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The U.S. Post Office reduced mail delivery to two days a week in Taylor, Nevada, on January 24, 1886, where the White Pine News was then being published. Isolated mining camps on more than a hundred mail routes in Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona suffered the same fate.

The editor of the paper, W.L. Davis, lambasted the federal government for reducing western miners to being second class citizens, but this was a futile gesture as more frequent mail delivery wasn’t soon restored. Many of the stage lines in the West were subsidized by mail delivery contracts.

On that same January 24, 1886, the White Pine Stage Line reduced to two per week the number of trips it made to Eureka. It appears to have been intervention by Wells, Fargo, and Co. that caused return of the third weekly stage as the company offered to forward all letters left at its office.

The ability of Wells, Fargo and Co., to make a profit in the West seems to have escaped officials of the ‘Mugwump Administration’ of Grover Cleveland.

Why Adam and I were trying to convince our sisters, Deirdre and Marcy, Santa Claus was in the area, checking to see if they were being “naughty or nice,” I haven’t a clue. What I do know is the jolly old Elf was nowhere to be found, so I stepped in.

Knowing where Dad kept his Santa’s Helper suit he’d wear on occasion to the VFW Christmas Party, I put it on. Then I climbed up on the roof and waited for Adam to get the girls to come outside and see the “truth” for themselves.

That’s where things seemed to slip – or rather – I slipped.

All I was supposed to do was run along the top beam of the house towards the chimney and duck down out of sight. But no, instead I took two or three steps, and then fell off the roof.

I hit the cement patio with a smack I thought could be heard for miles around.

There was no time to lay there and nurse my injuries though. Instead I jumped up, dashed into the house, stripped off the suit, stuffed it in Dad’s dresser and raced outside to join Adam and the girls. Deirdre and Marcy were so excited — they had jus’ witnessed Santa disappearing in the “twinkling of an eye.”

They were so excited they never noticed I was out of breath from knocking the wind out of myself, or the fact that I was trying not to show I had banged up my left hip and elbow in the fall. Adam didn’t even realized it until after I told him what had happened.

He jus’ laughed when I told him, “This Santa Claus’ helper doesn’t bounce.”

Joseph Webb started the first newspaper in what is now Nevada, the Gold-Canyon Switch during the year 1854. It was hand written and distributed in John Town.

Three years later, S.A. Kinsey started the second-hand written newspaper, the Scorpion, in Genoa. No copies of either paper still exist; knowledge of them comes from Dan DeQuille having written about them.

W.L. Jemegan and Alfred James hauled a printing press and rolls of paper over the Sierra Nevada on the backs of mules in 1858. The name of their paper was the Territorial Enterprise, following the practice of using the name of the place where the paper was published.

Instead of Genoa being used, however, the phrase ‘Utah Territory’ was shortened to one word. James sold out to Jonathan Williams before the newspaper was moved to Carson City in November 1859. Jemegan sold out to Williams in May 1860.

Williams moved the newspaper to A and Taylor Streets in Virginia City in October 1860. Today. the Territorial Enterprise Building is located at 23 South C Street, and is home to the Mark Twain Museum.

Since it was first reported in June, I’ve been following the investigation of nine-month old Elijah Guia’s sudden death while at a babysitter’s home. What I didn’t know was that I know Eli’s mother, Keia.

She worked at the Reno Hilton on the front desk while I was a security officer. I only found this out after the Reno Gazette-Journal published a photo of her holding a black and white picture of her son.

Keia move to Las Vegas shortly after I left the Hilton. She returned to the Reno area, jus’ a month before her son died.

The medical investigation into Eli’s death has only jus’ been completed and turned over to the Reno police for further review. Authorities say they’ll wrap up their investigation in a few weeks and submit a report to the Washoe County District Attorney’s office for further possible action.

Meanwhile an early evening vigil was held Saturday in front of Reno Justice Court at One South Sierra Street. During the vigil, people wore green ribbons — a color that symbolizes life — and is also the color of Eli’s birthstone.

The baby sitter, Rosalinda Lesaca has since left the U.S. and is believed to be in the Philipines. A Facebook page called, “Every Life is Important,” has been established to help maintain focus on this case and others.

Stokes Castle near Austin was completed in June 1897. It was built of local granite in only a year because it wasn’t a full-sized medieval castle, but a smaller, three-story turret, square on each side. The family apparently referred to it as “the Tower.”

The kitchen and dining room were on the ground floor, living room on the second, and two bedrooms on the third. All were supposedly ‘richly furnished’ and it had interior plumbing. The walls of the castle extended above its roof, with square crenulations that might allow defenders to fight off a siege.

Anson Phelps Stokes, a New York banker and lead financier of the Nevada Central Railway, reportedly built the castle as a summer residence for his sons. They occupied it for two months right after its completion, but never returned.

It is still standing, even though it has been vacant for more than a hundred years.

The year 2006 was our pit-bull, Roxy’s first Christmas with us. She had been a Christmas gift the year before to a man who couldn’t take proper care of her – so he gave her to us.

We’d had her jus’ short of a year and felt she was progressing fine in her general socialization with the other dogs as well as the family. Because of this we let our guard down.

Shortly before Christmas, we went got a tree from the local Boy Scout’s lot jus’ down the road from our home. We brought it in and set it up, leaving it undecorated for a couple of days, allowing the dogs to get used to it.

First thing that happened was our black lab, Yaeger, raised his leg against it. I had to take it out in the back yard, hose it down and let it dry off, before bringing it back in.

I chalked this up to his desire to declare ownership over the pine tree.

A day or so later, I dragged the tree back into the living room, where it was left until the following day. That’s when my wife decorated it, using lights, bulbs and her many  heirloom ornaments.

Things went along fine for about a week, so we felt brave enough to start setting out packages under the tree. Each of the dogs took their turn sniffing the brightly colored wrappings, but none of them touch any and there were no more “canine watering” incidents.

Two days later, I returned after being in town for about three-hours, to discover the majority of the tree was missing from our living room. I say “majority,” because there was a number of broken branches and tons of pine needles scattered around the room along with broken bulbs and ornaments.

It took only seconds for my shock to ware off and turn to anger as I raced out the back door and found what remained of our Christmas tree. Roxy had managed to pull, tug and drag the tree through both dog-doors and outside.

For hours afterwards, all I could say was, “G-d damned dog!” as I spent the next several hours cleaning up the mess she had made. Oddly enough she never touched one package that had been placed out – jus’ the tree.

That would happen the following year. G-d damned dog!

It cost Nevadans five cents a mile to travel on the Central Pacific Railroad in 1885, while it cost Californians only three cents a mile. This disparity also applied to freight being shipped. It cost more to ship most goods from Reno to San Francisco than it did to ship the same goods from San Francisco to New York.

This chicanery began when the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, although it was modified slightly in 1881. The problem was that the CPR bought successive Nevada State legislatures through bribery and kept them in a pocket.

The problem happened in other states, so Congressional action on regulating the railroads began in 1877. This resulted in the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. However, the US Supreme Court didn’t rule against the railroads in any lawsuit until 1896 and didn’t allow the Interstate Commerce Commission to establish uniform rates until 1917.

Until then, a railroad monopoly built through government subsidy charged whatever the market in Nevada would bear.

My wife was going through some of her boxes of Christmas ornaments — notice how I say “her” instead of “our” – it’s not that I don’t like them or the Christmas season – it’s jus’ that I’m too dysfunctional to truly enjoy the excitement of decorating. I’d much rather hear everyone else argue over how to do this or that, than join in myself.

Anyway, she found an item I thought had been lost years and years ago. It’s a simple, hand-made Christmas stocking that I was given as a little guy in Klamath.

Mom made one for me and one for Adam when we were still living on Sanders Court about 1965. At that time our sister’s, Deirdre and Marcy, had yet to be born, and because of this I don’t think Mom never made them a “special” stocking for the fire place.

When my wife pulled it from the bottom of the box — for some reason – perhaps allergies – I got all choked up and my eye-balls started leaking.  It’s a silly thing for a dysfunctional man like me to have happen at such a moment.

It’s the best present an old man could receive.

In January 1860, Governor Isaac Roop wrote a letter to General Clarke of the US Army, Pacific Department: “We are about to be plunged into a bloody and protracted war with the Pah-Utah Indians.”

On February 18, 1860, the Territorial Enterprise published another letter written by Governor Roop. “Citizens of Nevada Territory: Finding that we of Honey Lake Valley are unavoidably about to be plunged into a war with the Pah-Utahs, you are requested to prepare yourselves with arms and ammunition …”

The Enterprise also published letters from other settlers and they wrote that no such thing was about to happen. Some of them felt that incidents with Native Americans were due to traders along the Humboldt River giving them rifles so they could steal horses from emigrants and allow the traders to recover abandoned wagons and their contents.

Others explained that starving Native Americans were afraid to accept food from the settlers because they feared it was  poisoned.

We’ve decided not to go with a real tree or our fake tree for Christmas this year. Instead we’re going to use the ceramic cookie jar made by Spode, in which I bought for my wife several years ago.

Go ahead — say “Bah humbug!”

Yes, I know – it lacks the wonderful odor of pine and it’s not as festive as a tree set up and twinkling it’s lights in the corner of the room, but it also doesn’t need to be watered and there no pine needle shedding either. Besides if we really want that “oh, so fresh pine smell,” I’ll go buy an automotive air freshener and drop it inside the container.

On top of that — it’s much more dog proof than the one’s we’ve had over the last few years.