I discovered a letter today that I had written to my dear mother from Buzzards Bay away back in 1979, when I was news director of WOCB Radio…

Hi Mom, yesterday was such a pretty spring day here on Old Cape Cod, I decided to celebrate with my first sailing adventure on the Sound. So I tied a bandana around my head and drove to Sun Fish Rental on the shore of the Bass River, where I was asked if I knew how to sail. As you know I had never sailed before, but I did remember what Uncle Bo once told me, “The pointy end is the front.” 

So boldly I lied, “Yes.” (I will never tell another fib like that again…)

I was instructed to sail into the wind going out, with the wind on my way back home, and to be back before the rising tide at five. Thereupon, not unlike Captain Cook, I shoved off to where no man had gone before. I meant to make Nantucket mine, and I named my little Sun Fish the Endeavour! Well, I saw the Cape like no man has ever seen it before, at least no son of Barbara Layne’s.

Mesmerized and captivated by the wonder of it all, I lost track of time, and suddenly realized I needed to turn around to get back by five if lucky. So I swung the boom thingie around so fast that I got knocked almost into the water, but now we were heading with the wind back to Sun Fish Haven. 

What I failed to take into account was the fact that when the tide rises the bridges lower themselves, and I had three of them to duck under. I cleared the first two, but I could see the Endeavour was going to be too tall to clear the third. So I determined to hike her over as far as I could and go for it. Well, for a fleeting moment it looked like we were going to make it, but the wind died beneath that third bridge, and the mast thingie shot straight up, impaling the bridge and pinning us there. As I was grabbing superstructure, I saw the tiller thingie float away, followed by the centerboard thingie.

A small crowd of Good Samaritans gathered atop the bridge and a few actually climbed down to help me free the Endeavour, and I blew them a kiss as we drifted free in the direction of Sun Fish Haven, where they had launched a crew to find us.

Don’t tell Uncle Bo, Mom, but that tiller doodah and centerboard doodah cost me $85. And yet I should feel lucky, for as Captain Cook met his maker on a beach over there in the Sandwich Islands, I arrived home from my circumnavigation to a Cape Cod Cocktail in front of a warm fire…

Much love and good fortune from your son the sailorman…

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

As this is Pine Nuts number 1,664, I thought it might be fun to look back 26 years to column number one, to see just how bad it was. Please don’t let Historian Emeritus Richard Miner see this, he who tells me I’m a good historian where facts are not essential… 

Circa 1956, Harold Tiller and Art Wood, our founding fathers, shared a thermos of coffee over a fallen log…

“You know, Art, by the year 2000, they’ll be servin’ coffee over a nice counter here instead of this old dead log.”

“We only wish it were right now, Harold, ‘cuz we’re fresh out of coffee.”

“This village of ours is going to need a good name, Art, a classy name, a name that will stand up over time…I was thinking maybe, ‘Tiller Village.’”

“‘Wood-Tiller Village’ sounds fitting to me Harold, and isn’t it interesting that if you draw a line from here to Reno, and draw another line from here to the summit of Mt. Rose, and another down to Reno from there, you’ve got yourself a perfect right triangle…we could rightly call our little village, “Pythagoras Village.’”

“Art, who the heck could spell Pytha…no, you better leave that idea right there. It is a pretty good pitch from here to the top of Mt. Rose, actually quite a grade. We need to find us another word for ‘grade.’  

“Why, think if we were to build us a golf course here, Harold!  Can you just imagine what would happen with all these lateral water hazards?”

“Yes, all those lost golf balls would wash right down into the lake, and you & I’d be the only ones who knew where they gathered!  We could keep ourselves up to our eyeballs in Johnnie Walker Red on recovered golf balls alone!”

“And just think how far those golf balls would fly in this thin air!  Why people will come from the four corners of the earth to play our course. We could fairly well establish a newspaper, sit back and watch that paper prosper just on the publication of tee times. Heck, we could name streets after golf balls…think of living on Titleist Drive!  Wouldn’t that tempt the devil himself!”  

“Indeed! we could sell lots with a view of the lake, then the lots with partial views, then the lots with filtered views, and then we’ll go to sellin’ lots with an essence of view!”

“Hey, Art, we could carve our own ski slope!”

“Nope…too flat.”

“No problem…we’ll just take to callin’ it, ‘Diamond Peak!’  That’ll fetch ‘em.”

“You know, now that I think of it, Harold, we could lay claim to the beach too, and allow property owners to spread their towels out on our beach!”

“No, Art, that will never fly…those Crystal Bay Bedouins would be down here tryin’ to throw down their Cal-Neva towels on our beach, and we’d be havin’ to call out the militia every other day.”

“There’s potential here, Harold, great potential.  But this little village of ours is going to need a really good name. Tilted Village, maybe? We just don’t know… 

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

Some attribute my everlasting immaturity to the fact that I’m the son of an optometrist, and so it’s no surprise that I’m always making a spectacle of myself. However, having immersed myself in the writings of Mark Twain for half a century, I am now a recovering spectacle. Yes, if I can bring a smile to a stranger’s face with a spoken word, well, that’s what I’m here to do. The humorist is not looking for a laugh; the humorist is looking for the hint of a smile, or a nod of acknowledgement, for at bottom, all humorists are calling for action…

On September 18^th, 1943, inside Providence Hospital, Washington D.C., Barbara Layne gave one herculean push and heard, “I’m here! Got anything to eat?” Providence had it that I would have loving parents, quarreling siblings, a superior wife, a smart son, and three cute grandkids, all of whom have brought light into the life of this lifeguard, SAE, Marine, Never Sweat, and impressionist of Mark Twain…

Now it remains my goal, with the little time I have left, to bring a lasting peace to our torrid world. I have sent letters to presidents Putin and Zelenski offering to help our State Department broker a truce, and am patiently waiting for a reply. Meanwhile, we turn our eyes and hearts to the Middle East. I for one refuse to exit this planet until we have ceased waring on one another while attempting to promote monarchial, theocratic and political postures. And if the Middle East doesn’t cool down, I might just have to haul my Marine Corps uniform out of the closet and command that everybody chill, or they might have to deal with Corporal Night Train Layne. 

A little more humor, a little more music, a few more smiles, more dancing, more charity, more kindness, and BINGO, we’ve got ourselves a vigorous and enduring environment…

In closing I would like to suggest that we all pen, on our 80th birthdays, a personal one-page autobiography. Future readings will serve to advance human understanding and tolerance. And should you elect to start your one-page autobiography at age forty, and revise it as you steam mightily and jauntily along, well, that’s an excellent first step. Here’s to chronicling your examined life!

Your friend in history where facts are not essential,

And defender of virtue should any be found,

McAvoy

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

I just beat the odds at Harrah’s Sports Book by finishing Ron Chernow’s thousand-page biography of Mark Twain before becoming the world’s oldest man. As a product of Mrs. Blumberger’s Remedial Reading Class, it was mostly uphill work, which became Sisyphean toward the end…

Chernow gives us three parts Sam Clemens the Heavyhearted, to one part Mark Twain the Lighthearted, and in doing so, he endowed me with more heartburn than all previous Twain biographies combined. Yet I could not help but admire Chernow’s relentless research. Here is the Edison footage he refers to…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtzlVxhaBao

Mr. Chernow forgot to mention that the audio of Twain’s voice, recorded separately in wax, melted in Edison’s laboratory fire, dang it!

Adding to the affiliation in my reading Chernow’s bio, is the memories his book evokes. The bed Sam and Livy spent a fortune on in Italy, with swiveling angels adorning the headboard, Sam positioned at the bottom of the bed so he could see where their money was spent. And for one moment in time, I was there, shooting a documentary for the History Channel.

Not unlike Twain, Chernow is a prodigious noticer. He even dug up this note that Sam wrote to a friend while courting Olivia, “She says she loves me, but hopes to get over it.”

I never knew Clara was shot at through the window of her New York apartment, and that she thought Ashcroft had ordered her shot. That is a cold case worth reopening…

I felt Mr. Chernow spent too much time on Sam’s entrepreneurial excesses,

Sam’s carbuncles, and Sam’s avuncular angelfish associations. But overall,

I thoroughly enjoyed his sometimes wearing biography, and look forward to hearing 

my Twainian friends’ reviews…

If you’re hoping to check it out of your library you should expect to be put on a waiting list, which will give you an opportunity to start lifting weights, as Mr. Chernow’s tome weighs in at four pounds.

Personally, I still prefer Justin Kaplan’s 1966 biography, “Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain,” which won a Pulitzer Prize, and Ron Powers’s biography of 2005, “Mark Twain: A Life.” Chernow credits Percival Everett for his recent Pulitzer winning novel: “In 2024 Percival Everett published an excellent, poignant retelling of Huck Finn entitled James, in which Jim narrates the story, and protects Huck, instead of the other way around.”

Spoiler Alert: Then too, when everybody dies, I suffered all the symptoms of grieving,

including tears big as hockey pucks streaming down my cheeks, almost as if they were my own family members. And in a strange way, they were, for over the decades I have become closer to Samuel Clemens than ever I was to Dr. R.M. Layne, my own dear father…

In closing, we are going to present the lighter side of “Mark Twain in Tahoe” and “Mark Twain in Hawaii” at St. Pat’s outdoor amphitheater this summer. For information contact our North Tahoe Welcome Center at 775-832-1606 and we’ll hope to bring you a smile…

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

I had a call this morning from Reno advertising guru, Mark Curtis, inviting me to tell, in five hundred words or so, how I got into portraying Mark Twain. Mark might possibly include this brief exposé in his impending coffee table book, One of a Kind (Part Two), due out right around Thanksgiving. I was happy to assure Mark that such a request would make for an enjoyable undertaking…

In 1983 I had the best job in the world, a job my father thought should be illegal, that of a morning radio host on the Valley Island of Maui. I was off the air at ten o’clock and riding a wave at ten after. I had everything a Maui Boy could ever want, except skiing. 

So I booked a cabin at Lake Tahoe for five days and was so excited I could hardly sleep that first night. But it snowed five feet overnight and my little cabin was buried. I made the mistake of opening the front door and it took me an hour to get it shut again. I thought it was the worst stroke of luck to ever befall this Maui Boy, but in fact it was the best…

I played darts for two days, then my elbow gave out, so I sat down and picked a book off the coffee table, The Complete Essays of Mark Twain. I had cabin fever by then so my brain was soft, and that seed was planted in fertile ground. The next thing I knew, fast forwarding a little, I was lecturing at Leningrad University in Russia in a white suit, and they were treating me like an elder statesman. They even let me climb inside Sputnik Two, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

As it took them five days to plow up to where I was snowbound, I did not get to ski, but I accrued some more vacation time and returned to Tahoe for another chance. In a now much appreciated God Wink, a lady riding up Ski Incline with me in the chair asked what I did. I told her and she put her hand on my arm…

“I’m starting a radio station up here at Tahoe, how would you like to host the morning show?” I took a look over my right shoulder at that beautiful blue lake, and in the next two weeks I would trade my surfboard for a brand-new pair of skis. That providential chairlift ride would springboard me to a rewarding 37-year career portraying Mark Twain in Nevada schools, across America, into Europe, and yes, even into Russia. How lucky is that?

Thank you, Mark Curtis, for inviting me to be a small part of your big coffee table book, and I wish you every success. I shall purchase of copy myself, if Big Daddy Lerude will float me a loan… 

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

Forty years or so ago, I found myself staring up at the West Maui Mountains from Kahului, where I had been hosting a morning radio show for the previous ten years. I had a panoramic view of those lush green mountains, boasting a single bright red African Tulip tree cradled in her verdant mists. And directly above that African Tulip stood a white cross that some devoted artisan had placed so perfectly up there on high…

I adored the Valley Island and her lovely people, but I also knew I could not live my life out on that idyllic Island. So I made a solemn vow to leave the Valley Island when that African Tulip touched that white cross. It didn’t take long, a couple months maybe, before the two joined together in one prophetic God-Wink for this restless Maui Boy…

I had no idea where I would be going, but as good fortune would have it, I did have a girlfriend at the Lake of the Sky, Lake Tahoe, so I thought I might start there, and find out what providence might have to offer this drifter…

How could I possibly have imagined that 40 years henceforth I would be portraying Mark Twain at Tahoe, and repeating his prophetic words…

“If there is any happier life than the life we led on our timber ranch for those three weeks in 1861, it must be the sort of life which I have not read about in books.  We did not see another human being during those three weeks. We heard nothing but the sound of the waves, the sighing of the pine, and now and then the far-off thunder of an avalanche. The eye suffered but one grief, that it but 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.”

As providence would dictate, my visits to schools as Mark Twain would take him and me to Virginia City, the nation’s capital, Europe, Russia, and back to the Sandwich Islands, as Hawaii was known fondly to so many away back in 1866…

Upon my return to Maui as Mark Twain, I carried the strangest feelings along with me, for I was older by 108 years, and as many years wiser. Yet I was able to wash the white spray out of my hair and go for a run atop the old Waikamoi Flume with a few of my old jogging pals…

So it is, today, now in my 41^st year of idyllic life here at Tahoe, that I lift a glass to those deep green West Maui mountains, that bright red African Tulip tree, and yes, the beautiful white cross, that sent this restive Maui Boy across the Pacific Ocean to worship with gratitude and respect, God’s Masterpiece of the Creation, The Lake of the Sky, Lake Tahoe…

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

September 18th has yet to appear in the annals of American history.  Nothing important ever happened on September 18th, well, Sneaky Legs Calhoun lost his virginity on September 18^th in 1960, or so he says, and that’s been about it…  

If we’re really searching for something to celebrate, we have to go all the way back to 1895, when the world’s first circumnavigation by a woman on a bicycle began on September 18th, and ended fifteen months later. How she crossed the Atlantic Ocean remains a bitter question, so her name is lost in history.

This unremarkable day inspires me to honor it as a day where nothing ever gets done, and nobody cares; a day of rest if you will.

Since the Sabbath has long since passed out of favor, and the seven-day workweek has come into vogue, we have not designated one single solitary day to doing nothing; September 18^th can be our day!

It will be like setting our clocks back in the fall, except we will gain an entire day instead of just an hour, and we won’t have to give it back in the spring.  The idea is to put our feet up, and delight in daydreaming…

Now, employers are going to have to buy into this unofficial holiday, so I would suggest presenting this column in its entirety to your employer today. Depending upon what kind of person your boss is, you might just get September 18th off.  I bet my golden gloves the Comstock Chronicle staff will at least get the afternoon off…

So what are we to do if we are determined to do nothing?  Well, we could start by listening to an audio book. I would recommend Ron Chernow’s recent biography of Mark Twain if it is out…and, of course, if you can get yourself to a beach, well, it just doesn’t get any better than that…

Now, we have to prepare for some resistance. While Europeans work to live, Americans live to work. Therefore, when somebody tries to throw cold water on Do Nothing Day as being frivolous or not necessary, remind them of what Horace shouted: “Carpe Duda!” And if they still don’t get it, whisper what Liza Minnelli has been trying to tell us for years: “Reality is something you rise above.” At least we could rise above reality for this one day, September eighteenth!

If all else fails leave this quote from Leonardo Da Vinci on your desk, and walk away: “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”

So there it is, please join Leonardo, Liza, Horace and me in celebrating the eighteenth of September, America’s fast emerging day off, “Do Nothing Day.”  

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

I should begin this examination by testifying that I believe Mother Nature and God are different words for the same thing. That being said, I would like to examine the hydrologic cycle as it might relate to a presence of God, and invite you to accompany me in this exploration…

Invisible as it might be to the naked eye, let us take a look at the miracle of the hydrologic cycle as a continuous circulation of water from ground to atmosphere and back to ground. Here are a few of the basic machinations as we know them…

Water from our oceans, lakes and rivers evaporates as vapor into the atmosphere. Atmospheric vapor then cools and condenses into water droplets or ice crystals, creating clouds. Water droplets in the clouds then become heavy and fall back to Earth as rain, snow, sleet, or hail. Water is then stored in various reservoirs, including oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers and groundwater. And voila! We have our wet and wild water world…

Thanks to science, I learned all this as a freshman in college. I also noticed a handwritten note at the bottom of my report card: “Mr. Layne, perhaps you should consider changing your major to something more like, Auctioneering.”

But getting back to the subject at hand, how does a hydrologic cycle relate to a presence of God? Well, we cannot see the evaporation of water, but we can see the results, just as we can’t see God, but can stand in awe and wonder while observing the results.

So I’m starting to wonder if the presence of God is within reach of our intuitions and emotional suspicions, and yet still a leetle beyond the reach of our intellect.

My certainty in the hydrologic cycle playing a crucial role in the health of Earth’s climate and ecosystems causes me to suspect that there is an additional force, a force of God if you will,

that plays a crucial role in the health and wellbeing of our daily lives. Heck, it was a blizzard that kept me cabin bound long enough to read a book by Mark Twain that gave me a rewarding 36-year career of portraying Mark Twain in classrooms and one man shows around the globe. Some have called this delightful sojourn, “A God-Wink.”

Science and Mother Nature will eventually lead us to the discovery and explanation of a higher power, but until that happens, I shall content myself in knowing there is much more going on around us than we can see, and yet we can appreciate whatever we imagine it to be, including loving our mother, Mother Nature.

Well, I thank you for accompanying me on this scientific expedition, and I would now humbly ask you to pass me a lime for my Guinness…

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

http://www.ghostoftwain.com

An Evening with Mark Twain : https://www.airbnb.com/experiences/138314

Email: McAvoyLayne@gmail.com

“Always do right, this will gratify some

and astonish the rest.”  -Mark Twain

Allow me to introduce my pet jay, “Huckleberry,”

Who believes he is a Missionary…

Born in 2017 on the deck here at Layne Haven,

He has always believed he is part Raven,

And Lo! he’s even fond of quoting Poe!

When Huckleberry and three siblings were ready to fledge,

I spread a sleeping bag beneath their tall ledge,

Hitting the bag for Huck was a towering win,

while his sisters took it on the chin…

I remember Huck looking up as if to say,

“Wow, thanks!” And we are pals to this day…

He comes by at Happy Hour when I whistle,

“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”

I give him a Beer Nut, and he says, (you guessed it)

“Nevermore!”

Once he has his Happy Hour Beer Nut,

Huck thinks he’s King Tut,

Throws himself a touchdown dance,

Spikes that Beer Nut and tosses me a grateful glance…

Huckleberry faked his own death once to get my attention.

Feet up, wings out, a sight that needs no further mention,

I shouted, “Huckleberry!” and he jumped up as if to say,

“Hey pal, just in time, got any Beer Nuts for a poor jay?”

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