This is the hardiest lot the world has ever seen.  They are the whole-hearted few that see winter through up on the Comstock Lode.  They are the squirrels that wear dusters. They make their money in the summer, then squirrel it away to see them through the long Comstock cold.  Consequently, when Christmas Day rolls around, these robust souls are in possession of fertile imaginations when it comes to extending Yule Tidings.

Which brings us to Hart Nathan Cook of Virginia City, also known as “Cappy,” a handyman who can size up any job, give you a reasonable estimate, then retreat to the library to find out how on earth to tackle such a task.  

Cappy wears a tin cup on his belt, a tradition for handymen on the Lode, and so he is not the first to earn the title, “Tin Cup.”  The tin cup is for coffee in the morning, and once the noon siren sends its sonorous wailings sailing across the tailings, well, something stronger than coffee goes into that tin cup, though only Cappy and his maker know whereof the contents.

For life’s loners Christmas can be a disheartening time, a dispiriting time up on the Lode, where the Washoe Zephyr whistles through chinks in the timber, causing cabins to creak and cry.  But Cappy is one of those hearty spirits who thrives on adversity and laughs at poverty in all weathers.  He loves Christmas for the sheer challenge of it.  You see, Cappy singles out one individual whose lot he figures is hard as a three-pound drilling hammer, then he goes about ciphering a way to brighten that person’s Christmas Day.

This year Cappy picked Isaiah William Snuggle, known to a few as, “I. Will  Snuggle,” whose job it is to replace the candles deep down in the Chollar Mine. Cappy does not know Isaiah, though occasionally, while Cappy is working late on locomotive engine #18 of the V&T, he catches sight of Isaiah entering the Chollar mine with an armful of candles. 

On Christmas Eve, Cappy takes a pull from his tin cup and pulls a book down off the shelf.  He looks at it long and hard, turning it over in his hands…Roughing It, a first edition, the only first edition he has ever owned, signed by the author, Mark Twain.

Cappy wraps the book in a page of the Comstock Chronicle, tucks it under his arm, and walks over to the Chollar Mine, where he lights a candle and makes his way down into the bowels of the earth.  At the end of the drift he lays the book beneath a candle anchored in the granite wall, lights that anchored candle with his own candle, and heads back home.

Monday following Christmas, Isaiah William Snuggle walks into the Virginia City Library to show the librarian his new acquisition.  She suspects Isaiah’s book might be a first edition, and consults her “Guide to Identify Points of Issue” to confirm her suspicion.

Pushing her glasses up on her nose, she announces, “Isaiah, this is a first edition signed by Mark Twain, it’s worth more than your house.”

“Worth more than my shack?”  

“Much more than your shack.”

“Well, to me it’s worth more than anybody’s shack -so I’m keepin’ it.”

“Isaiah, how wonderful, was this a gift of Christmas?”

“Found it under a single lit candle down in the Chollar Mine.”

“From?”

“Who knows…Santa maybe.”

As the noon siren sends its sonorous wailings sailing across the tailings, Cappy Cook smiles, pours his coffee out onto the ground, and refills his cup with contents that remain a secret between himself and his maker. Merry Christmas to the squirrels that wear the dusters up on the Comstock Lode.

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I was whistling, “Born to Lose,” while waiting to get my booster shot, and overheard a young passerby ask his mother, “Mom, why is that man whistling?”

“Because he’s happy, Honey.”

And she was right. I was happy to be the lucky recipient of a potentially lifesaving vaccine, and, were I not to draw attention to myself there in the pharmacy, I’d have been dancing to the ironic song I was whistling.

One of the nice remunerations of growing older is an ability to celebrate other peoples’ conquests and achievements, some call it Freuden Freude. I only wish I could shake the hands of the doctors and scientists who developed our vaccines and take them all to T’s for lunch.

I was able to extend a small expression of gratitude this morning, with a little help from my pet Jay, Huckleberry. Six roofers were standing in a circle on the driveway below, about to tackle the big job of keeping ice from falling on us this winter. Huckleberry had just tapped on my window with his beak and was waiting patiently for his Beer Nut, while I whistled, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”

I shouted to the workers below, “Gentlemen, thank you for your good work, and my pet jay, Huckleberry, would like to thank you too.”

With that said, I took a half-step back from the Beer Nut I had set out for Huck, and here he came to take it almost out of my hand. The guys down below shouted their approval and gave Huckleberry a standing ovation.

When we take time to celebrate little subtleties, well, little grievances pass away. As an example, I’m delighted that I can put my thoughts down on paper, and thanks to this fine family journal, convey these thoughts to you. As I number my columns, I happen to know this one is number 1,528, and yet, it is the first in which I am acknowledging my joy. Please allow me to say thank you to the publishers and readers of Pine Nuts, for granting 22 years of scribbler gaiety.

Some of the feedback I have received over the years has been helpful too, like, “You don’t know Jack!” (Ah, but I do, he lives in New Jersey.) Humility is an essential ingredient to contentment. Mark Twain received a letter once that said, “Sam, those who criticize your writing never saw you dance.”

But before I quit apostrophizing and get me to bed, I must vehemently denounce the recent algae bloom of ill-conceived antisemitism. Of all the misplaced prejudices in the world, this one has the least to recommend it. Our Jewish friends and neighbors are our intellectual aristocracy. They are good at just about everything, and better than most at obstruse thinking. So the animosity we are witnessing today is most assuredly a product of envy, one of the seven deadly sins, I forget what the other six are just now. But then I am sleepy, and must say goodnight…

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One dazzling Tahoe day not long ago, my gaze fell upon a buttermilk sky, and suddenly, unexpectedly, I perceived time and space mutually…as one. I conjoined with those perfect balls of cotton and my body shook with awe. Wow! 

My first thought was, “I’m going to take another run at Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.” 

Non-Euclidean geometry hit me in a blank place while I was in college, and I could not get my head around Einstein’s formula, E=mc2 to save my soul, but now at least I know what Einstein’s space-time continuum feels like. 

Einstein postulated that space and time are not absolute, but relative.  Put another way, space and time are not independent but intimately intertwined in a four-dimensional continuum. So, yes, now I can feel it. We are all connected to that buttermilk sky, conjoined commonly in distance and time. 

It was a pleasant sensation to feel the oneness of it all. Truth be known, I’ve never felt quite so good in my long life. I wanted to shout-out to Einstein, “Hey, Al, I don’t understand your formula, but I FEEL the relativity, and now armed with your Cosmological Constant, well, I’m going to find out what positive force it can be on human discourse and healing.”

My first experiment in applying Cosmological Constant came when a party from China arrived at my home for An Evening with Mark Twain, or Maka Tuen as they called him. As I welcomed them, I turned on my Cosmological Constant Clock to connect space and time and we were bonded. We instantly recognized each other as kin. I realized that this was some powerful stuff I was experimenting with, and that I needed to capture lightning in a bottle so to speak, and get it out to various world leaders. Yes, I believe applications of Einstein’s Cosmological Constant could possibly save our vulnerable world.

My other ongoing experiment involves the power of Cosmological Constant in healing. The good doctors at the VA have been most effective in slowing an advance of skin cancer that I managed to acquire during my summers of lifeguarding. Yet now, and I don’t know how, I can feel the healing power inherent in embodying Einstein’s Cosmological Constant. I shall report my findings to Scientific American. On the other hand, if you don’t hear from me, well, you can draw your own conclusions. 

A funny thing happened at the Reno-Tahoe airport recently while I was wearing a mask. The nice lady checking my boarding pass asked if I would pull my mask down, and when I did, she sighed and said in a friendly way, “Oh, I know you…”

I felt a warm glow as I was sure she had recognized me as Mark Twain, but no, she said with certainty in her voice, “You’re Albert Einstein!”

Perhaps I have a second career waiting, though I suspect it might be a little late for such a venture, besides, I’m terrible at math… 

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I’ll never forget the day Mrs. McQuitty appeared in our driveway. She climbed out of an old white Ford, and I’ve never liked Fords since. It was a Monday, and I’ve never liked Mondays since. I didn’t want to take piano lessons, but my parents made me. At ten years old, all I wanted to do was to go swimming, and besides, piano lessons were for girls.

I remember how she looked me over, like an entomologist examining a bug, and I realized my life, as I knew it, was over. 

Sure enough, in our first lesson, Mrs. McQuitty tried to get me to memorize some scales. This was uphill work for her, as my memory was chock-full of blank cartridges…

“Ummm, Every Good Boy Eats Grass?”

“No, no, McAvoy, let’s begin again, from the top…”

I was a dismal failure, and I’m sure Mrs. McQuitty dreaded Monday afternoons as much as I did, maybe more, that is, until she introduced me to, “Mrs. McQuitty’s Boogie-Woogie.” Suddenly I had a reason to live on Monday afternoon, and even found myself sitting down to the piano to bang out that tune when nobody was around.

Still, I begged my parents to let me quit piano lessons, and probably because I could finally play a tune, they let me quit. I’m confident Mrs. McQuitty put that day on her calendar at home as the one day in the calendar year on which to take a drink.

Over the slow-moving years that followed, I would sometimes sit down to a piano that was looking for some attention, point to the sky, and bang out Mrs. McQuitty’s Boogie-Woogie. 

Then, my Mrs. McQuitty moment arrived. I was addressing a packed Nevada Room at the Governor’s Mansion as Mark Twain, when my microphone died, and there happened to be a piano behind me on the stage. While the AV guy ran for a fresh battery I glanced at that piano and a little voice deep down inside me said, “Go ahead, sit down at that piano, and call on Mrs. McQuitty.

So I shouted to the crowd, “I only know one tune on the piano, ‘I had an Old Horse, His Name Was Methusalem’…may I play it for you?”  There followed a resounding round of applause. I sat down on the bench, looked heavenward, and launched into Mrs. McQuitty’s Boogie-Woogie. The place went wild, clapping their hands and stomping their feet to the music.

When I stopped playing, and was assured the microphone was working again, I suggested to the governor that perhaps he should have the piano tuned.

When I arrived at my room that night I lifted a glass, and said out loud, “Thank you, Mrs. McQuitty, for providing me the most comforting round of applause any man in trouble was ever afforded. I love Mondays again, I love Fords again, and I love you, Mrs. McQuitty, wherever you are.”

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In full disclosure, I am a terrible cook, no, I am the worst cook in the western hemisphere. When I am left in charge of dinner, guests leave Layne Haven feeling confused and disoriented for several days. However, sometimes I forget how horrible a cook I am, and impulsively invite folks over to Twain Haven for one thing or another, and oh, dinner…

This happened the other evening when I invited half-a-dozen friends over for an unveiling of Julie’s Amazing Magical Twain Quilt, handmade for Mark Twain.

I should mention here that, along with being the world’s worst cook, I am an even worse shopper, so it happened that I purchased, upon first glance, a seven-layer bean-dip party-platter, heated-it-up, sliced-it-up, and served-it-up, as an entrée.

The room got uncomfortably quiet. I heard a sigh, and Julie asked with tears in her eyes, “So…what…exactly…is this?”

I had to admit I didn’t know, and that it was an impulse purchase. Be glad you weren’t here. I don’t know about the others, but it corked-me-up-pretty-tight for three days…

On the flipside of my culinary disasters, I am working up a Christmas Cointreau that might just rescue my reputation. In fact, it is with a spring in my step that I am shopping for the ingredients today… 

First you need a bottle of brandy, and it doesn’t matter what brand it is because you are going to improve upon it. Pour that brandy into a large bell jar, add ¾ cup of sugar, and stir vigorously. Now, you need some string to suspend a navel orange above that brandy, and then, snap the jar shut, nice and tight. Place that jar where you can watch that orange sweat for thirty days, and voila! Here’s your Christmas Cointreau! But I caution you, do not, even if your best friend dares you, eat the orange. I did that once, and it might have killed a lesser man.

By the way, do not tackle this task alone. Making Christmas Cointreau requires two people because it takes three hands and sometimes four, to suspend the orange, and then seal the lid of the airtight bell jar. I shall leave a small bottle out for Santa, along with my list of wishes for Christmas…

Dear Santa, I have been good this year if you don’t count culinary, so I thank you in advance for delivering a world filled with love & justice, equality & respect, truth & compassion, oh, and peace. By the way, don’t knock this Christmas Cointreau back in one draught or you might not make it back to the North Pole by sun-up. Warm regards to Mrs. Clause, and of course, Rudolf.

PS: Please leave something for my pet blue jay, Huckleberry. He’s crazy about Beer Nuts if you happen to have any in your bag. Oh, and Huckleberry is fond of North Pole Ale also, should you happen to have a six-pack of that in your bag…

Safe Travels,

McAvoy 

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On the 30^th of November I will be celebrating Mark Twain’s 187 birthday by observing some of the secrets to his longevity, a few of which we can share here… 

“You can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life, while they would assassinate you… 

As for drinking, I have no rules about drinking, when others are drinking, I like to help.  I have found that a tumbler full of whiskey in the early evening is a preventative against toothache.  I’ve never had the toothache, and I don’t intend to have one.

As for smoking, well, I came into the world asking for a light, and will probably go out blowing smoke rings.  But I’m smoking in moderation now.  I never smoke more than one cigar at a time, never smoke while asleep anymore…never refrain while awake.  This is a good rule.  It wouldn’t answer for everybody trying to get to be 187 years old, but it answers for me.

As for exercise, I’ve never taken any exercise and I don’t intend to take any.  Exercise is loathsome. I’ve never seen any advantage in being tired.  Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I go lie down somewhere until it passes away. Oh, and never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until day after tomorrow. Whatever a man’s age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his buttonhole.”

Yet even more than celebrating Mark Twain’s birthday, I will get to celebrate the 80^th birthday of lifelong friend, Bonnie McLaverty, and she’s still very much alive, much like an uncorked bottle of champagne. I just wrote Bonnie a note, a note of acknowledgment for a life lesson learned so many years ago on a school bus ride with her, well, here’s the note…

Dearest Bonnie,

I learned a life lesson on a school bus ride with you to Del Rey Elementary on the morning after your father had died. I wanted so to say something comforting to you but could not figure out what it was I wanted to say, so I didn’t say anything. All that day, and beyond, I admonished myself for not having said something, anything, to acknowledge your sorrow. I made a promise to myself to never again deliberate what to say, but to step right in and say something, anything, from the heart.

Over the many years to follow, I have, in fact, found myself in that very position, and have stepped forward to offer condolence without hesitation or a moment’s thought as to what I might be intending to say. Expanding upon that notion, it might be safe to say that we can never go wrong, no matter what the circumstance, when we speak from the heart. Sometimes a simple hug will answer.

So, Bonnie, if I failed to say so on our school bus ride down Valley View Drive toward Del Rey Elementary on that morning 68 years ago, please do accept my belated condolences, for I did indeed feel great sympathy for you in the loss of your father…

Your lifelong friend,

McAvoy

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Back in July Vladimir Putin quoted and credited Mark Twain. At the time, I suspected he was reaching out, maybe not with an olive branch, but maybe with a twig. He said, “To quote Mark Twain, ‘The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’” I was wrong.

Putin went on to conscript thousands of young men to fight in Ukraine, creating a brain drain the likes of which has not been seen since China took back Hong Kong.

With sophistication of weaponry, warfare has become less romantic. I can just hear this refrain from young twenty-somethings on both sides of any war, “I want to stand up for my country, but I definitely don’t want to be blown-up by a satellite-guided drone made in Iran.”

It might be safe to say that all the romance connected to warfare passed away with the arrival of the drone. I can’t imagine Mark Twain wanting to write about the war in Ukraine. In fact, I’m reminded just now of how Samuel Clemens felt about fighting in our Civil War, when the desire to kill people to whom he had not been introduced had passed away, and he seceded from the secession. Some said he was too irregular, even for the irregulars.

I believe in my heart that Putin should be reading Sakharov: “Peace, progress and human rights are three inextricably linked goals.” Then too, I had forgotten how Sakharov was not allowed to travel to Oslo to receive his Nobel Peace Prize. I only wish he were with us today.

Escalation is the dirty word of the day. It starts with one dirty bomb, a bomb combining radioactive material with conventional explosives, repaid by two dirtier bombs, followed by a flurry of nuclear bombs, launched with the words, “I’ll get you (insert your profanity of choice here), before you get me.”

Suddenly there is nothing left but cockroaches and, “Phantom of the Opera.” But wait! A Russian finger said, “Nyet!” Which in this instance means, “Not yet!” And we live to fight another day.

Isn’t it too bad that romance was ever connected to warfare in the first place? Warfare is nothing more than a street brawl made large, a street fight brought on by older men and fought by younger men. Or as our mutual friend Mark Twain characterized it, “…each nation knowing it has the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it.”

I wish I could sit at the other end of that long table of Putin’s, just the two of us, and ask him to explain to me the value of his invasion, and how it is benefiting the world at large. I doubt his explanation would earn him a Nobel Peace Prize, though it just might earn him an Oscar.

I would love to know what Putin has been reading of late. I am quite sure it has not been Sakharov…or Twain.

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I have a good friend whose wife puts a jar out whenever I visit, and makes us deposit a
dollar into that jar every time we use a profane word to color our conversation. So I always stock
up on dollar bills before visiting. Maybe it’s because I was in the Marine Corps, but I have found
as an adult, that sprinkling your banter with an occasional cussword for emphasis is like
sprinkling your mashed potatoes with pepper. Of course, if ladies are present I am most
guarded, and if children are present I abstain altogether.

Yet, nobody could swear, I have to believe, like Mark Twain. As his thirty-year
housekeeper Katy Leary wrote in her book, A Lifetime with Mark Twain, “Men don’t come any
better in this world than Mr. Clemens. He swore like an angel, sort of amusing it was—and
gay—not like real swearing. I suppose everybody has a few private cuss words of their own to
help them over the rough places.”

Apparently, there was little or no wrath or malice in Sam’s swearing. As Elizabeth
Wallace averred, “Gently, slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though
they had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came this stream of unholy
adjectives and choice expletives.”

And Sam had his own personal respect for the art swearing…

“As for profanity, there are times when profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer,
and when it comes to pure ornamental cursing, the average American is gifted above the sons of
men. Oh, I used to be able to utter an oath that would knock the dust up where it struck the
ground. When angry, count four; when very angry, go ahead and swear. It’s the people’s poetry.
A gentleman can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and
affectionate way.

I had a lady friend who was not feeling well last week, and she asked me, ‘Sam, what can
I do to feel better? I feel awful!’ So I told her what my doctor told me, I said, ‘Dear, you must
give up drinking, smoking & swearing.’

She said, ‘But Sam, that would be easy, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I’ve never
sworn.’

There it was. She had been neglecting her habits. Here was this poor moral pauper, a
sinking ship, with no baggage to throw over. Oh yes, one little bad habit might have saved her.”
Sam’s swearing, it might be safe for us to say, was an artform unto itself. I only wish I
could have had the distinct pleasure of hearing it fall upon my ears, like an American folksong.
By listening to Mark Twain’s swearing, well, I’m confident it might improve my own liberal use
of profanity and make me more comprehensible to my comrades in conversation. Sadly, that
might not happen today, but it might happen…

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