By McAvoy Layne…In August we welcomed a statue of Mark Twain to the water’s edge at Lake Tahoe, where he looks ever so relaxed and satisfied. Gary and Susan Clemons, members in good standing of the Never Sweats literary society, arranged for the bronze likeness to be placed in the front yard of their Lake Shore House in Glenbrook, where Sam Clemens once stayed. And the sculptor, Gary Lee Price, came out from Utah with his wife for the occasion. Price told us how easy it was to select Mark Twain as a subject in light of Twain’s stimulating writings about human nature. Then Larry Schmidt delivered a compelling account of how Sam Clemens hiked from Carson City to Glenbrook.
This is not a statue of Mark Twain reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, no, by special request, this is a statue of Twain reading Roughing It! And I have to say, it gave me chicken skin all over to see it…
This regal likeness of The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope now highlights a garden at the very beach where Sam Clemens must have stood away back in 1861, and gazed out upon those caerulean waters, thinking to himself, “This must be the fairest picture the whole Earth affords.”
Of course we all stood patiently in line to get a picture of ourselves sitting on the bench next to the Father of our literature.
Sam Clemens loved “Lake Bigler” as it was known back then, loved it almost as much as today’s Clemons love the Lake of the Sky. Our Washoe Native Americans called it Da-o-aga. And having been a lifeguard at Tahoe myself way back in the wondrous summer of 1961, I might fall comfortably into line in my love for “Tula Tulia,” as the lake has been called over the years. Actually, Sam Clemens found the name “Tahoe” to be too weak a name for so majestic a body of water, “…weak as soup for a sick child.”
Were he to come home to us today, I have to believe Sam would struggle with the difficult decision as to whether he should settle in the Sandwich Islands, or on the shores of Glenbrook, where his regal statue sits today.
He must be smiling down upon such a masterful work of art, such a treasured addition to the Clemons’s Lake Shore House, the lovely community of Glenbrook, Lake Tahoe, and the Great State of Nevada. We can all feel a steely pride in this gift from the talented hand of Gary Lee Price.
I might like to close here with some poignant words from our mentor, Sam Clemens: “When I said goodbye to Virginia City, Carson City and Lake Tahoe, I knew I was saying goodbye to the most vigorous enjoyment of life I would ever be afforded. Those days were full to the brim with the wine of life, and there have been no others like them.”
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.”