Author: Tom Darby

If you’d been wandering the old silver trail through Mound House on the evening of March 28, you might’ve seen more than tumbleweeds and tail lights. According to the good folks over at the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office—who, bless’em, seem to work harder than a preacher on Sunday—you’d have witnessed a bit of law and disorder that could’ve come straight out of a dime novel.

A feller named Jimmy Keith II, aged 52 and hailing from Dayton–not the one in Ohio, mind you, but our very own dusty dot on the map–got hisself caught up in a situation. Around 10 at night, when decent folks are either sleeping or trying to, Mr. Keith came barreling down Highway 50 faster than a jackrabbit with its tail on fire, swerving like a man wrestling with invisible bees.

The Sheriff’s Traffic Enforcement Team—who don’t take kindly to reckless wheelmen—decided to have a word. They flagged him down near Winter Parkway, a stretch of road known more for coyotes than criminals.

But this wasn’t your average traffic chat. No sir.

Out comes K9 Kai, a four-legged officer of the law with a nose keener than a gossiping neighbor. And wouldn’t you know it, Kai signaled that something unholy was riding shotgun in that vehicle.

Deputies took one good look inside, and lo! There lay over five ounces of methamphetamine—enough to stir up trouble in every saloon from Dayton to Yerington.

Mr. Keith now finds himself in a heap of trouble, and methamphetamine being what it is—more poison than profit—the law ain’t likely to look upon him kindly. He’s locked up for now.

So let this be a lesson to all who think they can outrun the law on Highway 50–the road may be long, but the Sheriff’s shadow is longer.

By Yours Truly, Who Has Known Panic More Intimately Than Profit

Now don’t go imaginin’ you can twist the spigot of your skull and expect a torrent of fine ideas to come gushin’ out like a river bustin’ her britches in spring. That’s a fool’s notion, friend, and I say it plain, with no garnish.

Creativity, she’s a peculiar old gal—proud, temperamental, and ornery as a mule in a rainstorm. She don’t show up when you call or stay when you holler.

No, sir, she waits till you’re good and desperate—eyes wide as saucers, ink dry, deadlines cacklin’ like devils in the dark—and then, she waltzes in like she owns the place, full of spark and sass, wearin’ the perfume of catastrophe and inspiration all mixed together. It’s that late-night, sweat-drippin’, heart-palpitin’ kind of moment when the brain finally catches fire, not from wisdom, but fear.

Ain’t it curious?

It started like all great tragedies, with a desperate need for Wi-Fi. I wandered into this saloon—half dive, half mistake—because my phone had about two bars of signal and the ambition of a potato. I figured I’d grab a seat, mooch some Wi-Fi, maybe send a few emails, and escape before someone tried to sell me life insurance or Bitcoin.

I sit down. Casual-like. Nod to the bartender, who looks like he lost a staring contest with a buzzsaw.

“Hey,” I say, “what’s the Wi-Fi password?”

He doesn’t blink, doesn’t move. He just wipes the bar with the enthusiasm of a depressed sloth and says, “You need to buy a drink first.”

Okay. Classic bait-and-sip. I play along.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll have a Coke.”

He squints at me. “Pepsi okay?”

It’s never okay, but I’m not here to start a war.

“Sure,” I nod. “How much?”

“Three bucks.”

I fork over the cash, and he slides over a warm-ish Pepsi in a glass that smells faintly of beer. I pretend to enjoy it, like someone pretending their online date looks like their profile picture.

“So,” I say again, “What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

He leans in like he’s about to share a state secret.

“You need to buy a drink first,” he says. “All lowercase. No spaces.”

I stare at him. Blink once. Maybe twice.

“You mean… that’s the password? Youneedtobuyadrinkfirst?”

He grins. The kind of grin that says he’s been waiting all day to do this to someone.

I type it in. And, of course—it connects instantly.

I sip my warm Pepsi and stare into the fluorescent lights, questioning all my life decisions, a reminder that the universe enjoys a good joke.

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto secured $2.5 million in taxpayer funding for the new Lockwood Senior Center, set to open in the twilight of 2025. Folks in Storey County will finally get something they’ve been lacking for far too long–a proper place for elders to gather, eat, and get help.

“I’m proud to have secured this funding,” said Cortez Masto, her words ringing like a dinner bell in a hungry town. “This center will be a cornerstone of the community.”

With meals on wheels, transportation, a pantry, mental health care, and even a health office, it’s the kind of investment rural Nevadans don’t often see, much less from the far-off marble halls of Washington. Storey County’s Donald Gilman and Storey County Director of Health and Community Services Stacy York stood beside the Senator–a sight as welcome as shade in the desert.

But just as the good news spread through the hills like wild sage in spring, along comes Senator Jacky Rosen with a letter in hand and a mouth full of trouble. Instead of joining the effort to build something, Rosen did something else entirely.

She fired off a letter to Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. over at Health and Human Services, bemoaning recent cuts to IT and cybersecurity staff. Now, don’t mistake it as a defense of bureaucratic bungling, just more of the same old, same old.

But while Cortez Masto was cutting ribbons, Rosen got busy flinging paperwork like a clerk in a windstorm. Her concerns may be valid, but her timing feels more like an obstructionist trying to gum up the gears than a partner in progress.

Rather than help bring services to rural Nevadans, Rosen seems content to stand on the porch and holler about hypothetical hazards.

It breaks the heart just a little to see a newspaper go belly-up — even one where half the words read like Chinese to a fellow who never did get the hang of Spanish. You don’t have to read every line to know when something came with import. You could see it in how the ink smudged on folks’ fingers at the bus stop or how the readers at the market would argue over it like it was the Ten Commandments printed sideways.

So it is with El Mundo, which in English means The World — a fitting name for a thing that tried to gather up all the little joys and sorrows of Las Vegas’ Latino community and roll them up between two staples once a week. And now, like the world, it’s spinning in a new direction — leaving behind its paper skin for the bright, cold ether of the digital age.

Edmundo Escobedo Jr. and his late father — God rest his soul — started El Mundo in 1981, when the city was just a sparkle on a zoning map. It was a family affair–Dad wrote the stories, the Son laid’em out, and Mama ran the social column, which sounds just about right.

Like a good tamale, a good newspaper is best made by hand and with family.

For a spell, the thing was booming. One hundred pages a week, by some counts. Weddings, quinceañeras, soccer scores, protests, dances, baptisms — every line of it proved that something real was happening in the world, and someone was there to notice. And all of it for free.

The Escobedos didn’t just make a paper; they made a map of the lives around them.

But time, like taxes and toothaches, comes for us all. The pandemic hit, ads dried up, and one by one, pages thinned. And then, like a candle in the wind that Elton John probably sang about, El Mundo flickered out in March of this year — at least the printed kind.

Edmundo Jr. says his father’s likely up in Heaven shedding a tear–but understanding just the same. And I believe him. El Viejo, after all, was a veteran of both the Air Force and the free press — no stranger to battles or endings. He knew that spirit counted more than pieces of paper and that the press was never about pulp but people.

Now, Escobedo says he’ll bring El Mundo back in a new form–and it’ll fit in a pocket instead of on a doorstep, but still speaks from the same heart. And maybe that’s all we can hope for these days–to carry our old voices into new places without losing their warmth.

Still, it’s a bitter sip to swallow–because some folks in Las Vegas won’t work a smartphone and refuse to know the digital interface. These people waited every Friday for El Mundo like a letter from home, and now that house is abandoned.

But let the record show that El Mundo didn’t die because it was weak — it died because the world got louder and faster and forgot to listen. And maybe when the fever of progress dies down–folks’ll look and remember how a little Spanish newspaper gave a community its voice.

We should be so fortunate.

If there’s anything more American than planting a tree and giving a speech about it, I’ve yet to witness it. On a fine Friday in Carson City—where the wind is as persistent as a politician’s hot breath and the sun burns hotter than a Fourth of July pie contest—the good ladies of the Nevada State Society Daughters of the American Revolution gathered ’round the old Washington Elm for a ceremony that’d make even the stiffest Founding Father misty-eyed.

It wasn’t just any tree but a descendant of the very elm under which General George Washington first took command of the Continental Army in 1775. Whether or not he paused for shade or to scratch his chin and mutter about the British is now lost to history—but his spirit remains, and so do the branches.

The Battle Born and Nevada Sagebrush Chapters of DAR, aided by their Maryland sisters–who brought along their historian like a good-luck charm, rededicated the elm with all the pomp and pride one could hope for. Mona Crandell Hook, state regent and custodian of patriotism, explained it was the perfect marriage of historic preservation and tree-hugging.

“We’re nonpolitical,” she said, “which is a miracle these days, like finding a chicken with teeth or a politician with silence.”

Carson City’s Mayor Lori Bagwell read proclamations from Governor Joe Lombardo and the city, declaring April 25th as Arbor Day, a noble occasion to honor a tree with more historical lineage than many politicians have common sense.

Then came the young voices from Mark Twain Elementary School, who sang with the sincerity only children possess and politicians pretend to. Afterward, the crowd moved to City Hall, where the Rotary Club, not to be outdone, planted another tree and surrounded it with flags, forming a patriotic hedge row if ever there was one.

Debbie Carroll, Regent of the Battle Born Chapter, stated what many thought–the tree deserves a bit more affection than the average shrub.

“We need the community to love on that tree,” she said, clearly a woman not afraid to mix sentiment with soil.

Crandell Hook summed it up best with the motto, one so unsophisticated it would look good stitched on a sampler, “Heart is where the home is. Celebrate Nevada.”

So, nearly 250 years since Washington took command, and still planting his legacy into Nevada soil—proof that in the West–history ain’t just remembered, it’s rooted.

And if the elm ever does fall, Lord willing, there’ll be another sapling and another speech to take its place.

It came to pass on a fine Saturday, the kind of day when the sun shines just enough to remind a man he ought to be doing something useful, that a citizen of mysterious intention took it upon himself to challenge the authority of law and custom by sprinting away from a deputy of the Carson City Sheriff’s Office.

This grand ballet of boot leather began near the civilized bounds of Winnie Lane, where a deputy, likely minding his peacekeeping business and perhaps hoping for a quiet afternoon, encountered the fellow. Instead of exchanging pleasantries or offering up the usual excuses, the man sprang like a startled jackrabbit, bolting, prompting the deputy to give chase—a chase that would wind through alleys, leap over fences, and crash through the serene domain of a storage unit facility, where one imagines more than a few rubberneckers got their day’s entertainment.

The man ran with the determination one only sees in gospel preachers or those who’ve just remembered they left the stove burning at home. Persistent as a Sunday sermon, the deputy pursued him, calling for backup when it became clear the suspect wanted to see more of Carson City on foot than most folks do by carriage.

Somewhere near Northgate Lane–amidst a flurry of shouts and badge-bearing folk, the pursuit wound down. The fugitive was finally apprehended near the Ron Wood Center, proving at last that no matter how fast a man may run, he cannot outrun his choices—or the long legs of the law.

No injuries beyond the pride of a man who mistook flight for freedom and ended up with neither. As for the reason behind his exodus, it remains a mystery, though one victim has expressed a desire to press charges.

Curious–and one that proves a man ought to stay still when told—unless he’s aiming to see the inside of the county jail.

Heads for Prison Instead of Podium

Now, I ain’t one to gossip, much, but if ever there was a tale worth telling twice, it’s the one about John Jessup — a feller from Shirley County, Indiana, who mistook politics for privilege and whiskey for wisdom. At the tender age of fifty, Mr. Jessup, a Republican of some former standing and even less sense, found hisself shackled in the warm embrace of the Clark County Detention Center last June on account of some “after-hours misbehavior.”

The charges weren’t a hiccup like public nuisance or dopey dancing. The man got booked on a felony count of sexual assault after what police say was an uninvited and most ungentlemanly act upon a lady he knew, following a lively evening at what’s politely called a gentleman’s club–though there’s little gentility found in such places beyond the door sign.

When questioned by the law, Jessup claimed he hadn’t done anything criminal, just endured what he described as a “f***ed up, drunk night.” That excuse might pass muster in a barroom brawl or poker table tiff, but it don’t sit well with judges.

Come fall, Mr. Jessup took a deal and pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault — still a felony, but one that carried a slimmer chance of leniency. The court could’ve handed him a couple of years or even a warning, but Judge Joe Hardy wasn’t in the mood for mercy. He sentenced Jessup to six to fifteen years in prison and told him he’d be carrying the title of sex offender for life — a label heavier than any badge he ever wore in office.

Here’s where the story turns from pitiful to peculiar. While Jessup was trading suits for stripes and awaiting his day in court, the good people of Shirley County went and elected the man to their county council — gave him over 15,000 votes, they did, like tossing keys to the henhouse back to the fox.

Indiana law says felons can’t hold office, but no law can stop folks from making poor choices at the ballot box. One might say it was a triumph of party over principle or proof that not everybody reads the newspaper these days.

So now Mr. Jessup’s got himself a fresh prison sentence, a lifetime registry as a sex offender, and a seat he can’t legally warm — unless they move the county council chambers to a correctional facility.

Ain’t democracy grand?

It may surprise the casual observer of the great Silver State, with its noble mountains and ignoble tax base, that the mood in Carson City is less celebratory than a cat in a rainstorm. The reason? A solemn convocation of economists—five in number, each more learned than the last, and all of them employed in that curious profession where one can be wrong with confidence and still be considered a prophet—has gathered to deliver a most inconvenient truth: the money pot is shrinking, or at least not growing as vigorously as the politicians had hoped.

This band of soothsayers, known as the Economic Forum, is tasked with foretelling how many doubloons shall pour into the state’s coffers over the next two years. Due May 1st, their findings will dictate how much brass the Legislature has to play with and whether pet projects like expanding film tax credits or doling out hundreds of millions for the Governor’s priorities, will live to see another committee hearing.

While I ain’t one to accuse a man of misdeeds without a trial, the recent clamor around these budget woes has taken a curious turn, wherein several well-groomed and well-rehearsed politicians have set their sights on a scapegoat so familiar he ought to have his own parking space at the Capitol: one Donald J. Trump. I hold no brief for Mr. Trump, being neither kin nor creditor, but I reckon it’s worth pointing out a simple truth that seems to have fled the minds of these honorable men and women–you can’t blame the last fellow who stirred the pot for the fact that the stew’s been burning for years.

Let us travel back—not in theory, but in fact—to a time before Mr. Trump was anything more than a New York curiosity and television nuisance. Bless her heart, Nevada was already engaged in a delicate dance with fiscal misfortune.

Tourism, that ever-wavering mistress, has flirted and floundered for decades. The budget’s dependence on gaming, sales tax, and the comings and goings of tourists with pockets full of dreams and nickels was always a gamble—and not the kind you win often.

The pandemic put a stopper in every bottle. When folks finally staggered out from under their stay-at-home orders and began spending like drunken sailors, they mistook a temporary sugar high for sustainable growth. Now, the crash is arriving, not because of a tariff here or a grumble about Canada there, but because no economic party lasts forever when built on hope and roulette.

It’s a rare form of nonsense to claim tariffs from four years past are to blame for a downturn rooted in decades of lopsided revenue strategies, misaligned priorities, and an over-reliance on tourism—a fickle friend if ever there was one. But it makes a fine campaign line. And that’s what many of these proclamations are–not economic insight, but political ventriloquism, where the dummy says “Trump” whenever the heat gets too close to home.

Listening to these modern-day Cassandras, one would think that no tourist had ever skipped Las Vegas until the 47th president started spouting off about trade. Yet Harry Reid Airport has seen its fair share of empty seats long before that man ever came down his golden escalator.

If there’s any truth to be gleaned from Mr. Aguero’s observation—that what we don’t know outweighs what we do—we should proceed with humility, not hubris. Blaming a man for the wind when the roof’s leaked for decades is a logic that only passes muster in legislative chambers and lunatic asylums.

The good people of Nevada deserve a sober accounting, not scapegoats. Fix the revenue structure. Diversify the economy. Stop pretending the problem came with a red tie and a loud voice when it arrived decades ago wearing a smile and promising prosperity through slot machines and sales tax alone.

And if you find yourself tempted to believe that one man—love or loathe him—could single-handedly upend the vast machinery of this state’s budget, I’ve got a silver mine outside Vya to sell you. Cheap.

My wife, Mary, left a 30-roll pack of toilet paper by our indoor trash bins last night.

Dawn hadn’t broken. The air was cold and sharp. I started the truck, engine grumbling, and headed out.

Realizing I had forgotten my briefcase, I went back inside. Coming out, I saw the toilet paper was gone.

It vanished in a minute.

“Mary,” I called, stepping into the kitchen. “You move that toilet paper?”

She looked up, eyes narrowing. “No. It’s still out there.”

“It’s not.”

She picked up her phone to dial 9-1-1, “Someone took it?”

“Hold on,” I said.

Grabbing my keys, I went back to the truck. I pulled out of the driveway slowly, scanning the street.

To the east, a figure jogged, a bulky white package in his arms. It was our toilet paper. I gunned the engine, closed the gap, and rolled down the window.

“Hey,” I said, voice flat.

He tripped, almost fell, eyes wide, caught. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he heaved the toilet paper into my truck’s open bed and bolted, cutting into the neighborhood where steel posts blocked my way.

I let him go. Drove home. Carried the rolls inside.

Mary stood at the door, arms crossed. “You got it!”

“Yeah.”

“We’re not leaving stuff in our garage again.”

“No,” I said. “We’re not.”