Author: Tom Darby

A Money Tree We’d Rather See

In the grand circus of Washington, where fine folks gather to jaw and jostle over the nation’s doings, Representative Mark Amodei, a son of Nevada’s sagebrush and silver, has fixed to plant a Jefferson American Elm on the Capitol’s lower West Terrace, come April 29 at nine in the morning, Eastern Time.

It ain’t no regular sapling, mind you, but a hardy specimen chosen for its knack of thriving in all manner of soils and weathers–much like the stubborn spirit of Nevada itself.

It ain’t the first time Nevada’s tried to root itself in the capital’s sod. In ’83, when Harry Reid was a young congressman with a spring in his step, he sponsored a Jeffrey Pine to stand for the Silver State near the Cannon House Office Building.

Like many a prospector’s dream, the tree has since gone to dust, and the ground lies bare.

The ceremony’ll draw the Nevada delegation, staff, and a passel of special guests, all to watch this elm take root on the south side of the West Front, a grand gesture, to be sure, and we tip our hats to the sentiment.

But if I might speak plain, as is my custom, the good people of Nevada ain’t so much pinin’ for a tree as they are for a permanent tax cut —a relief that’d lighten their burdens more than any shade an elm could offer. Unless this Jefferson Elm’s a peculiar habit of sproutin’ greenbacks from its branches, we’d be mighty obliged to see it grow tall and fast.

So here’s to Amodei’s elm and the hope that Nevada’s voice in Washington remains as sturdy as the tree’s promise. But if the choice is between a sapling and a lighter tax load, we’d take the latter–unless that tree’s fruit is silver and gold.

By a Man Who’s Seen Saints and Sinners Wear the Same Robes

Governor Joe Lombardo, with all due solemnity and not a hint of side-eye, has ordered the flags of the United States and the Great State of Nevada lowered to half-staff in honor of His Holiness Pope Francis, who recently departed this world for the next—presumably the better half.

It comes by way of a proclamation from President Trump, who declared that the flags should hang low in national mourning until the day the Pontiff is laid to rest. The official statement read, “Honoring the Memory of His Holiness Pope Francis.”

Now, it ain’t my place to speak ill of the recently deceased—nor is it my nature to make saints out of men just because they’ve finally stopped talking. Pope Francis was, without question, a man of robes, rings, and remarkably vague pronouncements. He waved kindly, traveled often, and said many things about peace, poverty, and contrary to Catholic beliefs.

Still, the flags fall—not for the man, perhaps, but for the chair he sat in. That’s how these things go. We don’t lower the flag for what a feller did—we lower it for what he represented, even if that was mostly lip service and complicated footnotes.

So let the flags dip, the people nod, and the headlines write themselves. As for me, I’ll stand here, hat in hand, wondering—as always—why we mourn the passing of power more than we mourn the passing of the poor.

Requiescat in pace, Your Holiness.

If it ain’t the finest example of “catching a fish right after it jumps in the net,” Deputies in Crescent Valley, a place most folks couldn’t find with a map, have managed to seize around 4,500 pounds of marijuana, all processed and ready for the kind of business no good citizen would want a part of.

On the 10th of April, as if they were suddenly awake to the scent of something a little too green in the air, the Eureka County Sheriff’s Office and the Eastern Nevada Narcotics Task Force—who I imagine were each sporting an expression somewhere between a hound dog and a law officer—hauled in a sizeable catch. A mountain of marijuana got tucked away in a place where the only thing you’d usually find in excess is dust.

The deputies were alerted by someone or something to the stash, and—well—what are law officers supposed to do when a juicy crime practically presents itself like a pie cooling on a windowsill? They seized the stash quicker than a gambler grabs a good hand of cards.

As for the investigation, they say “ongoing,” as it’s hard to follow the trail when the suspects have long since disappeared—probably already across state lines, waving goodbye and wondering if their next shipment will be bigger than a shipment of gold bars. So, hats off to the Eureka County deputies and the Eastern Nevada Narcotics Task Force for catching this crop before blossoming into something regrettable.

If only they’d catch who is making all this green gold, maybe Nevada could turn this to its advantage, like a good ol’ gold rush—but with less dust and more “morning after” regrets.

But Traffic’s Thinnin’ Out

It appears—though Heaven alone knows how the newspapers still manage to find their way into our outhouses—that Nevada is no longer the booming crossroads of other people’s problems. Only 8.8 percent of the abortions performed in the silver-plated state last year were for folks who’d come from elsewhere, down a whopping 47.4 percent from the year before.

For once, something in America is shrinking that ought to be.

The learned gentry will tell you this is bad news. That people—young women in a state of panic or persuasion—are now “burdened” by restrictions and “forced” to stay home and rethink what they were about to do. To which I say–good. There’s an old saying–“Don’t go lookin’ for a solution that leaves a body in the ground.”

And if there ain’t such a saying, then now there is.

Ever since the Supreme Court finally read the Constitution and realized it didn’t say a blessed thing about abortion—between the commas or otherwise—many states have had the good sense to slam the door on the practice. And, lo and behold–people stopped crossing borders with the same frequency.

Maybe not out of agreement, but out of difficulty—and let’s be honest, virtue sometimes starts by tripping over the apple cart.

Nevada, for her part, still offers abortions like a saloon offers gin—eagerly and without judgment. And groups, like the “Wild West Access Fund,” that’ll pay your way to come and do what should never get done. They say most of their customers are from Utah and Arizona, though Arizona’s traffic thinned out once a judge decided there ought to be a line in the sand at fifteen weeks.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not heartless. I believe a woman should be able to choose a great many things—her hat, her husband, her horse—but not whether a baby lives or dies. That’s not a choice but a tragedy dressed up like freedom and invited to Sunday supper.

Let me put it in plain talk–You don’t kill the calf because the barn door was left open, and you sure as sin don’t kill a child because a nation forgot how to raise them. And if there are laws that help turn young women back toward life—real life, with diapers, noise, and all—then I say God bless the lawmakers, even if they’re mostly lawyers.

So here’s to fewer out-of-state abortions, and here’s to states with enough backbone to say “no more.” Let Nevada keep the gambling, the quick divorces, and the neon prophets.

As for the rest of us, let’s try raising children instead of raising excuses.

Not one to go flingin’ suspicions like a drunkard tossin’ cards at a saloon cat, but when a fellow turns up deceased on the shores of Lake Mead—with no boat, no gear, and no reason for being anywhere near the water—it tends to raise a few eyebrows in any town worth its salt and pepper. And if, by some twist of fate or flat-out foul play, it turns out he’d been introduced rather forcefully to the back end of a mule—or any blunt object equally democratic in its wallop—it might not surprise anybody who’s been watchin’ the papers lately.

Dr. Shawn Frehner, known by trade as a veterinarian and by reputation as something of a controversial horse-whisperer with a boot, was found dead near the Boulder Islands on the 18th of April, his lifeless body lodging in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Identified through dental records–which is a mighty formal way of sayin’ he was in no condition for a family viewing–Frehner had been missing nearly two weeks after vanishing under circumstances that, if not downright sinister, were at the very least odd as a five-legged calf.

The good doctor’s wallet, keys, and telephone—still warm from public scandal—got found abandoned in his truck near Hemmenway Harbor, a place he had no known business with, unless he intended to drown his sorrows or his reputation, both of which were teeterin’ after a viral video showed him kickin’ a horse in the face.

The townfolk of Pahrump remain divided. Some cry cruelty. Others claimed a misunderstanding—an animal doctor under duress, perhaps misjudged in the white-hot glare of internet lightning.

The authorities in Nye County opened an investigation. Meanwhile, the Nevada State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners had already had their dance with Dr. Frehner back in 2016, when he got a year’s suspension for scribblin’ patient notes on the back of napkins and handin’ out prescription drugs like they were after-dinner mints.

And here we are, with a man gone to meet his maker in a manner that invites more questions than a poker player with one eye on the deck. The Park Service, bless their tight-lipped souls, ain’t sayin’ much yet. And the coroner has yet to declare whether Frehner’s fate came by misadventure, malice, or the sort of grim accident that keeps poets and insurance agents up at night.

But I’ll say this–if it turns out this poor soul got walloped by a hoof, a boot, a rock, or a heavy conscience—it would be the kind of irony that would make Shakespeare rise from his grave to spit. Until the dust settles, it’s best to keep one eye on the news and the other on the stables.

After all, horses remember. And so do people.

Now, I don’t mean to rile anybody up more than necessary–but I must ask—why–in the name of my wife’s sugar cookies, do we need Washington’s fingers fiddling in our local affairs regarding libraries and museums?

Last I checked, bookshelves, storytime, and dusty dioramas were matters of local concern. And yet here comes Senator Jacky Rosen, hat in hand, joined by twenty-five other Capitol-wanderers, sending a letter to the acting head of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—begging, mind you—to keep the federal purse strings from tightening.

The IMLS, if you haven’t heard of it–and you’d be forgiven–is the only federal outfit dedicated to handing out taxpayer money for the upkeep and advancement of libraries and museums. According to the senator’s press release—which reads like a sales pitch at a church potluck—nearly 640,000 Nevadans benefit from this agency’s grant-fed generosity.

That includes veterans who rely on the Talking Books Library, students tapping into research databases, children in summer reading programs, and cultural efforts in tribal communities. Even the Discovery Children’s Museum gets a cut of the pie.

But here’s the part that needs looking at–these are all local programs enjoyed by local people on local soil. And I ask you—shouldn’t local problems be solved with local money? Why must we always ride the federal gravy train to keep the library lights on? Isn’t that what county taxes and state budgets are supposed to be for?

It seems mighty peculiar that with all the taxes we pay here at home—sales tax, property tax, state this and county that—we’re still expected to go begging to Washington every year like Oliver Twist with an empty bowl. If our libraries are so vital, and I believe they are, shouldn’t we have the backbone to fund them ourselves without waiting for some Beltway bureaucrat to send a check with conditions scribbled in fine print?

Because mark my words, when the feds pay the fiddler, they soon want to call the tune. And maybe today it’s money for summer reading, but tomorrow it might be a mandate telling us which books we can shelve and which we can’t.

So I say again—why are we spending federal dollars to solve a local problem? And if our local governments can’t handle it, maybe we should ask them what they’ve been doing with all the money we already gave’em.

The Yurok elder, Sandy Sanderson, sat by the fire. The flames flickered against the walls of the sweat lodge, and we sat close, drawn in by his voice, low and steady like the current.

“You ever hear of P’eh?” he asked. “Means fish in my native tongue.”

We shook our heads. We were boys, maybe ten, maybe younger.

“A fish big as a canoe,” he said. “Bigger. Not a salmon, not a sturgeon. Something else.” He spat into the fire. “It waits in the shallows. It knows the voices of men.”

I didn’t like that part. Things in the water should not have voices.

Sandy shifted, his bones cracking as he leaned forward. “It calls to children,” he said. “Says, ‘Come ride on my back.’ It seems kind. Gentle. It lets them climb on. Then it swims out, deeper and deeper, and down they go.”

The fire popped. Someone kicked at a stick, sending a stream of sparks into the black.

“I knew a boy once,” he went on. “My cousin, maybe seven years old. Name was Daniel. He was a wild one. Always running, never listening. His mother warned him about the river, told him the current would take him, but he just laughed. One summer evening, he went down to the bank to play. Never came back.”

I felt something cold settle in my gut.

“They searched,” the old man said. “For days. Found nothing. No footprints. No sign of struggle. No clothes washed up downstream. A boy can drown, sure, but the river leaves things behind.” His eyes found mine in the dark. “P’eh doesn’t.”

The fire burned low. The frogs and crickets had gone quiet. I thought of Daniel, a boy like us, full of life, now nothing but a name in a story told by the fire.

I never found mention of P’eh in any book. I never heard another soul speak of it.

Maybe Sandy made it up that night, watching us hover too close to the river’s bank. Perhaps he knew boys needed more than warnings.

Or maybe he was telling the truth.

Reporting from the Back Pew of a Smoke-Filled Tabernacle

Las Vegas is shedding its skin faster than a sidewinder in summer. In a town where fortunes turn on the clink of dice and the whir of a slot reel, two great institutions have packed up shop within weeks of each other—one a house of God, the other a house of Ganja.

And I’ll be switched if that ain’t some poetic symmetry, Nevada-style.

First came the fall of Smoke and Mirrors, a name that was perhaps more prophecy than branding. Thrive Cannabis Marketplace’s once-buzzed-about lounge closed on April 4–after a mere two-month stint serving state-sanctioned puffs to the public.

Once hailed as a breakthrough, a trailblazer, a haven of safety for the red-eyed masses looking to take their high legally and lounge about doing what tourists in Las Vegas do best– not much of anything at all. But then—poof!—just like that, it vanished.

Not to be outdone by sin’s eviction notice, Grace Presbyterian Church, a stalwart sentry of downtown righteousness, also announced it would be giving up the ghost of its original campus. After seventy years of offering sanctuary, scripture, and the occasional potluck casserole, the church will host its final services–May 4th—the same date, some might note, as the next Star Wars holiday.

Coincidence? Divine mystery? Or Las Vegas being Las Vegas?

Between freeway expansions, rising rent, and a neighborhood now as stable as a roulette table on a cruise ship, the church is squeezed tighter than a choirboy’s collar. The good folks of Grace’ll be headin’ west to Rhodes Ranch, where the rent is cheaper, the pews fewer, but the faith no less determined.

While it’s unknown if the man upstairs smokes, if He does, it seems He’s kicked out of His lounge and sanctuary in the same season. What’re the odds? Well, in Vegas, you could probably place a bet on it.

So here we are, waving goodbye to two temples—one built on prayer, the other on pot—each promising peace, reflection, and the occasional spiritual snack. One passed the plate; the other passed the pipe.

Both headed somewhere new, perhaps with better parking.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a future where the faithful and the faded meet in the middle—where sermons come with snacks, and communion might involve a gummy or two. After all, if Las Vegas teaches us anything, its salvation wears many disguises–and sometimes smells faintly of sandalwood and salvation.

Amen, and pass the edibles.

Well, if ever there was a day that proved legislative bodies are more than capable of making a mess of things before lunch and still have time to sweep it under the rug by supper, it was in the fine state of Nevada.

The Nevada Assembly, bless their muddled hearts, managed to send up not one but two bills that’ll make you scratch your head ’til your scalp goes bald. The first, known to the bureaucrats and bill-counters as AB 346, proposes to let doctors hand out the means for folks with terminal illnesses to shuffle off this mortal coil—legally and with a prescription, no less.

While I ain’t saying the idea lacks sympathy, the fact that they’re doing this in defiance of the majority gives it the flavor of a legislative circus act. But no, they voted 23-19 to march on, with party lines about as crooked and confused as the Mason-Dixon Line.

In true straight-shooting fashion, the Governor declared he’d veto the thing should it reach his desk, calling the bill unnecessary in light of modern pain management. Truth be told, I can’t help but admire a man who thinks it wiser to fight death with care instead of paperwork and suicide pills.

But hold your astonishment, dear reader, because the second act of this legislative magic show was AB 217, a bill that forbids ICE agents from stepping foot on public school grounds without a warrant in hand. Now, far be it from me to doubt the intention behind protecting schoolkids from fright and confusion, but when did it become fashionable for a state legislature to start writing policy like a stage play—where fear gets banished with the stroke of a pen–and no thought spared for enforcement, consequences, or the small matter of federal law?

Besides, the federal law always shows up with paperwork in hand.

This one, too, passed with bipartisan approval–which means both sides are wrong but agree on being wrong together–and is now sauntering off toward the State Senate, where it may yet find company in a drawer, a trash bin, or the Governor’s veto pile. Now, I’ve seen foolishness before—whole cartloads of it—but Nevada’s Assembly just might be trying to set a record–two bills, one day, and enough political prestidigitation to make you wonder if the chamber ain’t a saloon where common sense gets kicked out for being too sober.

If folly were gold, Nevada’s Assembly would’ve struck the Comstock Lode again.

While I ain’t no architect nor property tycoon, even a blind horse can see that it’s high time we quit building fresh barns when the old ones still hold hay in the rafters.

In parched and sunbaked lands of Northern Nevada last year, a curious thing happened—business folks with more common sense than vanity bought up office buildings instead of throwing money into the rental wind. Colliers says over half of 2024’s 65 office sales got snapped up by companies who aim to use ‘em, not flip ‘em. Imagine that—folks buying buildings not to wring ‘em dry for a profit–but to work in’em.

The big fish investors stayed on shore, thanks to interest rates higher than a preacher’s collar on Sunday. They dallied, waiting for the numbers to come down from the mountain, like Moses with the tablets, while smaller outfits have been scooping up 2,500 to 7,500 square foot spots like prospectors with a hot tip.

Now, I won’t pretend to understand all the arithmetic, but word has it that building prices dropped from $259.15 a square foot to $219.38 in just two years, enough to make a miser blink. And while West Coast cities like San Francisco and Seattle have office vacancy rates so bad you could hear an echo when you toss your hat in, Reno’s sittin’ steady at 9.1 percent. The place might not be a juggernaut of high-rises and hedge funds, but it’s got grit, backbone, and more than 10 million square feet of office space—which is more than enough for folks who don’t insist on their desk having a view of Alcatraz or the Space Needle.

There’s talk—always is—about developers getting ready to bless us with new buildings now that the vacancy numbers are slipping under that magic 10 percent line. But before we go slicing up the sagebrush to pour new concrete, let’s pause. Reno’s got buildings with good bones and better stories—why leave’em empty to build fresh ones that’ll be vacant before the carpet glue’s dry?

They say the Meadowood submarket’s the belle of the ball with its $4.10 per square foot price tag for the fancy Class A spaces. That’s fine and dandy, but maybe fill up the downtown ghosts before raising any new steel skeletons.

Even now, developers like Ahlquist from Boise are reworking the old Harrah’s into 133,691 square feet of Class A office space right in the beating heart of Reno. That’s a step in the right direction. Turning the old into new keeps history breathing and pigeons off the rafters.

In short, if you’re one of those high-minded types itching to sketch up something shiny and new, stroll past the empty lobbies and lonely elevators already standing. They ain’t haunted—they’re just waiting on someone with imagination and less ego.

Because truth be told, a building ain’t worth a blick if nobody’s in it. And this country’s already littered with the bones of brand-new things no one wanted.

Let’s use what we got before we chase after what we don’t need.