton -homeward bound!”
A friend sent me a video entitled, “Nothing but Smiles,” and it was so chockfull of smiles that it brought a tear to my eye. So I thought I might try to recount it here with words that could never do the video justice, but still might bring you, the gentle reader, a smile…
This slow-moving saga begins at a public drinking fountain in a public park with a distinguished looking gentleman holding the water on for his German Shepard, who is lapping away with a look in his eyes that says, “Thanks, Pops, let’s catch a bite to eat on the way home, then settle-in to another rerun of “A Dog’s Way Home.”
The second scene features another elderly gentleman, this time with two dogs, and the three of them are carelessly exercising on public foot swings, each offering sideways glances of approval to the other two, a sight to make a homeless person smile.
Scene three presents a mature gentleman cuddling two large parrots that are in turn, cuddling him. It’s a lovefest, and they are one loving family. Just to watch makes you want to run out and hug somebody…
Scene four? A toddler busies himself lifting ducklings from a basket, and tossing them one by one, unceremoniously, into a large basin of water, then hosing them down. The toddler seems self-satisfied, while the ducklings appear to be enjoying the novel adventure. It is obvious that the toddler is destined to be a successful businessman someday.
Scene five is reposeful. A large cow and a young lady are sleeping next to each other when the cow lifts his heavy head and plops it down on the young lady’s stomach. Both continue their rest as though nothing has happened. Personally, I would have awakened and bellowed like a newborn calf had it been me.
Scene six, my favorite, highlights a large sea lion and attractive young lady embracing and mugging for the camera, both beaming and both sticking out their tongues at the same time. If you don’t smile at this synchronicity you ain’t right…
In scene seven a large goose flies alongside a speedboat, letting passengers reach out and pet its stomach, and everyone seems gratified.
Scene eight showcases two mountain goats balanced on a precarious precipice a thousand feet in the air, enjoying the scenery as if they were on level ground. Placed in the same spot, my heart would be in my throat and my eyes would be sealed shut.
The ninth scene boasts a young kayaker paddling along without a care in the world. His passenger just happens to be a gigantic Bengal tiger, looking much like the captain of a majestic Indiaman, plowing the great seas under a cloud of sail.
In a closing scene, an elegant lady on a second story balcony is feeding two equally elegant giraffes, and we have to know, thanks to this beautiful video, all of these wonderful characters will live happily ever after…
One of the chief joys in my life is to go fly fishing with my Marine Corps buddy, Marlboro Man. Craig Fellin runs a successful Montana outfitters resort, the Big Hole Lodge, with his son, Wade. Craig will walk the banks of the Wise on the day before we arrive and kick over logs to see what’s hatching. Once we arrive, we get to watch him tie a fly, perhaps a Wooly Bugger, that no self-respecting trout can refuse.
Fly fishing is not a sport, to my mind it is an art, and Marlboro Man is the Rembrandt of the Wise. His son, Wade, being the Picasso of the Big Hole. And then along comes the Zombie Trout, the brown trout that has been blinded by pollution, and can no longer see the Wooly Bugger.
First question: If a trout can no longer see his next meal, how is he going to find his next mate during mating season? Imagine the stress the Zombie trout is dealing with, for stress is just as hard on fish as it is on you and me. I can hear a female trout now as she is approached by a Zombie trout, “Oh, here comes that Zombie again, he is kinda cute, but my mother tells me he would not be a good catch. And besides, how on earth are we going to feed the kids if he can’t see a Wooly Bugger? It beats my time!”
So what makes a trout a Zombie? Well, number one, cows don’t really care where they poop, even if they’re standing next to a sacred Montana river. So, we have the well-worn western expression, “Never drink downstream from the herd.”
Number two, I never knew there was oxygen in water, but I found out firsthand that there is not nearly enough oxygen in water to sustain me while underwater, as I came very near drowning in the finding out of that singular fact. However, there is just enough oxygen in Montana rivers for fish to breathe, don’t ask me how, yet that oxygen level is dropping drastically. So when a Zombie trout can’t see, and he can’t mate, and he can’t breathe, what’s a Zombie trout to do?
Well that’s the very question the Fellin’s and other concerned Montana citizens are asking as a nonprofit called, “Save Wild Trout.” They are presently asking Governor Gianforte to create a task force to study and stem the sudden hemorrhaging of Montana rivers.
Our waters are warming, our world is roasting, and unless we do some really smart things really fast, I’m afraid you and I are going to be two-legged Zombies, finding it ever more difficult to eat, to mate, and to breathe. The very thought provokes me to buy an electric car, a self-driving one, and get off the grid. Some people tell me I’m already off the grid, but I take it as a compliment, and continue in my blasé ways…
PINE NUTS: Useful Quotes to Brighten One’s Day – Continued
September 18, 2023 | McAvoy Lane
Continuing from last week…over the years I’ve contented myself in collecting poignant quotes that I thought might shed some light upon a long and winding road toward old age. Recently I opened that file and was astonished to discover it had grown to thirty pages in length. So I thought for fun I might like to select my next eleven favorite non-Twainian quotes, and share them with you here in this fine family journal…
We pick it up here with number eleven from Quincy Jones: “No matter how much you feel, you have to have your science and craft together to express it. Otherwise you are in deep doo-doo.” Mr. Jones still has it all together at ninety years young and going strong.
Number twelve? Douglas Casey, while at Georgetown University, shared this satirical observation: “Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”
Robert Frost gives us number thirteen with his astute definition of freedom, “You have freedom when you are easy in your harness.”
For number fourteen we turn to Kahlil Gibran, “In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
At number fifteen Mike Caro weighs in on gambling: “Every conscious act requires risk. Every conscious act requires decision. Put these two facts together and you realize that the secret to life is not to avoid gambling, but to gamble well.”
Moving right along, Erich Fromm asserts “Giving is the highest expression of your aliveness.”
Marcus Aurelius checks in with number seventeen, “Waste no time debating what a good man should be. Be one.”
A short list of useful quotes would not be complete without one from H.L. Mencken: “Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
We miss you, George Burns: “Happiness? A good cigar, and a good woman -or a bad woman. It depends on how much happiness you can handle.”
Number twenty brings us closer to home. Las Vegas is not renowned as a literary town. In truth, Las Vegas, literally translated from its original Spanish means, “place of general inebriation.” Deke Castleman tells us, “The word ‘book’ around town, 90% of the time is a verb.” Finally we shall culminate this short list with a manifesto from Bertrand Russell & Albert Einstein: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”
Those two very smart men leave us on page 15 of 30 pages of useful quotes that I’d like to share, but the remaining 15 pages will have to wait for another day. Meanwhile, I hope these eleven might give you a lift as they did me…
Over the years I’ve contented myself by collecting poignant quotes that I thought might shed some light upon a long and winding road toward old age. Today I opened that file and was astonished to discover it had grown to thirty pages in length. So I thought for fun I might like to select my ten favorite non-Twainian quotes, and share them with you here in this fine family journal…
The first comes to us from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Thank you, Mr. Emerson.
Number two comes from a man who lived for a hundred years, George Burns: “Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.” We miss you, George.
Number three is a lasting proverb from Mexico: “Eyes that see do not grow old.”
Number four comes from the pen of Luciano de Crescenzo: “We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly embracing each other.” For number five we call on Oscar Wilde: “The future is what artists are. Art is what makes the life of each citizen a sacrament and not a speculation.”
Number six flows from the founder of our nation, George Washington: “To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.” As an aside, Mark Twain proffered, “George Washington could not tell a lie. I can but choose not to.”
Number seven is a welcome to the world from Kurt Vonnegut; “Hello, babies, welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies -God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” Vonnegut, as you know, loved Mark Twain.
Number eight goes to Florence Kennedy, who told it like it is: “The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.”
For number nine we call on Henry David Thoreau: “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” Should you happen to live near Tahoe or Donner Lake, you might want to add: “Amen.”
Finally at number ten we return to Mr. Emerson, who reminds us, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
But I see I am running out of space and am only on page ten of thirty pages of my favorite quotes, so I shall have to continue this chronicle next week…
During a recent interview, I was asked about my impending retirement from 35 years of pretending to be Mark Twain and was probed about embarrassing moments. That was propitious, as I had just experienced two embarrassing moments in the same day, which was above my average. I was to speak to a room full of California sign language folks at Harvey’s, at least I thought that’s who I was going to be seeing.
As I walked into Harvey’s I was greeted by a warmhearted lady who rushed over and gave me a hearty hug. Wanting to put a little sign language into my program I asked her if she could tell me how to say, “I (and I pointed to my eye) love (and I pointed to my heart) you (and I pointed to her.)
She looked at me like I had just escaped from the Tahoe insane asylum, then started laughing, and it occurred to me with great force, that I was somewhere out in left field. When she stopped laughing, she half-covered her mouth, and shared with me out of the other side of her mouth, “We make signs, billboard signs.”
So, no wonder she thought I had fallen in love with her at first sight, and wanted her to show me how I could tell her I loved her in sign language -embarrassing moment number one.
Moving right along, I entered their exhibit hall and became interested in a gentleman standing beneath a sign that indicated he was in the tombstone business. He looked like he had been carving tombstones for quite a while, as he had the most stone-serious face I ever saw on a man. Well, never being one to relinquish my first impulse, I walked over to that sober looking gentleman and professed, “I have a confession to make.”
“And what could that be?” he asked in a voice common to tombstoners and coroners.
“I must confess to you that I have no formal education. In truth, I am as unlettered as the backside of a tombstone.”
He stared at me with his stone-cold face, and uttered without the slightest hint of a smile, “That’s a good one.”
I wanted to ask him how much he would charge me to put, “I’d rather be in Philadelphia,” on my tombstone, but suspecting that he might not be any more receptive to W.C Fields than Mark Twain, I bit my lip, held my tongue, and let it slide.
There have been so many embarrassing moments in my wild ride as Mark Twain, too many to list here, but perhaps I shall write a book of some 300 pages someday to chronicle that amusing aspect of a gratifying career.
In closing I would ask that you consider Chautauqua as a pursuit for yourself. It will give you a second life, and one life is not enough. Bring history to life and live twice, you won’t regret it…
In this unsettling world we live in, it feels good to have a relationship from a more predictable time, rekindled. That happened for me this summer when my high school sweetheart came to visit with two of her lady friends, and I got to sleep on a futon on the floor for a couple nights. Was there lively conversation? I sat in quiet awe, smiling, and oftentimes laughing out loud. It was nonstop entertainment at its finest.
But this time she might be coming back to visit alone, and I am frozen in fear, for my cooking has been known to leave people confused and disoriented for days. Then there is my daily Happy Hour with my pet jay, Huckleberry, during which time we talk and whistle and chortle back and forth for the longest time, while she will not understand a word we’re saying.
I’m reading Cervantes’s, Don Quixote de la Mancha, but don’t know how she will feel about my reading it out loud in its original Spanish. (I speak Spanish but don’t understand it.)
There is a good chance that she will start to cry while I’m reading this touching novel from 1605 out loud, as by her own admission, her tear ducts are connected somehow to her urinary tract, and she would shed copious and bountiful tears were I to accidentally step on a caterpillar.
Then there is the delicate matter of the bathroom, where I hang up my workout clothes in a maze that will require careful navigation on her part to locate the sink. I have been known to get lost in there myself during the night.
Driving in the car could be a challenge. I remember her chastising me while I was driving my ’55 Chevy in high school, “You’re awfully quiet today.”
“Quiet? Why would you say that?”
She smiled that sweet smile of hers and admonished, “‘Turn green, dammit, turn green!’ does not count as talk.” She was always good at correcting me like that.
I suppose I shall have to stop slurping water out of the tap, and drinking beer out of a bottle, then burping loud enough to wake General Grant and his wife in their tomb in New York. And I will definitely have to refrain from waking her in the morning by tickling her bare foot with an ostrich feather duster, because when I did that earlier this summer, she let out a squeal that could be heard in Albuquerque, told me I was immature, and would not talk to me for an hour.
Well, I shouldn’t get up-tight about how I’m supposed to act, because her relaxing presence will divine a path of behavior strewn with rose pedals, and I will naturally fall into a gallant mode of behavior that will warm her heart, and swell that forgiving heart of hers with pride that she could tame such a knight-errant as Don Quixote de la McAvoy.
Wish me luck, and keep your fingers crossed, unless you go bowling…
The intrepid Kathy Collins, who has always been Maui personified, recommended “The Hawaii Community Foundation Maui Strong Fund,” for much needed Maui relief. So with a lump in my throat, and a heavy heart for Lahaina I sent my heartfelt support.
I was granted a stroll through history while living on Maui from 1973-83 and hosting a morning radio show that included remote broadcasts from iconic Lahaina Town. To benefit the Maui United Way, I published a paperback book, Zowie It’s Maui, the Halcyon years ’73-’83.
Mark Twain told us back in 1866, “The Sandwich Islands are one long slumbering Sabbath. The good who die there experience no change, for they fall asleep in one heaven and wake up in another.” Our hearts and dollars go out to those who lost a loved one, a pet, a home, a place of business, and for some, all of the above…
It will take years, but Lahaina will come back faster than any other town its size could ever muster. The society I knew there was composed of wild, free, unspeakably happy souls, who laughed at poverty while having a noble good time in all weathers, though they never expected a fire. And why would they? Lahaina was lush and green until climate change, sugar, and the tourist industry sucked up the water, and Maui was transmogrified from sacred pools to savanna, from mangos to matchsticks. How tragic.
Among the things I carried with me when I moved to Tahoe in ’83 was a listing of early house rules at the Pioneer Inn…
How ironic…
There was always something distinct about Lahaina, as if they had a sign at the town border, “Check your cares and inhibitions here, and fill-up your heart with cheer & charity.”
With her noble spirit of Ohana, Lahaina will be back better than ever, and I’m making it a goal to live long enough to bear witness to that heroic return…
