During the first several weeks of the spring of 1995 I was finding my self being constantly distracted and amused by the ghost of Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the author that many people would readily recognize by his pen name of Mark Twain. I would sneak away to my office and sit down at the desk to try and get some writing done. But before I could even bring up my computer's word processor I would start to smell the familiar aroma of a cigar. At this point I would stubbornly attempt to ignore the creature, beginning to materialize to one side of me, but my efforts would almost always be to no avail. For whatever story I was attempting to create would invariably pale in comparison to the fanciful tales he would immediately begin relating to me.

"Did I tell you that my family moved when I was a small boy?" he asked me on one Saturday afternoon.

"Several times," I replied to him in my best imitation of being disinterested.

"Funny, I don't recall telling you that we moved several times?"

"You've told me, on several different occasions, the story about your family moving when you were a boy," I said as I tried not to fall into that little maze of double meanings that he so enjoyed weaving.

"Well, I'm glad we cleared that up, dear boy" he said with a touch of a smirk and then he took a long draw from the cigar. "I would not wish to be ambiguous when I am attempting to mentor an intelligent young man such as yourself."

"Thank you for your consideration," I said curtly and then I attempted to ignore him and go back to describing how the giant grub worm, which had attempted to devour the county court house, was being vanquished by magic spell of the young Cherokee Girl.

"And did I tell you about the tree that was behind our house?"

"I don't recall you ever mentioning a tree."

"It was a large oak like tree," he said in a bragging sort of manner. "With branches that looked like they were going to reach up into the sky and swat the rain right out of the clouds."

"I thought your back yard was a bit too small for a tree of that stature," I said to him rather dryly.

"Glad to see that you've been paying attention, my young friend," he replied.

"Thank you."

"You're quite welcome. Now, it is true that the proper boundaries of our yard would not have allowed my family to have a tree of, as you so aptly put it, that stature. But I have evidently neglected, during our past discussions, to mention the common area, just beyond the dividing fence, where our back yard met with several other yards. This particular tree was a part of that area."

At this point, having already spent a few weeks in his company, I was well aware of the fact that Mr. Clemens was embarking on the telling of a tale. And I knew that my best course of action was to simply let him ramble on and try not to get in his way. The sooner he was finished the sooner I might have a chance to return to the task I was attempting to complete.

"It was a magnificent tree. The sort of tree that any healthy young boy, between the ages of five and fifteen, would love to scamper up the branches of. And I myself was quite desirous of climbing that tree but I was also terribly afraid of getting anywhere near it."

"And why would that be?" I handed him the obligatory straight line.

"Because .... Well quite frankly .... Sometimes it was there and sometimes it wasn't."

And at that particular point he had me hooked. And the contented little grin on his face let me know that he knew that he had me. As much as I might still try to act like I was not really interested, in his story of the cloud swatting tree in the common area where all the back yards met, I was now firmly committed to following this tale to its conclusion.

"I woke up on my second Wednesday morning in this new neighborhood steadfastly determined that I was going to climb that gigantic and considerably frightening tree. So imagine my utter surprise and confusion when I ran outside and discovered that it was gone. Three days later it was back again but two weeks after that it had disappeared for a second time.

As the summer wore on I began to realize that only the children could recognize the presence of this highly unusual piece of shrubbery. The Adults were totally oblivious to the situation. They simply went about their day to day lives with nary a clue as to what was going on in their own back yards. I did not understand what was taking place at the time but as I have grown older I have begun to believe that the disappearing and reappearing of this tree was actually the comings and goings of a visiting alien from outer space."

"Please forgive me Mr. Clemens," I broke in on him. "I'm well aware of your reputation as the master of spinning a yarn and telling a tall tale. But isn't this whole affair just a bit far fetched and hard to believe .... Even by your standards?"

"Far fetched and hard to believe?" he barked at me in a very stern voice. "Might I remind you my young friend .... You're the one who's talking to a dead man."

He took a long draw from the cigar and blew a marvelous ring of smoke into the air. And as his smiling image started to fade away I quickly realized how unnerving it is to be one-upped by a figment of your own imagination.