Near Hurnville, Texas, 1952: My grandfather had false teeth, but we children didn’t know that. He’d taken us fishing at the tank, and we’d caught several catfish. At the faucet in front of the washhouse, he was cleaning the fish. “Ugh!” we said.

In reply, he moved his jaw in such a way that his false teeth moved free and jutted from his mouth. “Wow!” we cried, “How did you do that?”

“Can’t you do it?” he asked. We were then quiet for a very long time, contorting our faces, attempting to get our teeth to jump up like his did.

Some years later, now wise to false teeth, we were riding in Uncle Esty’s car from the farm toward Henrietta, late at night. As we drove along the flat, a car was coming distantly, when suddenly, on his instruments, a little green light went off. “What’s that?” my cousin Bob asked, pointing to the little light. Uncle Esty was silent for a moment as we passed the other car.

“That light?” he said, “That means there’s a cow in the road.” And just then, the little green light went on again! Knowing nothing of high-beam indicators, we spent the rest of the journey peering into the darkness, trying to see the cow in the road.

Adrienne tells a story of driving through hilly country one late afternoon, her girls watching the cows wandering narrow paths on the hills. “How do they do that?” they asked.

“It’s simple,” their father told them, “Cows that live on hills have legs on one side shorter than on the other.”

“Really?” asked the girls.

“Sure,” he said. “If they were the same length, the cows would tip over.” This made sense to the girls.

This willful misleading of innocent children is certainly fun,

but it has to end somewhere. I tried it on Lori, then my wife, when we’d just bought the yellow MGB. With new tires from the shop, I was showing her how to drive the stick shift, and she caught on right away.

“Now the one thing you need to remember,” I told her, “is that on a sports car you need to equalize the left and right turns. For example, if you’re driving and you have to make a lot of right turns, then you want to make some left turns too.”

She stared at me in consternation. I continued.

“That helps to keep the tires from wearing unevenly,” I said.

She believed it for a minute.

Well, nearly a minute.

San Anselmo, California, June 6, 2003:Adrienne will be dropping by the Department of Motor Vehicles, to renew her license, to take her pretty picture and provide a thumbprint.

She has an appointment for next week, but she cannot go to her appointment, due to the convenient DMV voicemail-appointment system.

It sounded like a good idea.

She’s a dogwalker, and sometimes brings playpals to visit our border collie, Tulip. Tulip’s best friend, a loud and brassy retriever, was visiting at lunchtime, and Adrienne thought this afforded time enough for eternal voicemail, so she called the DMV.

After selecting English and hearing important information about how they will monitor the conversation — what conversation? — she heard about their hours, and how to get to the place, which she passes daily when she’s working.

Then came another series of options: “Please press 1 to make an appointment … You have pressed 1 to make an appointment; is this correct? Please press 1 if correct, or press 2 if not correct, or press 3 to hear these choices again.”

Tulip and pal are standing beside her. Half their attention is on her — let’s play ball! — and half they’re scouting for intruder dogs on the sidewalk. Adrienne ignores them, frowning in concentration. The voicemail has reached an important point.

She has been offered one date or another date. She has selected one date. She has confirmed one date. She is receiving an Important Message: “Please have a pencil handy to write down your Appointment Code. You must bring the Appointment Code to your Appointment. Your Appointment Code is-“

A corgi and a ratty-looking terrier skitter down the sidewalk, dragging a young boy on a leash. “Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!” exclaims Tulip’s friend. “Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!” exclaims Tulip. The dogs scrabble at the window. The DMV voicemail, completely inaudible, drones on.

“-C45”, it says, “Remember, you must bring your Appointment Code to your Appointment. Thank you for calling the Department of Motor Vehicles. For information about our hours and locations, please press 1.”

So Adrienne cannot go to her appointment. She does not have her important Appointment Code. She’ll just have to drop by.

Sometimes that’s just how it goes.

San Anselmo: The Boernings have returned from Mount Shasta. I will report more details soon. Suffice it here to say: I have seen the mountain, and it is good.

Lyon Street, San Francisco, 1987:

I loved the synthesizer, and found it easy to read the manuals, to fiddle with the sounds.

Playing the keyboard was something else.

I took two lessons, to learn how to move my hands on the fretboard. I began learning to read, but it was slow.

Then I happily discovered that composition is easy.

First, chords. Staying in the key of C, you just play all the white keys. If you play four notes, skipping every other white key, you get some kind of a seventh chord. If your lowest note is on the C or F note then you’ll get a major chord, which sounds very rich. If your lowest note is on the D, E, or A note you’ll get a minor chord which sounds haunted. If your lowest note is on the G or B note, you get a real sour chord.

So, for starters, you just plunk around with these seven chords, and find a series of them that sounds good. This is pretty simple. The next step is even easier.

Fire up the drum machine. Set its speed and the rhythm pattern.

Play these chords on top of the rhythm. Find the way that sounds good. Now just play it over and over again.

While you’re playing imagine that some melody is already there, and just listen for it. It is already there. If you listen, you’ll hear it. Maybe bit by bit, or maybe all at once, but you will hear it.

Sing or hum this melody. Go around a few times. Now start working out how to play that melody with your right hand. I wasn’t a good enough player to do that at the same time as playing the left-hand chords, so I’d just record the left-hand chords and let the machine play them.

After you’ve worked out how to play the melody, you can write it down. This was very slow for me, but note by note, it can be done. Now with the chord symbols and the melody written down, you have a written piece of music.

Learn to play it with both hands.

Nothing to it.

Want to hear one? Go to the musician’s gallery at my Traktor website and click on my stage name Traktor Topaz, then scroll down to find the blue shockwave music player. Select a song — I recommend Maggie’s Song and Fly Like Summer Love — then press the triangular ‘Play’ button.

Composition is easy.

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

If your offer sounds good, the human will wonder what’s wrong with it?

That’s it.

It’s human nature to worry if an offer sounds good. Since you know they’re going to do that, make up a “downside”, and make this downside clear in your offer. Anyone reading your offer will find this vastly reassuring.

For example, if you rent cars for less than the best-known brand, you might say something like, “We’re only number two, so we try harder.” In this successful ad from the 50’s, Avis pointed out that they were not number one. It was a drawback, freely offered, a part of the headline. Readers of magazines stopped, and thought, and decided that they didn’t care about Avis’s drawback, being second. Readers concluded that the downside didn’t matter, and then went out and, greatly reassured that they knew the reason for the lower price, rented Avis’s cars by the thousands.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

There is no limit to anything in the Physical Universe except for one thing: Your time.

That’s it.

What is the limit of what a human can accomplish? The only limit is what the human can consider as possible. That is, if you can perceive the possibility, then the possibility exists. Simply put, this means that the only limit imposed upon you absolutely would be the limits of the Physical Universe.

Is there a limited amount of money in the Physical Universe? Not really. For all practical purposes, the possible amount is unlimited. Likewise there is no limit to the amount of land, water, sportscars, wine, women, songs, books you could write, or houses you could build.

Is there anything that absolutely limits you? You bet. There is only so much time in your life. Not one second more. And the funny part is: you never know in advance exactly how much there is. Isn’t that a riot?

The strength of a chain is determined by its weakest link. The richness of a lifetime is determined by its most limited resource. That resource is the time alloted you. Add it up, and wisdom suggests: Make every moment matter.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.