The Old Blog in the Desert

By One that Ought to Know

If you ever find yourself in Carson City on a Friday—heaven help you—you might think the State Legislature had packed up its wigs and gavels, boarded a stagecoach, and vanished into the sagebrush. The hearing rooms sit as empty as a church pew in a gambling house, the corridors echo with the distant hum of disinterest, and the only thing getting passed is time.

Now, let us not be hasty. There are laws to make, budgets to get balanced, and speeches to bloviate, but not on Fridays. At least not in the first two months of the legislative session when, by all accounts, the halls of government resemble a ghost town more than a capitol.

Senator Ira Hansen, a fellow from Sparks–with eight sessions under his belt and a disposition like a buckboard over a gravel road, was asked how much work gets done on a Friday. He didn’t mince words, “None. Almost none,” he said, with the candor of a man who’s seen a thing or two and has grown tired of seeing it again.

According to the good Senator, if the citizenry were the bosses and the lawmakers the help, there’d be a heap of pink slips fluttering through the air like autumn leaves. “You would fire us,” he said, “because we’re only working four out of the five days that you’re paying us for.”

And that’s before he warmed up.

And the records, alas, bear him out. Of 84 scheduled Friday committee meetings, 40 got canceled. That’s nearly half—a batting average that would have even the most hopeless baseball team blushing.

Now, lest you think this is all one-sided, we did hear from Senator Angie Taylor, a Democratic chairwoman of the Education Committee and, by her own account, no deserter of duty. She explained that sometimes meetings are scratched because legislators are still sweet-talking the stakeholders or waiting for the bills to roll like reluctant tumbleweeds.

“But when the bills are there, we’re there,” she insisted.

It’s a fine enough defense—provided the bills don’t know it’s Friday, too.

As for the pay, it’s $130 a day—a sum that might buy you a decent supper and a room above the livery stable–but which adds up when you multiply it by 120 days, especially if spending twenty percent of that time catching up on your correspondence from a fishing dock.

Senator Hansen invites one and all to visit on a Friday and witness the quietude firsthand. “Sit here for an hour,” he said, “and watch how much work is being done.”

The man should charge admission.

Senator Taylor, when asked point-blank if she ever took a three-day weekend. She said no.

She didn’t speak for the others, and who can blame her? In politics, it’s everyone for themself once voting’s done and the weekend’s nigh.

So whether this early exodus is a symptom of legislative inefficiency or simply the calm before the late-session storm, I leave it to you, dear reader. But if you plan to visit the legislature on a Friday, don’t forget to pack a book—and maybe a blanket.

The Silver State—grand, shimmering Nevada—is wearin’ a crown of tarnished tin, not gold, for she’s got herself the worst unemployment rate in all these United States. The number stands at 5.7 percent, accordin’ to some solemn scribblers over at DETR–that’s the Department of Employment, Training, and Reassurance, I reckon.

But before you go celebratin’–it’s a whole tenth of a percent lower than last month. That’s right—so slight you’d need a microscope and a prayer to see it.

Now, Nevada ain’t entirely alone in this plight. It got outpaced by the District of Columbia—our nation’s capital and a mighty fine place to misplace a dollar or two—where the unemployment rate is 5.6 percent.

So, at least Nevada can point east and say, “We may be broke, but at least we ain’t politicians!”

Reno, that jewel of the desert with more casinos than sense, came in at 4.7 percent. Carson City, ever the steady hand, is sittin’ at 4.5 percent, perhaps from all the legislative loafers finally countin’ for something. Elko County, bless its rural little heart, has the lowest number at 4.3 percent—proof that when there’re fewer folks to count, you can’t count many as unemployed.

But saddle up and ride down to Mineral County if you want a tale of woe–9.6 percent unemployment. That’s nearly one in ten folks kickin’ dust and cursin’ the sky. I don’t know what kind of minerals they’re diggin’ for there, but it sure ain’t jobs.

And then there’s Las Vegas, our city of sin and sequins, clockin’ in at 5.6 percent, where folks can lose their shirts in the casino or the job market—dealer’s choice.

So there you have it. Nevada’s got the worst jobless rate in the land, but don’t fret too hard—we’re inchin’ in the right direction.

Just don’t blink, or you might miss the progress.

Here’s a tale that’ll turn your coffee cold and make you swear off sightseeing by air. The federal folks—those good people at the FAA, who always seem to show up late with a mop after the milk’s already spilled—have poked their heads out from behind their desks and taken a hard look at our nation’s whirlybirds.

A January dust-up in Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter turned tragic—snuffed out 67 souls and painted a grim reminder that the sky, unlike a Sunday picnic, ain’t a place for sloppy manners and poor directions. The FAA prodded at the incident like one does with an old mule using a stick, decided to let artificial intelligence root through its mountains of neglected paperwork and figure out where else folks might be dancing too close for comfort in the sky.

Wouldn’t you know, Las Vegas—a town known for gamblers and showgirls, not safety records—popped up on the radar. The FAA discovered that the helicopter operators and air traffic controllers were playing “Guess where I am” with no rules about who flies where or when.

Picture a barn dance where half the folks are blindfolded, and the other half are drunk—that’s about the airspace over Harry Reid International.

Acting FAA head Chris Rocheleau, someone who just remembered where he left his car keys, said they jumped in quickly. They started telling pilots where the other flying machines were, which you’d think would be standard procedure, not divine inspiration.

Lo and behold, the near-smack-ups dropped by thirty percent in three weeks. Miraculous, what a little common sense can do.

Now, there’s talk of expanding the watchdogging to places like Boston, New York, and Dallas—anywhere folks go up in the air hoping to come back down in the same shape. It seems Las Vegas was just the tip of the iceberg, or maybe the first hole in the block of Swiss cheese that safety folks like to yammer about.

Former NTSB boss Jim Hall said the helicopter tour business is an airborne circus—less about safety and more about thrilling Aunt Edna from Omaha. And while the FAA deserves a slow clap for finally doing something, it’s a sorry thing when it takes a pile of bodies to stir the regulators from their slumber.

Jeff Guzzetti, who’s seen his fair share of crash sites, said, “This was a real hazard.”

Now the FAA’s eyes are on places like Van Nuys and Hollywood Burbank, where the runways are so close you could pass a sandwich between departing planes.

In the end, Rocheleau summed it up like a man trying to plug a hundred leaks with one cork–flying is still the safest way to get around, but don’t go betting your luck. They’re trying to get smarter, use the data better, and do something when they find a problem.

Revolutionary, I know.

Aviation lawyer Robert Clifford, usually the FAA’s loudest critic, even tipped his hat. Said the feds might finally be doing what needed doing before that January tragedy made headlines.

So there you have it, folks. The sky’s still blue, the helicopters are still buzzing, and the FAA is, at long last, trying to herd those airborne cats with rules instead of prayers. And about time, too.

Now, I ain’t one to meddle in the affairs of courtrooms and city halls—except when they hand down justice the way a goose lays eggs– unpredictable, unceremonious, and sometimes a little soft in the shell.

News out of Washoe County has it that Mr. Christopher McDougal, the gentleman that ran down U.S. District Court Judge Larry Hicks in the bustling core of Reno last May, has now begun his penance. For taking the life of a man who had himself spent decades measuring out justice with a firm but even hand, McDougal got sentenced to spend thirty days in the county jail—a sentence shorter than some marriages and far less painful than a toothache.

Along with the jail stint, McDougal’s gotta perform 200 hours of community service, suffer through eight hours of traffic safety school–which is a punishment in its own right–and sit solemnly through a victim impact panel—likely full of tearful reckonings and the kind of heavy silences you can’t wriggle out of. Add to that a suspended driver’s license and a fine of $1,153, and you’ve got the full weight of justice resting on him like a featherbed on a sleeping cat.

Should Mr. McDougal, by mischief or misstep, fail to honor these conditions, he will face 180 days behind bars. Though I reckon, for now, he’s gettin’ the sort of second chance a fellow prays for when a mistake too great for comfort and tragic for remedy gets made.

The family of Judge Hicks offered thanks to the officers and attorneys who worked the case, calling the outcome a step toward healing. And perhaps it is.

Whilst I don’t aim to write tragedies—as life already writes enough of those without any help from me—some tales fall so hard and sharp upon the public ear and private heart that they demand telling–and this is one. It is a story soaked in blood and sorrow, tangled in madness and mystery–and its telling is not to sensationalize but to record the truth as plainly and honestly as possible.

The accused in this tale is one Carson Gonzales, a youth of but twenty years, now sitting in the Washoe County jail under a no-bail hold, his soul heavier than the stone walls surrounding him. On a Saturday evening in the high desert, in a quiet home on Powder Drive in northwest Reno, a horror unfolded that folks in Sparks and beyond won’t soon forget.

The dead is his mother, Miss Carla Gonzales, aged 52, a schoolteacher of art and photography at Sparks High—a woman I had the pleasure of sharing a few words with from time to time in Virginia City, usually over an Old Fashioned and a discussion about lighting or composition. Whether we were friends or acquaintances, that is water under the bridge now.

For my part, I call her a friend because it hurts more that way.

When officers arrived, summoned by a flurry of 9-1-1 calls, they found her friend—Miss Angela Clay, age 46—bleeding in a neighbor’s driveway, her face torn open, neck gashed, body broken like a child’s toy after a tantrum. That she survived at all is a testament to the fortitude of the human frame and, more importantly, to a neighbor who pressed his hands to her wound and held her to this world by sheer grit and the mercy of Providence.

Inside, the scene was too dreadful to set fully to paper. Miss Gonzales lay on her side, her neck so savaged that her spine got exposed to open air.

Death came quickly–but not cleanly. Carson was found in the garage, stripped near to nothing, soaked in blood, muttering of madness, of Trump and queens, and other things that spoke more to a fractured mind than a wicked heart.

He told the police he got attacked. He said he acted in defense.

He said he could bring his mother back. And then he asked his half-brother how many years he might get for “this stupid sh–,” which seems to be the only moment of clarity in the whole ghastly affair.

The court has ordered a competency evaluation—which is fitting, for it is no small thing to ask whether a man is guilty if he no longer grasps the shape of right and wrong. Whether this is a tale of murder, madness–or both tangled together like fishing lines is yet unknown.

What is known is that Miss Angela Clay, described by her family as light-hearted and close as kin to Carla Gonzales, is slowly recovering, though she has many miles to go. Her brother-in-law, a plainspoken man named Chris Battenberg, said the family is pulling together, catching each other when they fall, which is what families are for in times like these.

He also gave thanks—tearful and true—to the man who saved her life in that driveway. Of Carla Gonzales, he said, “She was like the family mom.”

I reckon there’s no better epitaph for a woman.

It wasn’t a story I wished to write. But now that it’s finished, I hope you’ll remember the victims before the headlines fade and hold tight to those you love. Because the night is long, friends, and sometimes the devil don’t knock—it comes through the door wearing a face you already know.

It was 108 degrees in July 2006 in the Diyala Province, northwest of Muqdadiyah. We sat, baking in our MRAP, waiting, feeling like sitting ducks, while the lieutenant decided what to do.

There were a few shots in the distance–small arms fire, scattered and thin. The Skipper thought it was worth a look.

The platoon was light—two squads instead of three or four. We had two Iraqi Army trucks and two Iraqi Police vehicles, all RVing toward the noise.

A bad decision, but no one knew that yet.

They came to a small village, not much more than a handful of buildings strung along a dirt road. A canal ran to the right, a ditch to the left.

There was only one way in and one way out.

The lieutenant didn’t wait for the drone he had called in. He didn’t think about the blocked alternate route, didn’t think when the Iraqi Police left them, warning of an al-Qaeda stronghold ahead.

The lieutenant ordered the convoy forward anyway.

The Iraqi Army took point, our truck next. The others followed.
Halfway in, the lead truck stopped.

No radio call. No warning.

The driver pulled up behind them, where he saw the ditch across the road. The squad leader jumped out, spoke with the Iraqis, and then jumped back in.

That’s when the shooting started. I had no time to write, no time to take photographs.

Three men in the grass, fifty meters away to our left, with AKs.

Then we saw a bongo truck roll into the village, mounted with a DShK M1938, a Soviet heavy machine gun. The kind that tears through steel.

Stuck in an L-shaped ambush. No way forward. No way back. Just lead in the air and the sound of the big gun hammering.

The turret gunner fired back. The M240 barked beside him.

Our driver sat, hands on the wheel. Nothing to do but wait for the next bullet to find us.

Then, the explosion. A bang. Fire. Smoke. I thought it was an IED.

My ears rang from the blast. Knock out of my seat, I checked myself for wounds; nothing. Then, our driver felt something sharp on his cheek.

Touched his face. Blood on the glove.

Red. Wet.

“I’m bleeding,” he said calmly.

Then, the cab filled up with thick gas from the fire suppression system. Everyone’s voices dropped, low and strange, because of the gas, the opposite of sucking on a helium-filled balloon.

Time moved differently. It always did in moments like these.

He threw it into reverse. Hit the truck behind him.

No room. No give.

He hit it again. And again.

Finally, the convoy started backing out. It was slow, ugly work.

He had one mirror, no rear camera, and could barely see, blood filling his eyes. Then the Corpsman came, running under fire, climbing into the truck, hands on him, stopping the blood.

The squad leader took the wheel as the Corpsman and the driver got out to meet the Medivac. Air Force Black Hawk to Balad Medical, where we learned the truth.

It was not an IED. A DShK 12.7×108mm round.

It had punched through the armor, hit the roll bar near his head, shattered, and sent shrapnel across his face. A few inches closer, and perhaps none of us would be there to know any of it because of internal vehicular bounce around.

The Cherubini Brother’s Reunited

If this don’t warm the heart and sting the eyes, then you may be made of stone or servin’ as a bureaucrat. After eighty-one revolvin’ orbits of the sun, a soldier long thought lost to the green jungles of Burma has found his way home, carried not by the footsore march of war but by a Southwest Airlines flight touchin’ down in Reno.

U.S. Army Private Roman Cherubini, one-half of a pair of twins born in the fair town of Bridgeton, New Jersey, in the Year of Our Lord 1923, went to war and never returned–at least not in the usual way. Twenty-two, when he perished in the thick and sweltering wilds of Southeast Asia, he was part of a fierce and wiry crew known as Merrill’s Marauders.

These weren’t your average parade-ground soldiers. These men hiked, sweated, and bled their way through the dense green wrath of Burma, outnumbered, outgunned, and altogether unafraid.

The Marauders were the kind of fellows who’d spit on the Devil’s boots and keep marching. Pvt. Cherubini was among ‘em, making his stand on June 16, 1944, when the War Department says he fell in the service of a cause greater than any one man.

His mortal remains were buried once in a temporary grave, then again in a military cemetery in India, and later still transferred to the green slopes of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu–until science and diligence exhumed his story from the soil. It took the quiet work of men and women in white coats with sharp eyes and steady hands to set the record straight. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, bless‘em, got the job done, and now Roman’s back to the land of his birth, borne on the wings of an airliner.

When his casket came off that plane in Reno, it wasn’t just a box wrapped in a flag. It was eighty years of prayers, grief, and hope.

Passengers on the flight remained seated in a respectful hush, airport firefighters and police lined up in solemn salute as the Cherubini family, quiet and resolute, bore witness to it all.

Come Saturday at noon, down at Big Pine Cemetery south of Bishop, Calif., Pvt. Roman Cherubini will get laid to rest beside his twin brother Raymond–who wore the badge of a military policeman in the same world war and went to his rest in 2005. Two boys, born the same day, joined again in the long sleep, side by side beneath the California sun.

They say Pvt. Cherubini will receive the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and likely a handful of other medals. But I reckon the real honor is that after eighty-plus years of silence and searching, one soldier came home, and the other was there to meet him.

God rest the Cherubini twins–and bless all who never stopped waiting.

Now, I don’t reckon there’s a more jittery breed of creature on this Earth than a Wall Street investor with a fresh chart in his hand and a nervous tick in his eye. Why, a squirrel in a thunderstorm has a steadier constitution. And this week, those fellers got it in their heads that Tesla, that electric chariot outfit run by the ever-combustible Mr. Elon Musk, was teetering on the very precipice of doom because its profits took a tumble quicker than a greased pig on a marble floor.

Let me lay it out plain–Tesla’s profits for the first quarter dropped some 70 percent, down to a meager $409 million, which in most counties still counts as a pretty pile of money—unless you’re Wall Street, where anything less than last year’s loot like a funeral dirge. Revenue dropped to $19.3 billion, enough to make a banker flinch but not enough to call the undertaker.

Now folks are all aflutter, saying Mr. Musk is spending more time politickin’ with Washington bigwigs than tending to his fleet of battery buggies. There’s hand-wringin’ about his support of firebrand politicians and his moonlighting in the Trump administration, which has some buyers stomping off in protest or burnin’ showrooms like they’ve seen a ghost.

But here’s the rub, and it’s worth remembering–one bad quarter, or even three, does not sink a ship, particularly when that ship’s still hauling cargo and dreaming up self-driving carriages. A drop in the stock market don’t mean the company’s gone belly-up.

That’s just the stock market being what it always has been—an excitable fellow prone to fits and spasms, dancing like a cat on a hot stove. The market ain’t the business; it’s the gossip about business.

For all its stumbles, Tesla is still building cars, planning robotaxis, and scheming up cheaper models for the commoner. And while Mr. Musk may be half-mad and wholly occupied, he’s also the sort of fellow who can summon more headlines with a post than most kings can with a war.

So before you write Tesla’s epitaph or light the funeral pyre, take a breath and remember–in business, as in life, fortunes rise and fall like a river in Spring.

And there’s more to a company than a red number on Tuesday.

The Tale of Two Gents Who Couldn’t Take a Hint

Sit a spell and lend an ear, for I’ve got a yarn fit for these curious times—a tale fresh outta where dice roll and luck breaks like cheap china. It’s about two gents—one from Mexico, t’other from El Salvador—who’ve found themselves once more in the unwelcome arms of Uncle Sam, and this time it ain’t for the buffet.

One Heraldo Neftali Gomez-Jacobo, aged 54 and seasoned in ways best left to the imagination, was once shown the door back in the fall of 2003 after gettin’ caught in the most shameful sort of mischief—four counts of attempted lewdness with a child under 14. That there’s not just bad behavior–it’s the kind that curdles milk and turns angels away.

After that, the government gave him the boot and said, “Don’t come back now, y’hear?”

But sure as hens scratch dirt–Mr. Jacobo came back anyhow. ICE scooped him up on April 5 like a bad penny that rolled back underfoot.

His companion in calamity, a spryer fellow of 38 years, goes by Ismael Perez-Reyes. Now Mr. Reyez, for his part, had a bit of a tipple and a tangle, winding up charged with DUI in Vegas.

It seems it wasn’t his first dance with deportation, either—booted in December of 2022 and again just last November, which tells you something about persistence and a strong distaste for staying gone. He’d also seen the inside of a correctional facility, not as a tourist, but on account of having a fondness for illegal substances. Add to that a prior felony for slipping back across the border and now an open warrant out of Utah for violating his probation by returning like a ghost that don’t understand it’s dead.

The Department of Justice, not known for its sense of humor, has drawn up charges on both gents–one count each of being deported aliens found in the United States, which is a long-winded way of saying, “We told you not to, and yet you did.”

If convicted, Mr. Gomez-Jacobo may find himself with a twenty-year sentence, three years of government-sponsored supervision, and a fine that’d make a banker wince–$250,000. Mr. Reyez, being a slightly less frequent flyer but still a repeat offender, faces up to ten years, the same stretch of parole, and a matching fine.

The moral? If the government tells you to stay gone, you’d best not treat the border like a revolving door at the local saloon.

By a Disbelievin’ Observer of Modern Wonders

Well, now, would you believe it? The highfalutin’ Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles—known far and wide as the bastion of long lines and stern looks—has finally opened the doors of the Internet to the proud owners of yesteryear’s iron steeds. That’s right–folks can now renew their classic car plates right from the comfort of their rockin’ chair, using somethin’ called the MyDMV portal, which is a kind of electronic post office for people who ain’t got time to line up behind twelve other souls and a fellow tryin’ to title a go-kart.

“This enhancement is a big milestone for the DMV,” said Director Tonya Laney, with all the pride of a schoolmarm whose class just recited the Gettysburg Address backward and in Latin. “We’re givin’ the people what they want,” she said, meanin’ less standin’ in stuffy government rooms and more clickin’ and tappin’ from home.

That sounds mighty fine.

Before you go thinkin’ this is some free-for-all, hold your hosses. Online blessings only apply to classic, old-timers, and classic rods—vehicles with more character and chrome than a pawn shop. The DMV still insists that these wheeled antiques be insured, and they best not be gallivantin’ more than 5,000 miles a year, or they’ll find themselves back in line quicker than you can say “Model T.”

“We are excited,” said Laney, with a grin I can only assume was real, “that our customers with this plate now get the option of online renewals.”

Well, bless their hearts. The times are a-changin’–and if the DMV can shed its molasses pace and step into the modern age, maybe there’s hope for us all. So pour a cup of Sassafras tea, tip your hat to the new century, and give your old roadster a loving pat.