If there’s one kid I like the best here at The Lake of the Sky, it’s Darin Talbot, AKA Jimmy Buffett. Some adults are blessed by staying young, and that’s Darin. The fact that he is the spitting image of Jimmy Buffett, and can sing just like him, serves to endorse Darin’s one man show as Jimmy Buffett…

Darin is performing in the Florida Keys right now, but will be returning to his Tahoe home next month, when the Ghost of Mark Twain, yours truly, will welcome him home.

Darin and I are contemplating collaborating on a two man show, “Jimmy Buffett Meets Mark Twain on the Road to Heaven.” We imagine a fast-moving program just brimming with Buffett music, interspersed with insight and humor from Mark Twain. Who could stay away?

In real life, Jimmy was a huge Twain fan, tailoring much of his music to Twain’s writings. Buffett’s tributes include some sentiments from Twain’s Following the Equator, “We had a hope when we were young that if we lived, and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

As a fellow drifter who followed the Equator, Twain welcomes Jimmy onto a path to Heaven’s Gate. “Jimmy, can I offer you some etiquette on getting into heaven?”

(Jimmy takes out his pen and takes notes…)
“Upon arriving at the Pearly Gates, don’t speak first…Let St. Peter speak first. And don’t try to take a selfie with him, hell is full of people who have tried that. And don’t take your dog. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Oh, and if you get in…don’t tip St. Peter – publicly.”

Jimmy is duly inspired to sing, and his music takes Twain’s sentiments to the very gates of heaven. In his song, “Take Another Road” Buffett resonates, “Follow the equator, like that old articulator / Sail upon the ocean, just like Mr. Twain.” 

In his song, “Fruitcakes” Buffett employs the line, “That’s the difference between lightning and a harmless lightning bug,” thus adapting Twain’s quote, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning and a lightning bug.”

On it goes, between these two kindred spirits, linking song and literature as only Buffett and Twain could do…

In the song “Barefoot Children in the Rain” Buffett includes raft and riverboat imagery, which alludes to Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Also, the lyric, “Wrinkles only go where the smiles have been” paraphrases Twain’s quote from Following the Equator: “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” 

I look forward to working with my brother Darin on crafting a Buffett-Twain show that will delight a Tahoe audience…

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

Dear celebrants of America 300,

It saddens me that I cannot be there to honor this cordial occasion with you, but I have been called home, and will have to witness your grand arrival to pier 300 from afar, don’t ask me where… 

First, may I congratulate you on your quaint little colony on the moon. It wasn’t that long ago that we thought the moon was made of Swiss Cheese…

And compliments are due to you for implementing open primaries. I remember with a grimace how I registered as “No Political Party” and was granted the opportunity to vote for a lonesome dog catcher, running unopposed.

Encomiums should be coming your way for banning humans from driving cars and trucks. I’m still proud to be remembered as Nevada’s slowest driver ever. My one claim to fame was to drive around the village and see people pointing and exclaiming, “Ma, Look! The McAvoy Parade!” I’m hoping the Village of Incline might erect a statue this year at the roundabout, of my old Ford, followed by a long line of Burnt Cedar ducks.

Exaltations are in order for increasing the number of disagreements resolved in year 300 without the use of force. Kindness is becoming coin of the realm, and this sea change is admired and emulated the world over…

Kudos for figuring out how to get the salt out of water. Pabst Blue Ribbon was all that saved me from dying of thirst in 2050.… 

The jury is still out on AI. Personally I never liked it, never used it, and did not suffer any from the depredation. The 19^th century was always home to me…

I do wish I could have the leisure of examining what sorts of books are being written and consumed in America 300. It would not surprise me if books are scarce as hen’s teeth, and libraries scarcer yet, but you can probably find a video game store on every corner. I hope cage fighting will have gone the way of Gladiators, and that chess is making a grand comeback.

The music of America 300? Sorry, but all possible chords pleasant to the human ear have already been recorded. Still, you must keep composing and recording because it’s in your blood. With apologies, the music of the 1960’s was the best that ever was…

Making babies? Each generation thinks they have discovered the best possible way to make babies. We used to fear we would be overrun by babies. But the birthrate is falling, and a manageable population without extreme poverty is finally within reach. Well done!

I only wish I could join you in lifting a glass to the next generation of American experimenters, but they don’t have glasses where I am, only shovels to keep the embers glowing…

Finally, congratulations to the New York Knicks on making their first trip to the NBA finals since that epic comeback of 250. Enjoy a happy 300^th birthday America. Happily, your grand experiment is percolating along jaunty-jolly… 

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

For forty years I honored an imperative that every other book I picked up to read would be a non-Twain book. This little rule of mine kept me from going down the rabbit hole and not coming up. But now that I’m retired and contended in welcoming small groups into my home for An Evening with Mark Twain, I feel free to skip along happy-go-lucky, and revisit my favorite Twain books, interspersed only by the likes of Michael Makley’s excellent book, Saving Lake Tahoe.

In Twain’s A Tramp Abroad, Sam visits the Sea of Galilee, and suggests that Lake Tahoe throws Sea of Galilee into the shade… 

“And when we come to speak of beauty this sea is no more to be compared to Tahoe than a meridian of longitude is to a rainbow.”

As one lucky boy who has been in love with Lake Tahoe since that wonderful summer of 1961 when I was a seventeen-year-old lifeguard at South Shore, I could not agree more heartily. I oftentimes picture Sam gazing out across Tahoe in 1861, thinking to himself, “This must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

In a letter to his sister, Samuel lavishes praise upon his newfound talisman, “Mela, you must come out here to Lake Tahoe…inside of three weeks you’ll have the strength to knock a bull down with your fist if you want to. Three weeks of camp life at Lake Tahoe will restore an Egyptian mummy to its pristine vigor. I don’t mean the oldest and driest of mummies -but the fresher ones.”

In his western memoire, Roughing It, Sam lays it out there for us…

“We never slept in our Tahoe home. We didn’t want to strain it. Yet if there is any happier life than the life we led on our timber ranch for those two or three weeks, it must be the sort of life which I have not read of in books. The eye suffered but one grief, that it must close sometimes in sleep. It was a veritable habitation with the gods. No, if Lake Tahoe does not cure whatever ails you, I’ll bury you at my own expense.”

Doesn’t that make you love Mark Twain almost as much as you love Tahoe? Me too.

It’s been a while since I was up there in that lifeguard tower, but when I walk to the lake these days, I feel a little like that seventeen-year-old kid again. There’s something about our lake that imbues a youthful ambiance, makes us feel like Olympians, and the lake is our coach.

How thankful I am to have The Lady of the Lake so close as to be able to feel her power each and every day of my long life. In fact, were you to ask me to what I attribute my longevity, I might like to answer, “Probably the air that angels breathe. I’m no angel, but for a few moments each day, I can feel like one, thanks to Lake Tahoe, and Mark Twain.”

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

Only a moment ago, I was enjoying a jazz recording from some sixty years ago, when I noticed credit was given to the drummer, Buddy Rich, whom I idolized sixty years ago…

A delicious memory came flooding back to my mind’s eye of a night out on the town, Chi-town, with my Marine Corps compadre, Ginzo, both of us fresh from the triple canopy forests of Vietnam… 

The moment we wandered into the Scotch Mist, everybody in the place jumped up to welcome their favored son, Ginz, back home to the Windy City…

The guys behind the bar hailed him, ladies serving drinks blew kisses his way, even the paying customers joined in a warm embrace. Then the exalted drummer who was driving the dance band, shouted, “Welcome home, Ginzo! Meet me in the greenroom during the break!”

Well, during the break, while Ginzo and Buddy reunited, I whipped out a pen and asked Buddy to sign a Scotch Mist coaster for a blind friend of mine who also idolized Buddy Rich.

When the band started up again, Ginzo was possessed by an impulse to do the Bunny Hop, and off he hopped, out the door and onto the sidewalk. 

Everybody jumped up and hooked up behind Ginz, including Buddy Rich with his snare drum, and along came the entire dance band. The waitresses and bar keepers were not far behind, and by the time Buddy’s band reached the stop light, everybody in the Scotch Mist had joined Ginzo’s Bunny Hop and the Scotch Mist was an empty space. It was probably the first and maybe last time that a Chi-Town night spot fell silent… 

We hit a couple more clubs that night, including My Father’s Mustache, and it was the same story wherever we went, everybody knew and loved Ginzo.

I don’t know what Ginz did for others while living in Chicago before he became a Marine, but whatever he did there, he must have put his whole oversized heart into it, to earn the esteem and respect lauded upon his return. It did my weary heart a world of good to see it too, for warm welcomes home from a misguided war came far and few between. Warfare is such a travesty! There never will be a just one on the part of the instigator…

The good news is, Ginzo is alive and well today. I know this for a fact as I just got off the phone with him, and I can attest to the undeniable fact that he is as swashbuckling today as he was on that memorable night when he led the Scotch Mist Bunny Hop out onto the streets of Chicago…

And for pardonable sarcasm we might leave the last word right here to Buddy Rich, who was asked by a nurse while being wheeled in for some surgery, “Is there anything you can’t take?”

“Yeah, country music.”

(Drum roll please, followed by crashing symbols…)

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

In the spring of 1803 President Thomas Jefferson was suffering buyer’s remorse.  He had just handed Napoleon fifteen million dollars for Purchase of the Louisiana Territory that nobody knew anything about, including the president.  So Jefferson asked Secretary of State, James Madison, “Jim, what exactly did we just buy here?”

Madison waved his hands in the air, as it to say with body language, “I’m thinking…I’m thinking!”  After a pregnant pause, Madison offered, with the confidence of a Christian holding three aces, “Well, Mr. President, seems to me, you, not we, just bought Park Place without passing GO.”

“What does that mean exactly?  asked the president, puzzled.

“I don’t know, but if I were you, I’d send somebody out there right now to find out, before Napoleon spends that money on cognac and you can’t get it back.  I know two guys out of work right now who would be perfectly suited for the job, Lewis & Clark.”

“Well then, outfit them both with a compass, a blanket, a plug of tobacco, and send them on their way…

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

So, Lewis & Clark started out from St. Louis, looking for what they knew not.  Their assignment was to describe the Louisiana Purchase, but they had little instruction to go on more than, “Go that way!”

As good fortune would have it, they ran into a young Shoshone lady, Sacagawea, who saw they were lost and offered to show them the way, which was an easy task for her to do, in that nobody knew where they were going anyway.

The one and only instance of humor recorded on the excursion came when Clark accidentally stepped on the back of one of Lewis’s moccasins, giving Lewis a flat tire, and starting him to hopping around on one foot, while Sacagawea guffawed out loud.

Well there were plenty of mosquitoes around, enough to suck you dry as a hat rack if you stood still for more than two seconds. One mosquito carried off the dog they had taken along for company. 

Well Lewis & Clark & Sacagawea survived mosquito bites, snake bites, accidental gunshot wounds, plummeting over lofty waterfalls and cold sores on their lips, before finally reaching the Pacific Ocean and diving in, only to dive back out again, Sacagawea swearing in her native Shoshone, “Dang-Nabbit COLD!”

After a quick meal of Pacific snails, they discussed the routes they might take to get back home.  Each of them had a different route in mind, so they took a vote, and Sacagawea’s route won the day.  Thus, Sacagawea became a hero of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, which should rightly be known today as the Lewis, Clark & Sacagawea Expedition. She also became the very first woman in our history to cast a vote.

And this is where we bring our short story of the LC&S Expedition, as it should not be taught in the schools, to a close…

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

There’s a tree outside my bedroom window that speaks to me. Yes, speaks with a perfectly symmetrical spray of pine needles that welcomes me when I rise in the morning and bids me adieu when I retire at night. It’s the very same constellation that welcomed me when I moved into Twain Haven 22 years ago. This flawless bouquet, in the shape of a microphone, speaks to me through Huckleberry, my pet jay, every day when Huck arrives for a Beer Nut at Happy Hour…

“Thanks for the Beer Nut, Pal, to celebrate this particularly pleasant pinecone day.”

Then this morning the unimaginable happened. I was gazing out the window at my noble pine needle comrade, ruminating about how lucky I am to have Huckleberry and our pine tree to associate, when Huckleberry suddenly burst through the middle of that spray of needles, parting it like a cape with his wings, and stood there staring at me as if to say, “Ta-Da! You’re right! This tree does speak to us both!”

My breath forsook me, and I came near falling onto the floor in astonishment. Huckleberry employs many different tricks to get my attention, from landing on the flagstaff and waving Old Glory, to banging on the window with his beak, but his bursting forth in the middle of our pine needle touchstone at the very moment I was focused on it, well, “out of this world” does not describe my wonder. It stopped my heart, and even now, half-an-hour later, I’m reflecting feverishly upon this affirmation…

I’ve had some surreal incidents in my life, but never one so palpable and profound as the flamboyant appearance of Huck in the exact time and place that I was contemplating his role as liaison between the tree and me. It gives me chicken skin to contemplate it…

Huck has been coming for Happy Hour every afternoon since 2017. Lately he has taken to raiding the rain gutter when I’m not at home, and flinging pine needles onto the deck as if to say, “Hey, I was here, where were you?!” It’s his calling card, and it makes me smile.

There is something clairvoyant going on between that tree, Huck and me. I don’t know exactly what it might be, but there’s a definitive telepathic link joining the three of us. It’s a bond that the tree and Huckleberry know more about than I do. Whatever it might be, I wish I could bottle it up and give it away to parties who are hell-bent on using violence to settle their differences.

The calming and charming effect of knowing that we three, Huckleberry, our tree and me, are aware of our supernatural alliance is a comfort me, and I don’t need to know how or why to appreciate the splendor of it. It’s the dangdest thing I ever struck, really, and I remain eternally grateful for the illustrious mystery of it all…

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

Around 1793, Philadelphia was laid low by a yellow fever epidemic.  Five thousand lives were lost.  A twenty-four-year-old Dolley Todd lost her husband, John. But Dolley soldiered on.  Somehow she managed to maintain a sunny disposition that was recorded by one admirer:  “Dolley’s radiance raised to fever heat the thermometers of the heart.”  

With feathers in her hair, she occupied the highest levels of society, where she was introduced to James Madison by Aaron Burr and bada-boom, bada-bing, the next thing anybody knew she was First Lady, and that was just what Dolley Madison was born to be…

“James, let’s throw a party.”

“What kind of a party?

“A fun party…a toga party!”

“Whatever.”

Dolley went straight to work on the invitations…

Dear friends and neighbors,

On the fourth of March, President James Madison will host a Toga Party at the White House.  Formal Greek attire will be required.  Muscat of Samos Wine will be served along with Baklava, Spanakopita and horiatiki soaked in olive oil.  Music will be provided by “Socrates Drunk the Hemlock” and everyone will be required to dance along with the President to Zorba the Greek at midnight.  Karaoke singing will commence at 1am.  Bring a friend… 

Well, that was a party to remember.  It brought James out of his shell, which bought him and Dolley a second term.  But what distinguishes Dolley to my mind, and makes her a hero of her time, really, is the way she single-handedly saved an American treasure…

In August of 1814 the British were coming, and they were not looking for a toga party either.  In fact, it was rumored they might loot the White House and burn it to the ground.  So Dolley got it in her estimable head to save the regal portrait of George Washington that hung there in the White House and hangs in the White House today.  She ordered that the frame of that regal portrait be unscrewed and the portrait delivered to the safe hands of a gentleman in New York.

“But there is no time, Madam, the British are coming!” protested an aide.

“Then destroy it!  It cannot fall into the hands of the Brits!”

“Alright, alright, I’ll try, Madam, but there are so many screws…”

That trusty aide unscrewed and unscrewed and unscrewed some more, until the portrait of George Washington fell off the wall into his hands.  He wanted to roll up the portrait for shipping, but again Dolley came to the rescue and shouted, “No, you cannot roll it up or it will be ruined, you must transport it flat-out!” 

Well, he done it.  Gilbert Stuart’s majestic portrait of the Father of Our Country was saved, and hangs today in the East Wing of White House, thanks to the insistence of one amazing First Lady, Dolley Madison.

And this is where our brief story of Dolley Madison comes to an end… 

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

While downsizing here at home yesterday, I came across a 1983 article from the Maui News that I had not seen since the day it appeared. The author is Doctor William James, and for those who like analytics, let us quote the good doctor here…

One example of the amazing resources and strength of human beings is the Run to the Sun, the annual race from Kanaha Beach Park to the summit of Haleakala, one of the most grueling athletic events ever.

This year, I made some calculations on McAvoy Layne, Maui’s first place finisher, to demonstrate his (and our) amazing performance potentials. McAvoy weighed about 145 pounds before the race. He ran 37 miles and climbed 10,000 feet in six hours and 17 minutes.

The route of the run has an average upward rise of a little over 5 percent. In other words, you climb five feet vertically in every 100 feet of road.

McAvoy’s average speed was 5.89 miles per hour. He did 1,450,000 foot-pounds of work, not counting friction, at the rate of 64.1 foot-pounds per second. One horsepower is 550 foot-pounds per second, so McAvoy was churning out a steady 0.12 horsepower during the entire trip of six hours and 17 minutes. Translated to watts, he was generating about 87 watts of power, enough to light a few small lightbulbs. He was burning energy at almost 12 times his resting metabolic rate during this run, and was consuming oxygen at almost three liters per minute.

McAvoy was spending calories at the rate of 14 per minute compared with a little more than a calorie per minute when he is at rest. That means he burned about 840 calories per hour. Textbooks state that the average man can work at a level of 700 calories per hour before fatigue forces him to stop and rest.

And the most amazing number of all is the total calories consumed in making the run: 5,218. Assuming that each pound of fat contains 3,500 calories of energy, McAvoy burned about one and one half pounds of fat for fuel in his race.

There are at least two messages in this analysis:

1: We human beings are blessed with remarkable and largely untapped potential, and,

2: Don’t expect to lose much weight walking around your backyard.

Not mentioned in Dr. James’ interesting analysis is my spotting a little mouse, too small to jump over the curb to get off the road, but trying. I bent down to give him a little boost, and the good doctor, not seeing the mouse, thought I was falling, pulled his car up alongside me, and said, “Pull over, please McAvoy, so I can check you out.”

“Sorry, Doc, it was only a little Maui mouse who needed a boost to get back off the road.”

Dr. James laughed, and waved me on. It was to be that little mouse’s, and McAvoy’s lucky Maui day…

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

Once upon a time I had the best job in America. At sixteen years of age, I was the gas jockey of Orinda Union 76.

At closing time, it was my job to swab the bay, which was more fun than you might think. I weighed 140 pounds at the time, so when I spread the slippery solvent on the surface of the bay and started mopping to the beat of “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” well, the mop stood still, while I slid back and forth in my slippery PF Flyers. People started stopping by at closing time to watch this ridiculous scene. I actually considered charging admission. But best of all, I got to drive the tow truck.

A heavy rainfall in that year of 1960 flooded the Caldecott Tunnel, and several vehicles were abandoned in three feet of water. The California Highway Patrol closed traffic to the tunnel and it became my job to haul out the half-dozen or so vehicles that were marooned.

It was my first real grown-up job, so I took to it like a duck on a Junebug. I hooked ’em up and hauled ’em out, drumming on the dashboard to the Everly Brothers singing, “Cathy’s Clown” on the radio.

It was ‘round ‘bout midnight when I got that last car out, and was struck with a burning idea. I drove over to Sneaky Legs’ house, parked my truck a few doors down, and knocked on his bedroom window, which he opened with half-shut eyes.

“Wanna go waterskiing?” I asked.

What’s a sixteen-year-old going to say to an offer like that?

Legs grabbed a slalom-ski and a tow rope, and off we went in our four-wheel ski boat to the Caldecott Tunnel. 

We drove in silence past a California Highway Patrolman, who waved us on, and disappeared into the empty tunnel, where we glided across the inky waters, and parked.  There wasn’t anything to say. Legs was out the door and hitching the towrope to the back of the truck while I turned the radio up. It was obvious he wanted to be first, and I had no objections, as he was my esteemed guest.

I hit the gas and hauled Sneaky Legs a hundred yards or so, grinning into the rearview mirror as he splashed rooster tails up onto those solemn old walls of the Caldecott. When we ran aground, I turned the tow truck around, and took my turn at washing the walls of the Caldecott with rainwater, smiling in ecstasy as I went. It wasn’t Artemis Two, but it was the next thing to it…

I might not have been the best gas jockey who ever worked at Orinda Union 76, hell, I might well have been the worst, but to this day, I think Sneaky Legs and I might be two of the luckiest people on the planet to have waterskied the Caldecott Tunnel, and are alive today to smile about it…

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

So brief is life, I feel compelled to take this moment to save the world. Necessarily I will need to call upon everything I have learned from our generation to address this daunting task, but here goes…   

How can we avoid a Third World War? We can avoid the scourge of World War Three with two little words, “Howdy, Pard.” We translate these two words into seven thousand languages and promulgate their use worldwide when greeting citizens and diplomats from other countries. Soon enough we will come to accept the truth that we are all partners, and that there is more good than bad in the sum of us…

Like sunshine on the forest floor, interdependence is our twenty first century condition. “Howdy, Pard” can serve to unite us in that affiliation, in our shared humanity, and in a respect for the Universal Brotherhood that fashions our World Family. A recent “Moon Joy View” of us from Artemis Two shows us as we are…

Sophistication in world weaponry dictates that we can no longer exist with a cavalier attitude of us versus them. From here on out it’s, “How can we help?” 

Words can be heartening when backed by action, just as they can work to the opposite effect, as in calling our Defense Department the War Department. Can we see a show of hands for renaming it our Peace Department?

Call me a Pollyanna for whistling past the graveyard, but the day has come for recognizing our kindred spirits and acknowledging our common humanity with a simple, “Howdy, Pard.” For example, in Cuban it’s, “¡Hola, Socio!”AndIn Russian, “Zdorovo, Priyatel.”

Yes, there is sunshine on the forest floor, and we are here to spread the warmth. Let us keep the sunlight glowing by sending this declaration off to a dozen different countries, and petitioning them to do the same…

Before long, and hopefully before too late, I shall be reporting back to you in this fine family journal with encouraging early results…

Your Independent Goodwill Ambassador at Large,

McAvoy 

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