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.

Our next door neighbor owns every tool in the world and he’s very generous with them. Jamie doesn’t trust me with power tools, but allowed me to borrow Rico’s pressure washer only on the condition that he give me detailed lessons on how to use it. He told me all I needed to know in one short sentence: “Be very careful because the pressurized stream of water can cut right through your shoes and take your toes off.”

Which brings us to this recent only-in-Australia story from the 9 Network:

A naked man has decided a Sunshine Coast car and dog wash would be the perfect place for a late-night shower.

In video recorded on August 16, the man is seen receiving a high-pressure hose down from a mate in one of the washing bays.

The owner of the car wash shared the footage on their Facebook page and wished the man a “speedy recovery”.

Not to cast any aspersions on Aussie men, but it happened on a Saturday night so I’m willing to risk a considerable number of Australian dollars that there may have been a bit of alcohol involved in the pre-car wash activities.

NOTE: I would be willing to make the same bet on any Sunday-Friday night.

The story involves a deadly snake, a speeding ute, a tradie, and a life-and-death knife fight. How much more Aussie could it possible get?

Police hear plenty of wild excuses when they pull a person over for speeding, but one Australian man’s real story might be a cut above the rest.

The 27-year-old man, identified by police only as “Jimmy,” says he used a knife and a seatbelt to fight off a deadly brown snake that had coiled around his leg while he was driving a truck in Queensland, Australia, on June 15. Police pulled him over after clocking the vehicle at 123 kilometres an hour, but they let him go after they heard his incredible story — and saw the dead snake that proved it.

Oh, how we miss watching each day’s local Aussie newscast. There seems to be something crazy like this every damn day.

Everyone in Australia asked us what “home” was like. I told our friend Ken that McKinney was a small town, just 190,000 people, and he damn near choked. That’s a big city by Aussie standards.

Jamie and I were having cool, refreshing beverages outside a downtown restaurant the other day when the man who gets the credit for revitalizing downtown McKinney came walking past. We’ve lived here six years and I’ve seen him walking around “his” downtown a thousand times but have never spoken to him before.

I called out his name. I think he was surprised to hear a stranger call out to him. I shook his hand, introduced Jamie and myself, and thanked him for creating this wonderful little downtown. McKinny was a rundown, forgotten spot on the map before he invested his considerable time and energy and money in its downtown real estate when everyone else thought it was folly.

Look at the wonderful little town he’s restored, rebuilt, and recreated.

The downtown square isn’t very large. It’s basically one block of shops across from each side of the old courthouse.

Check out the cool red metal chicken above the store on the left side of the photo. I’d love to have that thing sitting on our front porch.

In the center of the downtown square sits the former Collin County Courthouse, now the McKinney Performing Arts Center.

Over on the right of this photo, the building with the red and yellow awnings is Spoons, the coffee shop/restaurant where Jamie and I enjoy a cold iced tea or two on hot summer afternoons.

The downtown square comes alive with happy Texans during the various festivals that occur during the year. Not sure, but this one looks like either 4th of July or Oktoberfest. On second thought: It looks like people are bundled up for cold weather, so it’s definitely not 4th of July and it’s highly unlikely that it would be that cool for Oktoberfest, so I honestly have no idea what this festival might be.

Back in Australia our friend Dr John always said, “Jamie has the face of an angel.” Neighbor Scottie said, “She’s a delicate porcelain doll.”

What the hell? Jamie just got her Texas driver license renewed. No one else in the world is happy with their official government photos but this one makes her look like the impossibly perfect creature John and Scottie imagine her to be.

In other words, it’s pretty damn realistic.

But don’t be fooled by any photos. She’s tough as an old army mule. And even more stubborn. Tenacious. I meant more tenacious.

By the way, why is it called a “driver’s license” in California but a “driver license” in Texas?

Jamie and I often wonder how Aussies can afford to pay for daily life. Taxes are high. Home prices are sky high. Dining out is outrageously expensive. South Australia’s electricity rates are said to be the highest in the world. Cars are unaffordable. And gasoline is through the roof.

I thought our Aussie friends would like to see what gasoline (or “petrol,” as they would say) costs here in Texas. Today’s price at Sam’s Club here in McKinney is $1.64 per gallon. When we left South Oz the price of petrol was $1.28 per liter.

There are 3.79 liters per gallon. So the equivalent price would be $4.85 per gallon. Factor in the currency exchange rate and we come to a price of $3.40 per gallon.

For God’s sake, man, even those poor devils who live in tax-crazed California gas only pay $3.25 per gallon.