By McAvoy Layne…Probably because we are so young, we Americans love to show off on our big number birthdays. Personally, I have my costume ironed and hanging in the closet for our 250th Fourth of July. The last big national birthday I celebrated was Jamestown 400, back in 2007, when we celebrated the first English settlement in America, way back in 1607. As I was visiting schools as Mark Twain at the time, I was invited to join in the fun…
So I packed my white suit, a few cigars, and flew back to Ol’ Virginny for a history lesson. (I’ve been told I’m a good historian where facts are not essential.)
Well, when that first winter of 1607 settled in, those Jamestown settlers found themselves wishing they were in South America. They busied themselves by skinning beavers and making beaver skin coats, beaver skin boots, and beaver skin hats, but there were not enough beavers to go around, so it happened that of the original 214 settlers, only 60 survived that first winter.
Native Americans, meanwhile, were amused to see the English settlers planting a non-edible crop, tobacco, and before you could say, “Marlboro Man,” the English were smoking their skulls off, while turning Jamestown air to a hazy shade of blue…
I was invited to John Rolf’s bachelor party the night before he married Pocahontas, and because I was so young as Nevada’s Mark Twain, they made me sit with the children and drink milk; it was embarrassing, really.
I did get to hang with Teddy Roosevelt one afternoon. We stopped into a waterfront steakhouse, drawing a few stares and whispers as we arrived…
“Hey, check it out, it’s the old Rough Rider himself! And look who he’s with, Mark Twain!”
We were shown to a table by a waitress who was most respectful and courteous, “Can I get you distinguished gentlemen something to drink?”
“Tarantula Juice!” I expounded.
“I’ll have the same,” growled the president, and his eyebrows raised in agreement.
“I need to ask you something,” I invoked candidly.
“Fire away!” shouted T.R. in his bully voice that could be heard in Chesapeake County.
“Where did you get that Bull Moose slogan anyway?”
“I had been shot…in the chest, and was asked by a reporter how I felt. ‘Fit as a Bull Moose!’ I exclaimed, and that became the nom de guerre of our Progressive Party, simple as that.”
“So, let me get this straight.” I continued, “You toppled some monstrous monopolies, championed conservation, extended the vote to women, won the Nobel Peace Prize AND the Medal of Honor?!”
“That’s about the size of it, Sam,” he concurred with the hint of an almost modest smile.
“Can I see the medals?” I asked.
“They’re under glass in the Roosevelt Room of the White House,” he answered with a note of irritation in his voice.
But I see I am running out of space here; besides, we know the rest of the story, as told to us by Metro Goldwyn Mayer…
Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO
— 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.”