Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: A short story where God looks after fools
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 08/17/2020 - 9:45am
Just for fun I decided to write a short story and preview it here in this fine family journal. It's called, A Pictorial Story Of One Long Party On The Tropical Island Of Maui '73-'83, and it's a true story, mostly.
Long about 1973, like a piece of driftwood, I washed up onto the shores of the Hawaiian Island of Maui. Twenty-nine years old, and full of bravado, I went hunting for a job, and as God looks after fools, shortly found one.
To celebrate my good fortune I wandered into the first tavern I came to and bought myself a drink. A fellow at the bar welcomed me with this greeting, "I don't trust a man who walks into a bar smiling." I thought it a rather peculiar way to welcome a stranger, so I boasted, "Well, I just killed a man."
This unofficial Maui greeter, Kelly Dean was his name, smiled and responded, "So, who was it you killed, I might buy you a drink."
That was yours truly's welcome to one lucky day in paradise. After a couple Mai Tais Kelly and I were hugging each other like lost brothers and crying tears down each other's backs, when he invited me to accompany him to a party at Tsunami Estate in Sprecklesville, a party I would not leave for a calendar year, a party that looms like a shot tower in my memory these many years later.
Tsunami Estate in Sprecklesville was teeming with school teachers, five of whom lived there in that sprawling six-bedroom home right on the water, and they were the warmest-hearted teachers you ever met. Cordial? I never saw their likes for teachers, and they could talk the warts off a frog as the saying is.
Long about midnight Kelly said he was leaving and asked if I might like a ride home. I told him I didn't have a home and one of the school teachers piped-up and offered with some urgency in her voice, "No home? Well we have had a Peeping Tom here of late, and we've got this extra bedroom … it sure would be nice to have a man around to chase-off our Peeping Tom."
Of course I was quick to respond, "Well, that's what I'm about! I was born to chase off Peeping Toms. You could not find a better Peeping Tom chaser-offer than yours truly if you searched the world over, and that's the petrified truth."
I slept that night, and for most of the next year, with the rhythm of the Maui surf in my ears. And just outside my window stood a night-blooming jasmine, whose delicate scent painted my dreams with every possible patchwork of color.
What a noteworthy day, landing on Maui, getting a job, and attending a party at Tsunami Estate that had no end. Yes, God looks after fools. Though how could I ever imagine that the first day on my new job would be more interesting yet.
— For more than 30 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.”
