David's Knob (USA Day 139)

“And I’ll show you one more thing. I’ve got most of my pension tied down in this.” Don walked over to a marble-looking plinth and lifted up a plastic cloche, under which was a small cardboard box on top of an assortment of photographs of Michelangelo’s ‘David’.

We’d invited ourselves on a mini-tour of the cavernous octagonal bedroom that he’d built to extend the house on one side. The walls were bright lilac next to yellow, the floor black with white stars of the ground-up reflective material used on roads, for easy night-walking. The walls to the closets were pocked with peepholes, each one a wormhole to a different scene from continental Europe, thanks to some well-placed postcards on the other side. The parlour next door was dominated by an enormous Chinese Checkers table.

“Look. Have a feel of that.”

Inside the tiny box was a smooth piece of marble, about the size and shape of the tip of my thumb. Amy picked it up to admire, or perhaps to figure out what we were being shown.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s what it was. Turns out Michelangelo got the proportions wrong. David was Jewish, you see, so he had to be circumcised.” Don handed us one of the faded photos, pointing to David’s crotch.

“You’re saying this is…David’s knob?”

“Yup. A guy sold it to me in Florence. Genuine article.” Don smiled proudly.

I was filled with the horror of realisation. He’d been conned.

“If David could’ve signed the official documentation, he would have,” Don added. “But I got these photos to prove it’s real.”

“Woah…” said Amy. She later confirmed that this was acting.

I had to ask. I had to. “How much did you pay for it?”

“Oh, pchh,” Don said, counting in his head. “Nothing at all. I just found it on the side of the road.”

Okay. His elaborate prank had completely got us. I’ve not laughed so hard in weeks. The payoff was quite wonderful. What gets me is how perfect he was at playing the role of the gormless American tourist, how well he had us fooled, even though we knew his intelligence from a number of conversations previously. The plinth, the photographs, the plastic cloche. This was a man whose life was led by play, from the very structure of his self-adapted house to the things inside it. He later told us that each year at Christmas he builds a rollercoaster in the backyard, just for a bit of fun. Takes about a week, he said, but if he really focused he could get it done in a couple of days. Last year he did a monorail, and made it extra wobbly.

I’m telling you all this because our rest day was wonderfully uneventful. We caught up on some blogs, edited some photos, wandered to the local fete where women collared by pyramid schemes tried to flog their stalls of products and a country band played under the bandstand. There was a beer tent and a street of bouncy castles. Amy’s flip-flop broke.

We ate delicious food cooked by Mary, barely moved a muscle all day, and mapped out the final miles into Los Angeles. If this were the end of the tour, I’d be getting sad about now. But we just booked our train to New Orleans. The ride continues…