I was lucky enough to live fifteen years in the Hawaiian Islands before moving to Tahoe forty years ago, and I learned several valuable life lessons out there in what Mark Twain called, “The loveliest fleet of Islands that lies anchored in any ocean.” One of which I shall recount here if I can claw it back from recollection’s fragile vault…

I was news director at KHLO on the Island of Hawaii, and at that place in time, there was no news on the Island of Hawaii. In fact, our news studio was located on the sundeck of the Grand Naniloa Hotel, where you could hear Myna Birds singing whenever we went on the air. So one news-absent afternoon, a lady friend and I went hunting for a beach upon which to play. Soon enough we were in the shallows off the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and were frolicking in the surf there when a gentleman hailed us from onshore and hollered for us to come join him in some fresh squid he had just caught, and we did. 

He was a kindhearted gentleman who had a merry twinkle in his eye, and good snacks too, fried squid and Primo Beer, it just didn’t get any better than that. The squid was on a portable burner, and the Primo was on ice. It’s always the Hawaiian way, whether it be a spoonful of poi, or a puff on a pipe to share.

We talked about the weather, which was mostly absent, and about the news, which was always absent. Then for a moment it grew quiet and he motioned to the hotel with his hand and asked, “You see that top floor up there?”

“Yeah, nice view from up there.” I offered.

“Well, I own that floor, and own a football team too, the Minnesota Vikings, but you kids have something more valuable yet.”

“What could that be?” my lady friend asked.

In an earnest voice, he gazed solemnly at us both and said, “Youth, you have your youth.” And we smiled in the awareness of that truth.

I made a little promise to myself just then, to never, ever let go of my youth.

Thank you, Mr. Max Winter, wherever you are…

So should you happen to read a Pine Nuts column and say to yourself, “This McAvoy guy is really immature.” Well, that’s why, and I shall pull for the Minnesota Vikings as long as I live, unless they are playing the 49ers of course. In closing, I hope the current news director of KHLO in Hilo has it easy as I did back in those halcyon days of the sixties. There might not have been any news back then, but every day was a little bit like that day on the beach when we encountered Mr. Winter, and came away a little wiser for the company…

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

I was on a down escalator once at Capwell’s when the skirt on the lady in front of me was suddenly swallowed up in the mechanical mouth waiting at the bottom of that ride, and her skirt completely disappeared. She fell down, and I fell on top of her. But as good fortune would have it, nobody was behind us to pile on, or hear her screams…

On another occasion, just before I retired from 35 years of portraying Mark Twain, 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 add a little sign language to my program, I asked her if she could show 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 asylum, then started laughing, and it dawned on me 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 half of her mouth, “We make signs, billboard signs.”

So, no wonder she thought I had fallen in love with her at first sight, and that I wanted her to show me how I could tell her I loved her in sign language…

Finally, even our mutual friend Mark Twain endured an embarrassing moment…

“When I was fourteen years of age, 1850 or so, my sister Pamela threw a party and invited all the marriageable young people of Hannibal.  I was not invited.  But I was given a small part in a play as a bear, and they gave me a big brown hairy suit to wear.

A half-hour before the play was to begin, I withdrew to a vacant upstairs room to practice.  I thought it was vacant, but there were a couple girls behind the shoji-screen, and they could see me, but I could not see them. Well, it was much too hot to practice in my bear suit, or even my clothes, so I stripped to the skin and threw myself into my work.

I was full of ambition, I capered around on all fours; I did everything a bear could do, some things no bear could do, some things no bear with any dignity would want to do, including standing on my head.

When I climbed into bed that night I found a note on my pillow. It read, ‘Sam, you played bare very very well.’  

By the bye, Mark Twain said propitiously in 1899: “The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm.  Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.” More recently, President Putin, in his annual address last month, quoted Mark Twain, upon which he received a round of laughter and applause…to be continued. 

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

Around eleven pm, I asked the only other passenger in an elevator at Reno’s Grand Sierra, “Any Luck?”

He was a cultured looking gentleman, nicely attired in cowboy chaps and bolo tie, and had a sagacious twinkle in his eye.

He shouted, “Lu-uck!?” And I thought I detected whiskey in the air. 

“Son, have you any idea but a child’s, what LU-UCK is?!” he asked.

“Well, I guess I meant to ask, have you won any money?” I answered humbly.

“Son, you are a but a newborn, come with me.”  He locked his little finger into my buttonhole and pulled me into a bar around the corner, where he stood back, looked me over, and began dusting me off, like I had been in storage somewhere.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Johnie Walker” I lied.

“Well, Mr. Walker, let me give you a little Nevada history at no charge…”

Fortifying himself with a restorative, he launched headlong into a history that went well into the midnight hour…

“In 1897, on St. Patrick’s Day,” he began, “Carson City hosted the Heavyweight Championship Fight of the World.  That fight, son, between Gentleman Jim Corbett, our champ, and Fightin’ Bobby Fitzsimmons, England’s champ, would save Nevada’s statehood.  You see, mining had played itself out here in the Silver State, our population had dwindled to 40,000 people, and there was a movement in congress to revoke our statehood.

Then suddenly four thousand people crossed the High Sierra to see that fight, which Fitzsimmons won in the fourteenth round with a low blow to the solar plexus, but then Corbett always wore his trunks hiked up so high, who was to know?

Anyways, when everybody had gone back to California and we counted up all the money that was left behind, our legislators asked themselves out loud, ‘If four thousand people will cross the High Sierra to see one fight, how many more will come if they can spin the French Wheel, get married, get divorced, visit a brothel?’

So you see, son, Nevada’s romance with disrespectability began with the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight. Those two boys preserved our statehood, and we became the state of attractions on St. Patrick’s Day, 1897. My boy, everything you see around us today, from that crap table over there, to all of Las Vegas, and back to the Mustang Ranch brothel, is a direct result of that fight! Luck!? It ain’t just luck, it’s called, NEVADA! We’re the only state in the union whose economy and very identity are intrinsically linked to luck.  You see, son, here in the Silver State, the words, LUCK, and NEVADA, are merely two different words for the same thing. So the next time you ask a stranger if he’s had any luck, understand that you are asking a perfectly round rhetorical question.”  

And with that he gave me a slap on the back that watered my eyes.  So I guess the moral of this story is, don’t talk to strangers in elevators…

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

I was treated to a hearty laugh this holiday season, not from a good joke or a bad pun or an amusing anecdote, no, but from the sheer joy of being alive. This tingling sensation was initiated by my Sierra Blue Jay, Huckleberry, who arrived at Happy Hour and while waiting patiently for me to find him a Beer Nut, puffed himself up to twice his normal size as if to say, “Happy Holidays, Dude!” Huck communicates to me his sheer joy of being alive, and it gives me chicken skin to see it…

It is that joyous little moment that reminds me of my good fortune to be alive at this particular point in time. In truth it strikes a chord in my heart that resounds throughout my body. It makes me want to shout, “Ain’t it great to be alive?!”

I talk to Huck like he is family, “Hey, you look great today, all fluffed out like you’re going to church or something. You should be proud that you and Emmeline raised four great kids this past summer, and they’re all doing fine. Bravo!” Then I whistle our favorite song, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”

For fun, I imagine Huck talks back to me, “Well, seems you’re doin’ pretty fine yourself. I notice you have a new Lake Tahoe School pullover that looks mighty smart, and you seem to be enjoying that eggnog like its Mark Twain’s birthday or something.”

Of course I am compelled to continue the conversation, “How did you know? It is Mark Twain’s birthday, his 189^th, and for that you get an extra Beer Nut, my little genius!”

“So what do you plan to do on Mark Twain’s birthday?” He asks.

“Well, I might have a second eggnog, or better yet, I might sit down and pen Samuel a letter, thanking him for the sunshine he has brought into my life, sunshine that I was able to share in classrooms and lecture halls over the many years.”

At this point in our eyes-only conversation Huck sometimes shouts, “And, you must tell me once again what Mark Twain had to say about us jays.”

So of course I launch into The Blue Jay Yarn: “Oh, a jay’s everything a man is, he loves gossip and scandal, and he knows when he’s an ass, just as well as you do, maybe better.”

With that, Huckleberry stands on one leg, laughs, then nods his head in acknowledgement to me, before flapping his wings twice, and taking off into the wild blue yonder…

Our daily conversations are in body language mostly. I slowly flap my arms when I hear his beak tapping on the window, he puffs himself up, and I start to whistle our favorite song while hunting up a Beer Nut. Our daily conversations do vary a little, but always end up with the same refrain, “Ain’t it great to be alive?!”

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

As our mutual friend Mark Twain reminds us around this time of year, “The Christmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, and repair damaged relationships.” We thank you Samuel, for that reminder, ever so poignant in this particular Christmas season.

A gentleman knocked at my door recently and said, “You don’t know me, but I know you, and I have been instructed to deliver this sidewheeler.” He handed me the cutest little music box in the shape of a sidewheeler that Sam Clemens would have piloted, and added, “I hear you have a pet jay named ‘Huckleberry.’

I laughed out loud and said, “I do!” I took the sidewheeler in my hands and wound it up. We then stood raptly by as it played “Moon River,” and joined together in singing the line, “My Huckleberry Friend.”

It brought a tear to my eye, really, and I had to ask, “So who instructed you to deliver this treasure if you don’t mind my asking.”

“The Lord.” He answered solemnly.

“Then I shall take the very best care of it.” I promised.

We shook hands and he went on his way. Some days are diamonds, and this was one to be sure. Here were two strangers listening intently to a music box while smiling and sharing a refrain. I play that wonderful gift every morning while pouring my coffee and it makes me wonder what it might take for all of us to share the gift of music, somewhat like that gentleman did for me…

Might we each have a little sidewheeler music box to bequeath to a neighbor, a friend, or a total stranger? I have to believe we do; it might not be in the form of a sidewheeler, it might be in the form of a piece of pie or a Christmas wreath. And our little gift of music would not have to be “Moon River” but could cross the borders of 195 countries with music from each and every homeland.

These gifts of music could fill the air with goodwill and stop us from chasing around and biting our tails, as many of us have been prone to do of late. It might not be a music box at all. Can you whistle?

I whistle Huckleberry’s favorite song every day at Happy Hour before giving him a Beer Nut, and he goes into a touchdown dance and does everything but spike that Beer Nut to show his gratitude. It is no coincidence that Huckleberry and my favorite song is, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” So, allowing for a scarcity of music boxes, why don’t we take to whistling a song out the window, down the street, and across this great land of ours at the stroke of midnight, this January first, 2025. And if we cannot whistle, then let us hum…  

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

Nevada has always been a betting man’s jungle. Before casinos we bet with each other, and here’s how one friendly wager played out on a Saturday afternoon away back in 1862…

Leo Hechinger was a stocky Dutch German who threw a keg party on his B Street Virginia City deck every Saturday afternoon during the month of May to celebrate the end of winter. His mining friends tossed a half-dime into a mason jar, and the end of winter celebration began…

A keg was delivered by horse-drawn wagon at high noon, and on this particular Saturday the young lad delivering that keg could not wrestle it out of the wagon. He was maybe sixteen-years-old and thin as a rail, so the boys started taking bets on whether that lad could deliver, or not. Well, the poor boy gave it his all, which was not quite enough, and he dropped the keg on the ground, which brought a groan from half of his audience, and a cheer from the other half. Then Leo walked over, hefted that keg, and carried it up onto his deck like it was a child. 

“Leo,” somebody shouted, “I bet you could carry that keg to the summit of Sun Mountain!”

Leo set that keg down, smiled at the boys, and said, “Don’t know if I could, or if I couldn’t, but I’m willing to try.” 

That started it. The boys began placing bets and talking up next Saturday’s happening. Word spread like fire in a mine, and the following Saturday speculators came from as far away as Hangtown to place their bets and bear witness to what could go down as the most Herculean Feat in the history of Nevada… 

It was said $30,000 was wagered on a side, which was held in a sort of escrow. One man from each side of that bet was assigned to accompany Leo, to safeguard that the keg would either touch the ground, or be borne to the summit of Sun Mountain, one thousand feet straight up. A keg of beer back then weighed over a hundred pounds, and Leo Hechinger weighed all of 145 pounds. 

Well Leo wrestled that keg from one shoulder to the other, and then down onto his hips and every which way you could conceive of lugging a keg, and yes, Leo Hechinger made it to the summit of Sun Mountain without that keg ever once touching the ground…

And what was amazing about that feat was that Leo knew he could do it, for he had done it before -at midnight.

That’s the kind of person we used to bet with back in early Nevada. Yes, Leo Hechinger was the sort of loveable character that was waiting in the weeds for you back in those hoary old days before a more sophisticated means of lightening our wallets would arrive here in the great state of Nevada…

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

Don’t you love October baseball? Me too! It might not be America’s pastime anymore, but this time of year it feels good to hear the crack of the bat and the slap of the glove. I learned to love the game while playing shortstop in Little League. My nickname was, “Tennis Shoe Ernie,” because my feet were so gal-darn big, ground balls always clipped my tennis shoe, then hit me in the chin. I never got anybody out, and parents in the stands took to laughing at me when I started taking to the field wearing a chinstrap. So I feel for today’s hapless White Sox…

In setting an all-time losing record for a season, this year’s Chicago White Sox even managed to hit their catcher in the groin with the ball three times in one inning. My chin doesn’t feel so bad anymore, and I imagine that particular White Sux catcher is looking for work as a Door-to-Door Fuller Brush salesman in Hawaii…

Mark Twain would remember the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. They hold the overall record for losses in the National League with a dreadful 20-134 record. The Spiders won just one of their final 41 games, and their faithful fans in the stands for that one win, were so full of Hazy Wife IPA, that they forgot to applaud…One steadfast fan was heard to say as he was leaving the Spiders’ stadium, “We could volunteer at a funeral home, it would be just as fun!”

I suppose I might someday end up in the Guinness Book of Worst Records myself for being the only clown diver to miss the pool from the three-meter diving board, and walk away smiling. As of this writing I have been disqualified for using the one-meter board along the way. Yes, while still in high school I leaped from the high diving board to the low diving board, intending to dive into the water from there. But that low diving board was so springy, it flung me up higher than I started out, and I ended up missing the pool altogether, but landed on my feet directly in front of the audience, which could not believe what they were seeing, nor could I. However, as I do not have a video, I guess I will have to settle for the few voices who were there to corroborate my World Record leap. “You done it, and I saw it!”

In spite of that singular misfire, I did have a rather successful though short career as a clown diver in a water circus. Did I ever tell you about my favorite trick? Well, that will have to wait for a future column…

 I shall leave you here with a trivia question, which professional baseball team was Mark Twain’s favorite? Right! The Chicago White Stockings…“Wait’ll next year!”

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

Man can be awful cruel to man, and from time immemorial we continue to come up with new ways to exact our cruelty. The first novel ambush that caught my attention was described in the Odyssey, where Greek soldiers were able to take the city of Troy by hiding inside a giant horse parked at the city gates as an offering to the goddess Athena. What a surprise those soldiers of Troy had when they laid down their weapons to cheer and hug that humongous Trojan Horse. I was ten years old when I first read that story, and did not trust a horse for several years after…

Some ambuscades do not fare as well as the Trojan Horse. Mark Twain describes such a failed episode in one of Fennimore Cooper’s books…

“Chingachgook is able to divert a stream and uncover moccasin tracks!  He bends a sapling in the form of an arch over this narrow passage.  The Indians hide in the arch and wait for a 90-foot scow, moving at one mile per hour.  The first Indian that drops lands in the wheelhouse in the very stern of the scow.  The other five have a full minute to drop and all five drop astern of the scow into the water!”

But all the skullduggery in recorded history pales compared to the most recent advance in electronic sabotage. Some evil mastermind figured out how to load pagers, walkie-talkies, and hand-held radios with explosives that when detonated, drop their users like stones.

So what will we weaponize next? How many different ways can we conceive to dispatch one another? Well, there is a more natural demobilizing weapon that is most effective, though often overlooked, and it’s called, a pun. A good pun, or better yet, a bad one, can become an epiphany to an innocent interloper, and upgrade his disposition without harming him. 

So, my proposal is that all 195 countries in the world sign a treaty pledging to employ lighthearted puns in place of the heavier pursuits of war. This will cut the killing fields in half, and perhaps more, as there will be those lucky ones who will not try to understand a pun, and in feeling superior, will live a satisfied life ever after…

Now, if you doubt that this Ecumenical Pun Pledge will work, let us try a quick test on you, and find out if you don’t feel comforted, and above entertaining any thoughts of violence whatsoever…

                                 This is what I’m having for dinner tonight…

There! You see? If you figured it out you will feel grateful and benign, and if you don’t care to figure it out, well, you will feel peerless, and too erudite to harbor any thoughts of cruelty for the balance of a long and productive life…

I shall spend tonight drawing up our Ecumenical Pun Pledge, and shall get it in the mail to 195 countries first thing in the (Drumroll Please!) mourning… 

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