The Great Bonanza Begging Bee:

Or, How Virginia City Proposes to Pan for Memories in the Dust of Yesterday

Friends, neighbors, and fellow loafers upon the porch of time, lend me a moment.

A gentleman of Virginia City, one Steven Saylor, has stepped into the public square and asked for help. Not money, not mules, not even whiskey, though he would likely tip his hat to any of the three, but memories. And, if we are being honest, whatever attic treasure those memories happen to be clinging to.

Virginia City has long made an honest living remembering itself. It polishes the past daily and charges admission. Now Mr. Saylor proposes Bonanza Days, a celebration of the Comstock, the town, and that television colossus, Bonanza, which for fourteen years rode into America’s parlors and tied its horse to the furniture.

They called it a program, but that was being modest. Supper hurried and arguments postponed.

Fathers occupied the best chair like lawful claim-holders. Children got solemnly warned that any noise during the opening sequence, wherein that infernal map of the Ponderosa burst into flame like a claim notice gone wrong, would be remembered come the reading of wills.

Backyards became the Ponderosa, and fence posts suffered gunfire, while dogs got promoted to cattle. And every boy believed he had Hoss’s heart, Adam’s brains, and Little Joe’s hair.

Nature, as usual, has disagreed.

Meanwhile, sensible adults hoarded programs, photos, toy six-shooters, autographs, some authentic, some suspiciously enthusiastic. Pilgrims traveled to the Ponderosa Ranch, where fiction and gift shops came together.

And here lies the fine irony: the true history of Bonanza is not locked in a studio vault. It lives in your scrapbooks, your garages, your stories polished by retelling. In photographs where Uncle Fred stands beside a Cartwright, or a man who once waved at one.

So Mr. Saylor asks, “Did you visit the Ranch? Meet the cast? Work on the show? Grow up in a house where Sunday night meant the Cartwrights were inbound and the outside world could wait? Have you relics, letters, snapshots, collectibles, tales from behind the scenes?”

The best will get featured at Bonanza Days or in the Bonanza Times, credited properly, and handled with due care. So step forward, custodians of nostalgia, and send a message, share a story, or produce that lunchbox you swore you’d never part with.

For Bonanza was never merely a television show. It was a shared claim staked in the public memory, and it belongs to the folks who kept it alive long after the credits rolled.