Living Twice: How Chautauqua Can Give You Another Life

By McAvoy Layne

Chautauqua is returning as a force in education and entertainment.
Living Twice illuminates how embracing Chautauqua can actually give you another life, as exemplified by McAvoy Layne’s 35-year portrayal of Mark Twain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662934940

Book preview

Chapter One

1960

A senior in high school with a fever I came across this sentence from Henri Bergson: Life, in all its color, warmth and complexity, is far greater than any intelligible formulation of it. I set that book down, and determined right then and there, that I wanted as much life as I could get, and not from books…

1961

Having graduated without distinction, I took a job lifeguarding up at Lake Tahoe at the Sands. My first day on the job we had a 'Code Brown.' I heard a lady shriek like holy hell. She had discovered a water moccasin between her breasts. It was actually only a kid's lunch that had been eaten the day before, digested, and discharged into the pool without anybody noticing. But she noticed. Boy did she notice! The rector at the Episcopal Church in Myers could hear her war whoop. Well, she tore off her top and flung it into the garden, but the code brown did not go with it. So she started splashing and shouting, Get away from me! I never saw anybody so afraid of anything in my life. Anyway, she covered herself up with a towel and went to the front desk to complain that the lifeguard, me, did nothing to save her. What was I supposed to do? Dive in, get her in a headlock and drag her out of the pool? Well, that was the best job I ever had, outside of the Code Brown…

Next job? What could be more natural than a clown diver in a water show…

1962

I was never tested, but believe now I must have had attention deficit disorder, dyslexia and D-GAS, (Don't Give A Shit) at the same time in my freshman year of college. I did not learn a single thing. My motto was, It's not for knowledge that we come to college. And I wanted out of there with as little knowledge as possible. Besides, I already knew enough to get by in the real world, or at least I thought I did. There is nothing more pathetic in life than a freshman in college who fashions himself to be endowed with more valuable knowledge than the accumulative knowledge of his professors, but that was me all over. I joined a fraternity, and we serenaded the girls in the sororities and sang ourselves hoarse until they hung so far out of their windows we thought they were going to fall into our arms, but they never did.

It rained in the morning in Eugene, then it rained in the afternoon, then it stayed up all night and rained. I transferred to Mexico City College.

1963

Mexico City College was more my speed. I could leave for Acapulco on Thursday and try to be back by Tuesday. Nobody cared. I fell in love with a senorita and asked her to go to a movie with me. She said Si, and when I showed-up she trotted out her mother, her mother's sister, and her mother's sister's four kids to go along to the movie. The Taxi ride with all of us in the back seat was so uncomfortable. Every time we went around a traffic circle somebody groaned until they could find a new position. The theater was another scene altogether. With all the popcorn and drinks we pretty much filled up the whole back row. I thought the family was going to bankrupt me, and we would all have to walk home. Much as I loved her, I couldn't afford to see her again. But I gained an appreciation for love of familia that they share down there in Mexico, an appreciation that has stayed with me to this day…

By the way, when negotiating a roundabout in Mexico City you must have all of your eyes about you. If the car to your left gets one centimeter ahead of you, yield. If the car to your right slips one centimeter behind, give him a wave and blow him a kiss for his mother.

1964

While looking around I ended up in Hong Kong, where I saw an ad for a teacher at St. Joseph's College. Never one to pass up a job offer, I applied, and was granted an interview with the Headmaster. His first question to me was not what did I want to teach, but, Do you have your teaching credential with you? Of course I didn't have a teaching credential, but I told him I would send for it. He would be the oldest man in the world before he ever got it, but what is the Latin saying? Carpe Dooda, or something like that.

Well, I got assigned to seventh-grade, where I got to teach social studies, math, English and physical education, PE being the only course I was actually qualified to teach. But I jumped in with both feet, hoping my ignorance & confidence would save the day, and they did. I loved those kids, and was happy to be learning right alongside them. I had never loved to learn, but they were teaching me.

It wasn't long before the Headmaster called me in again and asked me where the hell my teaching credential was. I acted surprised and assured him I would look into it and have it for him post haste, probably the first time I ever used the term 'post haste.' He had me in the door so to speak and I had to come up with something fast. What could I do? Well, I could organize an intramural basketball league. They didn't have a basketball league, and the kids were crazy for basketball. So that's what I did, and the parents fell for it. The Headmaster stopped asking me for my teaching credential and I was suddenly in the enviable position of COACH, a lofty position I held until the end of the basketball season, when I timed my departure to coincide with my honorable discharge…

1965

Jimmy was a friend of mine. He was blind, but often saw more than I did. He was nine when he walked up to my lifeguard stand, introduced himself, and asked me to teach him how to swim. I taught him how to swim, and he taught me how to see. He taught me how to read braille and see with my fingers. He told me the color red was the sound of trumpets blaring, and I heard color for the first time. He cared nothing about the color of skin, and asked me to read him Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcom X that was just out, and from reading that book together, well, we grew alongside each other.

His father installed a square post to a basketball standard, so that while blindfolded, I could feel the post before taking the ball in to play Jimmy one-on-one. And wrestling? I cannot tell you how defeating it is to be locked in a Double Nelson in ten feet of water.

As a teenager Jimmy fell in love with a girl his own age at summer camp, and as Cecelia lived in LA it looked like he would not get to see her again until the following summer. So I drove him down there to take them to a drive-in movie. On the drive down we passed a field of cotton, and I mentioned to Jim how snowy-white it was. He asked me what white looked like, so I pulled off the road and let him feel the cotton. He picked a bouquet of it and presented it to Cecelia when she came to the door. I thought she was going to cry, me too.

While at the drive-in I excused myself to the refreshment stand to give them time, but not too much time, for a smooch. He confided to me on the drive back home that he wanted to steal a kiss, but they decided to wait until they were married.

Subsequently I enlisted in the Marine Corps and would receive letters from Jimmy in bootcamp in braille. One evening during mail call our drill instructor asked if he could have my letter from Jim when I was done with it. I could not imagine why he would want such a letter, but I found out the next time I got into trouble, and was ordered to report to his hootch. As I was leaving that hootch, having been read the riot act, I saw Jimmy’s letter posted on the wall above the fire alarm, with a note that read in all caps: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY READ THIS! I later told Jim about that incident, and he had a good laugh.

Jimmy learned to read and memorize a series of tie-line numbers that would allow him free access to long distance phone calls. While I was living in Hawaii, he would tell me to pick up the phone at noon and sure enough, without a ring, he’d be there on the line. He got so good at it that the phone company hired him to detect and bust others who had also learned to read that secret code.

Jimmy left this earthly realm last September and is now up there in heaven teaching others without sight how to see. Thank you, Jimmy, for teaching me…

Chapter Two

1966

In Marine Corps bootcamp they taught us how to discharge about a hundred different weapons from Colt 45's to flame-throwers, and how to kill a man with your bare hands in about six seconds flat, then they put us on a Navy boat to Vietnam where I got beat up by a sailor in a boxing ring.

Vietnam was a beautiful but very scary place. We were told not to make friends of our fellow Marines, but that advice fell on deaf ears. We did make friends -fast friends. John Sibilly was my friend. I wrote his mother a letter, a letter that got lost in the mail but would be delivered by her son, Frank, 51 years later, on her 90th birthday…

John Sibilly shed a bright light in a dark time…Rest in Peace.

As Mark Twain tells us,