The route from Kalispell to Bozeman took us along the eastern shore of Flathead Lake. Jamie took all these shots as we drove along at 65 miles per hour. I can’t believe they turned out so unblurred and pretty.

I’ve always had it in my head that Flathead is the United States’ second largest freshwater lake (excluding Lake Michigan). Must have been something my Montana relatives told me when I was a kid, because very few people outside of Montana have ever heard of Flathead Lake.

So I Googled “largest lakes in the United States” just to see if it was true.

Not even close.

According to Wikipedia, an unimpeachable source, it ranks 30th. But if I do a little Flathead Lake Chamber of Commerce-like analysis, I can move it much higher on the list.

Of the Great Lakes only Lake Michigan lies completely within the United States, and we already said it was excluded. Then we can eliminate the Great Salt Lake because it’s not a freshwater lake. Let’s knock Lake of the Woods off the list because it lies mostly in Canada. Likewise, Iliamna Lake is in Alaska, not the continental United States.

By the time I was done whittling away lakes that aren’t freshwater, don’t lie within the contiguous United States, or lie partially in Canada, we’re down to a very short list:

1. Lake Okeechobee in Florida (662 square miles)
2. Red Lake in Minnesota (427 square miles)
3. Devils Lake in North Dakota (300 square miles)
4. Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin (215 square miles)
5. Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota (207 square miles)
6. Flathead Lake in Montana (192 square miles)
7. Lake Tahoe in California-Nevada (191 square miles)

So there you go. Flathead Lake is not the United States’ second largest freshwater lake (excluding Lake Michigan). But seventh ain’t bad. Especially when you realize it’s one square mile larger than Lake Tahoe.

Here’s Jamie, my cousin Muriel, my cousin-in-law Bill, and me on their farm.

Muriel has always been my favorite cousin. I love all my other cousins, too, but Muriel spent every December at our house when I was a kid so I got to know her better than any of the others. And then, of course, she married Bill which really sealed the deal.

Muriel’s dad was a real estate agent in Kalispell. He couldn’t sell much land when it was covered with snow, so he came up with the brilliant idea of bringing Montana Christmas trees down to Southern California. He was a smokin’, drinkin’, gamblin’, cussin’, dirty joke tellin’, incredibly charismatic guy. He seemed really exotic and fun compared to my parents‘ milquetoast circle of friends and I couldn’t wait until Uncle Dick and Aunt Noma and Bill and Muriel and the rest of the cast of characters showed up at our front door every year. It was the best day of the year, even better than Christmas.

Muriel prides herself on being tough as nails. No one who knows her would dispute that self assessment.

For some reason, she stayed behind here in Montana one year after the rest of the crew headed down to California to sell Christmas trees. She was supposed to drive down later with her two infant daughters. Well, a major blizzard hit the Canadian border just as she left Kalispell driving one of those tiny, rickety, original VW bugs.

She reached the Rocky Mountains just as night fell. So much snow was falling that she couldn’t see twenty feet in front of the car. Most rational drivers pulled over and didn’t even attempt to cross the mountains at night. But family lore says that snow and darkness didn’t deter Muriel.

She pulled into a gas station on the eastern side of the Rockies and approached the drivers of two 18-wheelers.

”Would you two be willing to guide me across the mountains in the dark?” she asked. “If one of you drives in front of me I’ll be able to follow your tail lights, and if the other one drives in back your headlights will light the road in front of me.”

They agreed to her crazy scheme. And that’s how Muriel and her two infant daughters crossed the Rocky Mountains and got to California in time for Christmas dinner with our two families.

Yeah, she’s tough. And Bill has had to put up with that toughness for seven decades now. They’ve been married for 65 years and together since junior high school.

My Aunt Sarahjane always said, “You’re a saint, Bill.”

She was right, of course, but I have a feeling he wouldn’t want it any other way.

Huckleberry pie is one of the highlights of visiting Montana in the summer and autumn. Bill and Muriel went out before we arrived and bought us one, but it apparently called to them a bit too seductively from the refrigerator. They ate the whole thing before we arrived.

We stopped at a roadside huckleberry stand to buy another one.

You might remember cartoon character Huckleberry Hound. Or Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. Or if you grew up in Southern California when I did, a great disc jockey named Huckleberry Chuck Clemans.

But what the hell is a huckleberry? I thought they were fictional until I had my first piece of huckleberry pie.

They look a lot like blueberries but can range from bright red to dark purple to blue. Red huckleberries are a bit tart, but the purple and blue ones are sweeter.

I’ve always wondered about the origin of the phrase “I’m your huckleberry.” If you say “I’m your huckleberry,” you’re saying you’re the right person for some task. Wonder where that meaning came from.

We loaded up on a selection of huckleberry jams and jellies to take back to Texas.

My cousin’s farm is pretty damn pretty. Here’s the view as the sun comes up.

And here’s the view as the sun goes down. Six of one, half dozen of another.

My cousin Muriel lives on a farm a few miles outside Kalispell, Montana. Soon after our arrival we were sitting around her living room talking when Muriel casually said, “Here come the wild turkeys.”

Sure enough, a band of wild turkeys strutted across Bill and Muriel’s back yard as if they owned the place. Turns out they make the same journey every afternoon just before sunset.

Every time I jumped up to take a photo, they’d scatter and I could only capture one of them.

Whenever we visit Kalispell we bring Bill a bottle of Texas whiskey. Maybe in the future we should just go with a bottle of Wild Turkey.

We were driving from Moscow, Idaho to Kalispell, Montana when we saw this street sign welcoming us to the tiny town of Tensed, Idaho. I screeched to a halt to take a photo.

I’ve mentioned several times that I’ve spent my entire life stressed out. I can actually remember worrying if I would be able to recite the ABCs properly in order to pass from kindergarten to first grade. I think it’s something I get from a Savage gene because my all my cousins on my mom’s side of the family seem to suffer with the same sort of needless stress.

It results in sleepless nights, migraine headaches, ulcers, chewed fingernails, and constant fidgeting. Jeez, I’m a mess.

In my early 20s I worked as a copywriter at the Los Angeles office of a huge international ad agency. The stress became overwhelming. Call it non-sexual performance anxiety. My boss couldn’t help but notice the impact of the stress, so he called me into his office and sat me down and told me I needed to relax, that he was very happy with my work, and as he put it, “The the only stress one feels is the stress one puts on oneself.”

All that was great to hear, but it didn’t reduce my stress one iota. If anything it made it worse because he was a great guy and I didn’t want to disappoint him.

I decided I needed to do something, anything, to make alleviate the tension. I remembered that my favorite baseball player, Maury Wills, suffered from immense stress during the 1962 season when he was setting records for stolen bases. Every time he got on base a stadium full of fans began chanting his name to encourage him to steal another one.

”Maury, Maury, Maury,” they chanted.

And then he’d steal another base.

I remembered that Maury had sought out the services of a professional hypnotherapist to help him deal with the stress he inflicted upon himself.

Well, I thought, thousands of people are not chanting my name in hopes that I will come up with a clever headline, but the stress I‘m feeling is unbearable nonetheless.

I pulled out a copy of the yellow pages and looked up the same hypnotherapist who had helped Maury. I called his office and made an appointment. His office was in a fancy schmancy office building in the heart of L.A.’s ritzy Westwood district.

Soon I was sitting before him in a darkened room as he gently swung a shiny, golden watch back-and-forth from the end of a long chain.

”Concentrate on the watch,” he said calmly and quietly. “Let the world drift away and concentrate on the watch.” I did as I was asked. I concentrated. I watched the watch.

He calmly told me to forget my worldly cares. To relax. To let the stress melt away.

”Picture your stress as a block of ice. It’s a warm, beautiful day. The sun is shining. It feels good on your skin. The ice is melting and with it, your stress is slowly melting and going down the drain.”

Well, I did as Maury Wills’ hypnotherapist suggested. I followed his instructions. I pictured that block of ice melting. Then the hypnotherapist counted slowly from five to one, snapped his fingers, and brought me out of my hypnotic trance.

”You were a great subject,” he told me. “You went under quickly and deeply and I think a few more sessions like this will really help you. How do you feel?”

“Well,” I answered, “I really don’t feel any different. I don’t think I was hypnotized. I was just doing everything you said in order to go along with the program.”

He laughed. “What would it take,” he asked, “to convince you that you were really under hypnosis?”

”I don’t know,” I said honestly.

”What if I got you to cluck like a chicken?”

”Well, sure, I guess I would believe I was hypnotized if you told me to cluck like a chicken and I actually did it.”

”OK, then,” he said. “Let’s put you back under and see what happens.”

Again he brought out the golden pocket watch. Again he began swinging it gently back and forth at the end of a chain. He slowly and gradually began telling me to relax. When finally he got me into a state of complete relaxation he said the words:

”I’m going to count downward from three to one and when I get to one, I want you to cluck like a chicken. Three. Two. One. Cluck.”

I grew up on a farm. I know what chickens sound like and I began clucking up a storm.

“Bwaaaack, bwaaack, bwaaack.”

With a knowing smile on his face, the hypnotherapist slowly brought me out of my trance. “I’m going to count down from three to one and when I get to one you will awaken. Three. Two. One. Wake up.”

He looked at me. I looked back at him. Finally, he said, “Well, you clucked like a chicken. Do you believe now that you were in a deep hypnotic trance?”

”Well, no, I don’t” I replied. “I just clucked because I wanted to go along with you and not screw things up.”

”No. You were hypnotized. That’s just your conscious mind trying to explain why you clucked like a chicken. Remember telling me that you would believe you were hypnotized if I could get you to cluck like a chicken?”

”Yes, I remember telling you that. But then I decided to make those clucking noises so I wouldn’t offend you.”

He laughed. There was nothing he could do to convince me that hypnotism had anything to do with those enthusiastic clucking sounds.

I never went back to see him. Instead, I went back to work and continued to suffer from migraine headaches, sleepless nights, nervous tics, and ulcers.

Instead of seeking out a hypnotherapist, maybe I should have sought out Tensed, Idaho. It certainly looks a lot less stressful than Los Angeles.

We’re about as far away from Texas as you can get and still be in the United States — all the way up in Idaho near the Canadian border.

Moscow, Idaho is nothing like the Russian city with the same name. It’s much smaller, much cleaner, and full of much friendlier people. Our god daughter Kendal lives here while attending the University of Idaho.

She’s a great kid. Smart. Beautiful. Very mature for her tender years. Wants to be a doctor. And I guess that I should mention that she’s such a good athlete that she’s here on a soccer scholarship.

In a really interesting twist, the soccer season has been cancelled because of the Wuhan Flu. But that doesn’t mean they don’t practice. In fact, despite the fact that the girls will not play any real games this year, the coach has them working out and scrimmaging even harder than ever.

One of the reasons we fell in love with our home is because four stately, matching sycamore trees towered over its front yard. The hundred year old sentinels provided much-needed shade during the hot Texas summers and covered every yard on the street with falling leaves each autumn. They were beautiful.

Sadly, two of them died and had to be removed while we were traveling, and a third one will soon suffer the same fate.

They had a disease, but the experts can’t decide if the disease came first or if they were weakened by something else that made them susceptible to the disease. Perhaps they were weakened by the drought that Texas suffered a few years ago. Or maybe they had just reached the end of their natural lifespans.

Neither can the arborists explain why three died while the fourth one is still healthy. Maybe it’s just the Ruth Bader Ginsberg of sycamores.

That one remaining sycamore looks a little lonely sitting by itself off on the western edge of our lawn. Luckily, our next door neighbors planted a pair of matching baby sycamores a few years ago. They won’t equal ours in height nor girth for fifty years or so, but it’s a good start.

We’ll miss the sense of strength and stability and beauty they provided all year long, and the cooling shade they gave us in the summer, but definitely won’t miss the reddened leaves they shed in autumn nor the sticky, yellow pollen they spewed every spring.

But the front yard and the neighborhood sure seem empty without them.

My first ad agency boss once said, “It’s my job to create an environment where other people can be creative.” I always remembered those words and tried to put them to good use after I became a boss.

We once had a young copywriter named John. He was a great kid, very creative, and has gone on to great and well-deserved success in the ad agency business. But that success may have come, I must admit, despite the intervention of my business partners and me.

John occupied the office next to mine. For some long-forgotten reason, my partners and I began a strange little ritual just for John’s benefit. Each Friday morning, we walked into his office, shut the door, and my partner would say, “Do you know what today is, John?”

”It’s Friday,” John would respond, clearly hoping that it would turn out to be nothing more than the last day of the work week.

”No, it’s not just Friday,” my partner would tell him. “It’s Greek Day.” And on that cue my partners and I would begin our version of a traditional Greek dance, complete with enthusiastic cries of, “Opa! Opa!”

Elbows anchored on his desk, John would bury his face in his hands and slowly shake his head, clearly hoping that this was all just a bad dream that would return to a more normal reality when he again opened his eyes and looked up.

Alas, it was not a dream. When John opened his eyes, his bosses were still there, dancing and crying out like Greeks.

You may find this hard to believe, but other than these strange Friday interludes my closest brush with Greece and things Greek was driving past the Greek Orthodox Church up on the hill overlooking my hometown. My partner had visited Greece and had Greek friends. I was merely imitating him in an attempt to keep things loose and creative for an employee. (Yeah, ok, maybe we strayed a bit beyond creative and entered into the world of bizarre, but we were up for whatever it took to keep our environment “creative.”)

That’s a long way to go to tell you that Jamie and I visited Athens, Texas today.

Yes, last weekend it was Paris. This weekend, Athens. Living the lives of Texas jet setters can be so exhausting.

When we visited Paris we saw the world’s second largest Eiffel Tower which was topped off with a giant red cowboy hat. So when we decided to drive down to Athens, Texas we thought maybe it would be home to the world’s second largest Parthenon topped off with a similarly jaunty red Stetson.

No such luck. Athens has no Parthenon. No big red hat. But, on the other hand, it does claim to be the place where the hamburger was invented. And it must be true, because the town’s water tower plainly says, “Athens. Hamburgers. Heritage. Texas.”

Here’s another great sign in front of the county courthouse on the town square. “Home of the Hamburger. Old Fiddlers Reunion. Black Eyed Pea Capital of the World.”

A little more about that “Home of the Hamburger” claim:

The Texas historian Frank X. Tolbert attributes the invention of the hamburger to Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas. Davis is believed to have sold hamburgers at his café at 115 Tyler Street in Athens, Texas, in the late 1880s, before bringing them to the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. 

So in order to honor the local creation of the world’s most iconic item of American cuisine we sauntered over to the Athens Brewing Company, ordered up a couple of big ol’ cheeseburgers, and chowed down.

Damn good burgers.

But to be completely honest, good as they were, they may not have measured up to the catfish burgers available down the street at the All U Can Eat Catfish Palace. (Or if you look closely at the sign on the building behind Jamie, the ‘atfish Palace.”) C’mon, you have catfish in the background and an increasingly rare pay phone in the foreground. Pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the place.

Opa!

I was in the paint store the other day and the kid behind the counter had such a thick accent that I said, “You gotta be from east Texas.”

”Yes, sir,” he said. “Paris, Texas.”

It’s only about 80 miles northeast of McKinney, but all I knew about Paris, Texas is that there was a 1984 movie of the same name. It starred Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, and Dean Stockwell.

”How big is Paris?” I asked.

”About twenty-five thousand people, sir.”

”And what is there to do in Paris?”

”Well, sir, we have the world’s second tallest Eiffel Tower but it’s better than the original because ours has a red cowboy hat on top. And we also have BurgerLand, which makes the world’s best hamburger.”

Well, who could resist visiting Paris after a sales pitch like that? Jamie, Tinker and I drove over this morning and made a day of it.

We explored the downtown square’s antique stores, took selfies in front of the world’s second largest Eiffel Tower, and partook of the haute cuisine at BurgerLand. (It was one of those great, old, hole-in-the-wall places that had greasy, delicious burgers and fries that soaked right through the wax paper they were wrapped in.)

Now we’re thinking about taking a tour of Texas’ other European-named towns: Amsterdam, Athens, Belgrade, Copenhagen, Dublin, Edinburg, Florence, and London. Who knows? There may be even more of them out there.