Time and a again I’ve heard, “It’ll get better if you give it some time,” or “Time heals all wounds.”
It’s like time is some sort of magical healer. However, time does not change anything — you and I do.
It’s the work that we do while time is passing that changes things. The good news is that neither of us has to wait even a minute to start this work.
En route home from the post office as song came over the radio that reminded me of one of my favorite radio station stories. This one involves my friend Geno Clauson and a Trisha Yearwood Song.
We were both working at Reno’s country music station KHIT at the time. The song was, “She’s in Love with the Boy,” a big hit for the future Mrs. Garth Brooks.
Geno was working the weekend evening shift, when he back-announced the song. That means he told listeners the name of the artist and the song’s title.
Backing up jus’ a bit, Geno is an ethnic Jew. This means he doesn’t practice the faith and never has, rather he has an ancestral connection to ‘God’s chosen people.’
So as he back announced the song, he said: “Trisha Yearwood and ‘She’s in Love with the Goya.’”
And yes, he said it on purpose.
Later in his weekly air-check session with our Program Director, a recording of the back-announce was played for review. While Dan laughed, he told Geno it was probably best not to use references like this because those listening wouldn’t under stand what “Goya,” meant.
The people driving along side me must have thought I was nuts and laughed out loud at the memory. Incidentally, “Goya,” is a Hebrew and Yiddish term for a non-Jewish person; synonymous with “gentile.”
We were hunkered down in a group of ruined mud and wood framed huts at the edge of a larger village. It was chow-time and the grub was being passed around.
That’s when someone shouted, “Hold your fire, hold your fire.”
Several of us stood up and looked in the direction of the voice. That’s when I saw this smallish man in khaki uniform running towards us.
At first I though he was the one yelling at us to hold our fire, but then I realized he was a local. Behind him were several men, all yelling and shouting in Spanish.
We watched as the man raced by our position, followed closely by the hostile group that seemed intent on bodily harming, if not worse the first guy. No one tried to stop either the man or the crowd.
Not one Marine raised a rifle, which is a good thing as their would have been casualties. However, I’ve often wondered if the little dude was ever caught, and if so, what happened to him.
More than 30 years would pass before there would be another expedition to the northern most point of California. Although the Spanish Empire claimed during the 1500s, the area that now comprises Del Norte County, it was an Englishman who became the first European to make landfall on the Northcoast.
Francis Drake, commanding the Golden Hind, sailed into the Pacific Ocean around the tip of South America in 1578, working his way north past Peru and Panama. His crew of privateers plundered several Spanish colonial towns and ships along the way.
Just as his ship and crew were reaching 43 degrees north latitude, heavy, cold winds forced the Golden Hind towards the shoreline. He anchored in a bay exposed to wind gusts, rain and heavy fog.
When the weather became more moderate, he turned south, traveling during the day and anchoring at night for nearly two weeks. He sought a harbor where he could fix the ship’s leaks and go ashore for food and fresh water.
Among the places he passed up to anchor was the Crescent City reef.
Eventually he stopped somewhere between Crescent City and Point Loma, making contact with Indians and restocked his ship. Drake claimed the Northcoast for England, calling it Nova Albion.
Legend says that some of his men stayed ashore to start a small colony. But Drake’s mission largely was about plundering Spanish galleons and colonial towns.
England never sent a ship to check on this alleged colony.
Drake ultimately would become famous for helping the English defeat the great Spanish Armada in 1588. He served as second-in-command of the English fleet during that attack.
Usually when I go through a bout of insomnia, I lay in bed reminiscing and thinking of new story lines for future blog postings. However the last couple of nights and early mornings I’ve been fantasizing about a very peculiar idea.
It comes by way of to ships that have been and are still important in my childhood. One is the S.S. United States, which me and my parents were aboard as we came to America and the other is the Ship-Ashore in Smith River, which is home to a museum and gift shop.
In this world I’ve made up, I’ve somehow managed to drag the 47,300 ton luxury liner nicknamed the “Big U,” some 2,500 miles from it dry-dock to the middle of the Nevada desert. Once secured, I turned it into a sand-bound casino-resort and hotel.
Sometimes, one really needs a far out dream…
A year or so ago, a former co-worker asked, “What do you think is the best way yo go about starting a historical preservation project?”
My answer was quick, “Start with yourself and work outward.”
Sitting in the morgue, with all the previous day, months and years of newspapers, I was working on my 10th or perhaps 11th obituary of the day. It was quiet and I had everything I needed for possible research on whoever’s passing I was chronicling.
Liz came in with a cup of coffee for me, something that happened once or twice a day. She sat down on the wood stool next to my cramped desk and sipped at her coffee cup as I typed away.
“Why do you go to such great lengths?” she asked as if in mid-thought.
“What do you mean?” I asked in return.
“Well, you spend so much time writing about someone who’s dead,” she answered, “and they’ll never see your hard work.”
Looking over my horn-rimmed glasses, “I do it for the living, too, you know.”
There was a few seconds of silence between us as I continued to type and Liz continued to sip. Then I thought to add, “It’s like writing a mini-biography, a last hooray for a person who can’t do it for themselves.”
“Yeah,” she retorted, “So who will write your obituary when the time comes?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” I laughed.
After Liz left, I sat there thinking — who would write my obituary?
It was jus’ a few minutes before midnight, Christmas eve. My relief, Neil, had arrived and placed his backpack down on the table between the talk-show studio and the large window facing outside.
We were in the middle of talking about shift-change and I was updating him on top news stories and such when we both saw his backpack rise up about an inch and “jump off” the table. We both looked at the bag, then at one another with astonishment.
“Did you see that?” Neil asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, “so you saw it too, then?”
“Uh-huh,” replied Neil, adding, “I really don’t have time this morning for the Spirit of Christmas Present.”
When I first saw her picture and before I heard her name, I thought I knew her. That’s because she looks remarkably like a young woman named Jeanine I used to work with and even DJ’d for her at her wedding reception.
A Nevada native, Jeanine Bonnet grew up in Yerington and lived in Oklahoma City. The day after Christmas, Jeanine and her four children, Natalie, 8; Samantha, 7; Mathew, 5; and Kara, 3, died in a house fire.
The fire was caused by a space heater and their home had no working smoke detectors. Jeanine’s boyfriend, escaped the fire with serious burns and is hospitalized.
Could this be the same Jeanine?
“The Waver,” has died at his home in Iowa at the age of 75. Ed Carlson was an institution in Reno from 1974 to 2007 when he moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to be close to family.
He used to wave at drivers in Reno, then hitch-hike south to Carson City, where he waved some more before hitch-hiking back to Reno the same day. Ed served in the Army and worked a variety of jobs, including deputy sheriff, logger, oil field worker, dock worker, bartender, carnival worker and female impersonator in a comedy show.
Ed wrote a book about his experiences titled, “I Walked to the Moon and Almost Everybody Waved,” after having walked 200,000 miles — about the distance between Earth and the moon. He published it in October 1996.
In his book, Ed writes that he hitchhiked blindfolded from Boston, where his brother lived, across the country to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, then back towards Chicago. It was during his journey to Chicago that a voice told him he needed to be in Reno.
Ed walked Interstate 80, and the first vehicle to come along was a van driven by a man headed to San Francisco. He gave Ed a ride, dropping him off in Reno during May 1974.
During Ed’s early years of his walking and waving, he would get nasty looks and called names. However as he continued to walk and wave people began to wave back.
The Old Blog in the Desert 