McAvoy Layne

I've never had to worry about illnesses, because I've always known how I was going to die. I would step into an open manhole while out running and get swept out to sea, however that's not likely to happen because I'm no longer running. But it did happen to a Brazilian girl last week, and she lived to tell about it.

Golf was invented or discovered, whichever you like, in Scotland in the mid-1400's, and became hugely popular almost overnight. Golf in Scotland in 1460 was so popular that one could not walk to the post office without getting hit by a golf ball.

Before the pandemic arrived I used to get to read the Declaration of Independence as Mark Twain, orchestrated to a Marine Corps flyover upon finishing with these words, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our Lives, our Fortunes, our sacred Honor." Va-voom!

Well, here we are, alive and mostly well, after almost a third of a year without sports. I didn't think it was possible. Thank goodness I've had Mark Twain to keep me in a state of moderate good cheer.

Yesterday while out for a walk, I ran into four middle school boys on skateboards and hailed them, "Okay, men, I know you've been out of school, but I've got a pop-quiz for you."

My father was of the Model T Generation, born the year the Titanic went down, 1912. His was a sober generation, living through the flu pandemic of 1918, Prohibition, the Great Depression and WWII. If that won't sober up a generation what will?

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Farmers have always been the world's busiest, hardest-working people. Farmers are perhaps the only people whose profession commands universal respect. Between milking the cows in the morning and getting that milk to market, and collecting the eggs at day's end and getting those eggs to market, who has time to date?

Since I started walking instead of running I'm enchanted by the simplest things. I guess trading "runner's high" for "walker's enchantment," is not such a bad trade.

America's Red Light District originated in Dodge City, Kansas, where train crews would leave their red lanterns outside when entering a bordello so they could be located in the event of an emergency, and America's madams were quick to embrace this tradition as an excellent way to advertise.

Trousers came into being when it was discovered, before Christ, that hand-to-hand combat was most unpleasant while wearing a robe, not to mention the discomfort endured while riding a horse while wearing a robe.

We all remember our first, our first love, our first kiss, our first colonoscopy. The procedure was developed in 1969, but was overshadowed by the moon landing. There were no headlines, "Colonoscopy Arrives! What is it? Don't ask."

Staying at home alone gives one time to pause and ponder. Today I'm evoking the war in Vietnam. This was an American booboo that was partly my fault. I was in college, 1966, majoring in pizza and beer, when I received a lottery number in the mail.

A gifted poet friend of mine, Jack Wright, penned a verse to welcome a flattening of the COVID-19 curve.

Like everybody else nowadays, I'm lugging a heavy heart around in my chest. So I like to escape into the past now and again, and dream about how things might have been. I would like to have been in Boston for the Tea Party for example, and I picture myself at the Bell In Hand Tavern, holding forth in front of my fellow Bostonians.

In full disclosure, I opted out of pre-med when confronted with analytical geometry, but have never lost my interest in good health. So I stand in awe of our country's show of courage in our sudden shift of values. A new energy is emerging in America, a new altruism. With the arrival of COVID-19, mastery of fear is our new normal, bravery our new mantle.

They told us the C-rations they were delivering to us leathernecks in Vietnam were prepared and canned for troops fighting long before us in Korea.

Feeling it the right thing to do, the only thing to do, really, I scratched out a short letter and delivered it to our community hospital.

What I know about gorls you could put in a gnat's ear. It's not because I haven't tried to understand gorls, I have tried to understand gorls. They make great mothers and grandmothers, I know that. But you show me a man who says he understands middle-aged gorls and I'll show you a big fat liar. Though just because we can't understand gorls does not mean we can't love gorls. There is something comforting and contenting about a gorl's voice, a gorl's laughter.

The first European to see America, so far as we know, was a Norseman named Barney, somewhere around A.D. 986. Barney was wading ashore, holding his shoes, when he encountered some Native Americans who were not in a good humor that particular morning, and they gave Barney the bum's rush. So he absquatulated (cut stick) in his dinghy, and rowed like crazy for home, anywhere but America.

An Evening of Wine, Wisdom and Chili at Tunnel Creek Lodge in Incline Village will feature witty conversation over dinner with adventure stories only Mark Twain and Snowshoe Thompson could tell, on Saturday, Feb. 29.

One of the nice things about portraying characters out of the past is the feeling you get when you stand where they stood and see what they saw. Within this confluence of past and present, there is a palpable kinetic link to be embraced and enjoyed.

I've long wondered how the marathon run came to be 26 miles in the first place. So I did a little research and found the history to be fascinating. It all started, like so many other events in history, after tossing back a few beers, away back in 490 B.C.

Was there humor to be found in the Impeachment Trial? You bet there was. To begin, you can't ask a senator who is used to jumping up and pontificating every five minutes to sit still and listen to somebody else for eight hours without interrupting.

It is one thing to study history; it is another witness it. Visitors to the Nevada State Museum in Carson City this Tuesday, Feb. 4, will find themselves in history’s front row as the museum celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Carson City Mint. Just as it did 150 years earlier to the day, the Mint’s Coin Press No. 1 will be pressing silver coins, complete with the famous “CC” mint mark.

A rescue at sea is always riveting, but the 2020 New Year's Eve Rescue gave me chicken skin all over. In full disclosure I have not ventured out to sea since our honeymoon when my wife did most of the fishing and I did most of the crabbing. Unless standing on shore, anchored in sand, I have no love for the sea. To me a sea cruise is being under house arrest, but with a chance of "drownding."

When I was a little kid I read a Donald Duck comic book and was fascinated when I saw Uncle Scrooge McDuck had a coin with his likeness on it. I thought, "I'd like to have a coin like that someday." Well, it only took 70 years, but it looks like it actually might happen.

The following is a short conversation between a mother and her high school son.

What the world needs now is a strong shared narrative that transcends politics, a strong shared narrative that transcends "us verses them" and guess what? That very thing is in the skunkworks. I can't tell you exactly what it is, for that would jinx the whole mission, but it's coming our way soon, perhaps by the end of January. Stay tuned to these pages.

I ask you, how many of us lucky ducks have fallen back on the fine art of keeping bar when our life's calling falls a little short? I'm confident I do not stand alone in the oasis. There are thousands of us grateful "one time cocktologists" who succeeded in their life's work thanks to the glorious and oh so enjoyable salvation of, "Yo-barkeep!"