Pine Nuts: A Call from Mark Curtis, plus McAvoy’s retirement ship sprang a leak

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 expose 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.

My retirement ship sprang a leak

Also, Dear friends of Tahoe and Hawaii, We’re going to celebrate those two havens on Twain Tuesdays. Please join us. Go here for information.

Your friend in history where facts are not essential, McAvoy.

Want to hear McAvoy tell it? Listen to the audio version of this column here. For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”

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