A few weeks ago my friends, Dana Markins and Andy Romero, a couple of paranormal enthusiasts, wanted to know where they should go to investigate stuff like that. I suggested Potosi, Goldfield, Chloride or Rhyolite.

Since I didn’t know they had gone, it surprised me to get a letter from Dana. It concerned me that I never got the phone call she promised and now, I can’t seem to reach her or Andy.

Furthermore, I contacted the West Los Angeles Community Police Station to ask them to do a welfare check on the pair. They told me their Volvo was found abandoned at a ’76’ gas station on San Vicente Blvd.,  and no one saw them leave it.

Instead, I filed a missing persons report.

August 8th

Hey Tom,

You were right about Rhyolite, what a beautiful place, especially at night. Andy and I had a blast. We got some neat EVP’s and orb-type pictures. It’s amazing how many stars you can see when there’s no street lights in the way.

We’re sitting in a coffee shop inside the Bellagio waiting for the sun to come up, bored and full of coffee. We should be sleeping but we had a really frightening experience while playing the slots and don’t want to be where there are no people around.

Andy noticed a weird-looking man with a very pale complexion and eyes darker than his black hair. He was also playing the slots. But he appeared more interested in a couple seated nearby him.

So we sat there, playing the slots. and watching him until the couple got up and headed for the door. That’s when the pale-looking guy got up too and started following them.

Andy got scared for the couple and wanted to go warn them, but didn’t. He said the man didn’t have a reflection as he walked along the mirrored wall.  I swear my heart nearly stopped when I saw that.  Looking back, it could have been the angle that made him appear reflectionless.

It was made even more clear to us that we’d better not follow or interfere when the guy turned and glared at us. And if that wasn’t enough he hissed at us. When he did that, we both saw his sharpened teeth. Honestly, I don’t know if they were real or not, but I don’t want to take any chances.

I’m used to going out and looking for paranormal experiences, not having them come to me. Andy and I can’t wait to get back to Brentwood and put this shit behind us.  I’m cured of the supernatural for a while.

Will call when we get home.

Love, Dana

The end of Native American domination began in 1542 when Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed north toward the future Del Norte shoreline.  Leaving from the port of Navidad in June 1542, Cabrillo’s two ships, the San Salvador and Victoria, reached Point Reyes by year’s end.

With the winter waters turning rough, Cabrillo ordered his ships to turn around.  However Cabrillo died in January 1543 on the Channel Islands.

His chief pilot, Bartolomé Ferrelo, took command and turned the ships back north up the coast of what was then called “Alta California.”  In February a storm struck and threatened to sink the two ships however the sailors sighted Cape Pinos.

Then a couple of days later when the winds had died, the navigator determined they were at 43° north latitude.  But due to several days of storm, in which gale-force winds swept sea water onto their decks, threatening to sink them and eventually separating the two ships, they were forced to turn south.

The two vessels finally met up at Cedros Island on March 26.

Originally, historian’s believed the Cabrillo expedition never sailed farther north than Cape Mendocino, which is more than 150 miles south of Del Norte County. But a re-examination of the ships’ logs said the ships probably got as far north as the mouth of the Rogue River in southern Oregon.

If so, those sailors saw the Del Norte County shoreline in late February and early March 1543.  However it is unlikely they ever made landfall.

It was a slow procession of mourners and curious onlookers that walked the dirt trail through the Gold Hill Cemetery on the historic Comstock. They were all there to bring an end to a mystery nearly 40-years in the making.

Traditionally, the story of how the two boys died, claims their father, Robert Jones, told them to go out and look for a missing cow and not to come back until they found it. But newspaper accounts of the day report they were on their way home for the holiday.

Either way, Henry T., 14, and his nine-year-old brother, John Jr., were out in the freezing cold Christmas Eve of 1871, when they died. It was another three days and nights before their frozen bodies would be found jus’ four miles from their ranch on American Flat.

The Jones family owned several ranches in addition to the one on American Flat, near Gold Hill. One was near Rattlesnake Mountain where Longley Lane and South McCarran Blvd. in Reno intersect and it was there that the boys were staying. 

The father sent word to them to come up to American Flat for Christmas and to bring two cows and two calves with them. So the two set out with the cattle and their dog but the weather was against them. 

They spent that night at Brown’s Station, now the Damonte Ranch not far from U.S. 395 and Geiger Grade. The next day they set out again but decided against going up the Geiger Grade route and instead decided to go down into Washoe Valley and then up what is now Jumbo Grade.

When their dog arrived at the ranch without the boys, their father began searching for them. Unfortunately, he went down Geiger Grade and stopped by Brown’s Station only to learn the boys had chosen the other route. 

The boys were buried in the Gold Hill Cemetery and a marble marker was erected with the words, “death wrapped them in a snowy shroud. Then, sometime after 1974, their tombstone was stolen. 

“The story of the Jones boys tombstone epitomizes the plight of our historic cemeteries with so much vandalism and destruction and theft from these cemeteries,” said Comstock Cemetery Foundation Chairman Steve Frady.

Four years later,  a woman in Petaluma, Calif., found a marble grave marker broken into two pieces laying in a ditch near her home. It was decided to move the old grave marker to the Two Rock Presbyterian Church Cemetery where it rested against the stump of a eucalyptus tree for years.

Years later, a local historian took an interest in the damaged headstone, by then stained black and green with algae and mold, and reached out to researchers across the region. That’s when somebody saw an image of the headstone on the Comstock Cemetery Foundation’s website.

For years, the foundation used an old photo of the stone as its logo.

Until the stone was recovered, no one knew of the four other names on the back. All they had to go with was an old photo that just showed the boys names, and that’s why it has always been known as the Jones boys’ grave.

They include George F., 6, and Cora E., 4, who both died September 29, 1877; Alice E., who was 2 when she died on July 10, 1878; and 14-year-old Diana, who died of suicide in September 1878.

“We had no idea that was on the back of the stone,” Frady said about the other inscriptions.

The Nevada senator was raised in poverty, worked his way through law school, spent his professional life as a public servant and is currently earning $193,400 a year. Now Senator Reid is worth millions.

In 1974, Harry Reid told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (LVRJ), “Any man or woman who will not be completely candid about his or her finances does not deserve to be in public office.”

Reid entered the Nevada legislature in 1982 and at the time, according to the LVRJ his net worth was listed as between $1 million and $1.5 million. Today, Reid’s net worth is somewhere between 3 and 10 million dollars.

So how did he get that way?

It begins in 1982, with a worthless 160-acres Reid and long time friend and Las Vegas lubricants distributor, Clair Haycock purchased near Bullhead City, Arizona. Though deemed a money pit, the pair held on to it until Haycock transferred the property to Reid.

We’ll return to this in a bit.

In another land deal Reid made $700,000 in 2004. It started in 1998 when he bought a parcel of land with attorney Jay Brown, a close friend whose name has surfaced multiple times in organized-crime investigations.

Brown was formerly the Corporate Agent for Rick Rizzolo. He represented Rizzolo’s “Crazy Horse Too” in actions before the Las Vegas City Council.

In 2005, Reid appointee and Federal Judge Kent Dawson’s brother, attorney John Dawson, hid Rick and Lisa Rizzolo’s assets. John Dawson’s law firm Lionel Sawyer & Collins received $1.4 million dollars in legal fees for “asset protection” services.

Incidentally, Reid’s two sons are also attorneys with Lionel Sawyer & Collins.

At the same time, attorney Dawson was hiding Rizzolo’s assets; Judge Dawson was presiding over the trials of 15 former Rizzolo employees. Eventually, all received probation or reduced sentences

The Judge failed to disclose his brother’s financial relationship with Rizzolo during his “Crazy Horse 15” trials, nor did he disclose that he was appointed to the bench by Reid, who has close ties to Jay Brown, one of Rizzolo’s attorneys and a business partner of retired Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman who represented Rick Rizzolo in a 1989 attempted murder case.

There’s no evidence that Reid ever profited from these legal proceedings. They do however show the kind of company the Nevada Senator keeps.
Returning to the 2004 land deal, Reid transferred his portion of the property to Patrick Lane LLC, a holding company Brown controlled. And though he transferred it, Reid kept putting the property on his financial disclosures, and when the company sold it in 2004, he profited from land he didn’t own but which nearly tripled in value in six years.

Following this, in December 2005, Reid invested between $50,000 and $100,000 in the Dow Jones U.S. Energy Sector Fund (IYE), which closed that day at $29.15. The companies holding at the time included such oil giants as ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and ConocoPhillips.

When he made a partial sale of his shares in August 2008, IYE closed at $41.82. A month later, Reid introduced a bill the Joint Committee on Taxation said would cost oil companies billions of dollars in taxes and regulatory fees.

The bill passed a few days later, and by October, IYE’s shares had fallen to $24.41.

But by this time, Reid had already cashed in.

Then in November 2006, when Reid became Senate majority leader, pushed through an $18 million earmark to build a bridge across the Colorado River between Laughlin and Bullhead City. Incidentally, this is nearby the 160-acres he purchased in 1982 with Haycock.

The land was sold to Reid by Hancock for a mere $10-thousand, far below the market value. Adding to this, six months later Reid introduced a soon-to-fail piece of legislation to protect lubricants dealers who had their supplies disrupted by the decisions of big oil companies.

As of 2010, this piece of worthless property listed somewhere between $1 million and $5 million.

Senator Harry Reid took to the Senate’s chamber floor with unsubstantiated claim that Mitt Romney has paid no federal income taxes for 12 years. Reid said that a nominee for a Cabinet position couldn’t get confirmed by the Senate if he made as limited a release of tax information as Romney has thus far.

“His father, George Romney, set the precedent that people running for president would file their tax returns and let everybody look at them,” Reid declared, “But Mitt Romney can’t do that because he’s basically paid no taxes in the prior 12 years.”

Reid’s allegations are taking the issue to a new level as he’s continues repeating his allegations. In a conference call with Nevada reporters, he broadened what he claimed were his sources for the contention Romney was able to avoid federal taxes.

“I have had a number of people tell me that,” said Reid. “I don’t think the burden should be on me, the burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes. Why didn’t he release his tax returns?”

Reid said he learned about Romney’s taxes earlier this summer from an investor in Bain Capital who he says called his office to pass along the information. He refused to name the investor and acknowledged he is not certain a the charges he’s been spreading are true.

“Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t,” Reid said, “Mitt Romney makes more money in a single day than the average middle-class family makes in two years or more.”

Romney has already released his 2010 tax returns and plans to make public his 2011 file when it’s completed. He also repeated to crowds in Las Vegas during a campaign speech, he wouldn’t be releasing anymore returns.

“Let me also say categorically — I have paid taxes every year. A lot of taxes. A lot of taxes,” said Romney. “Harry Reid really has to put up or shut up, alright? So Harry, who are your sources?” Romney asked.

“And by the way Harry, I understand what you’re trying to do,” he continued, “You’re trying to deflect the fact that jobs numbers are bad, that Americans are out of work, and you’re trying to throw anything up on the screen that will grab attention away from the fact that the policies of the White House haven’t worked.”

Meanwhile, in a statement released by Reid’s office, the he claims, “Romney’s tax plan is even more insulting to Nevadans than his belief that he’s above basic scrutiny.”

Wrong, Senator Reid — you’re the one whose insulting to Nevadans.

Jessie “Ollie” Clausen died in a nursing home in Fortuna where she had been living with her husband of 63 years, former Congressman Don Clausen. She was born Jessie Oleva Piper in 1918 in Mansfield, Washington.

After high school, she moved with her family to Crescent City where she became a waitress at the Hi-Ho ice cream parlor. It was there that she was introduced to then- U.S.Navy pilot Don Clausen, who had just returned from World War II.

The couple married in 1949 and raised two daughters.

Her husband would go on to become a Del Norte County supervisor before serving in Congress from 1963 to 1983. They lived in suburban Washington, D.C., while Don was in office and settled in the Santa Rosa area afterward.

The couple had been living in Fortuna when Ollie Clausen suffered a fall, was hospitalized in Eureka and died soon after. She also is survived by daughters Dawn Marie Baumbartner of Ferndale and Bev Mendenhall of Kenne, Texas.

Along with the Klamath Reservation came Fort Ter-Waw. The name Ter-Waw is from the Yurok word for “beautiful place.” However Fort Ter-Waw, or Terwer as it is known, would not stay there long.

Set up by Lt. George Crook in 1857,  buildings took up about 80 acres on the Klamath River’s north bank above the waterway’s mouth and washed away several times. It disappeared in late winter 1862, washed away by the storms that ravaged the coast that year.

Then in the early 1863, Brig. Gen. George Wright ordered troops’ relocation to Camp Lincoln, under construction in Smith River Valley. It was about that time that Wright sent a message to his headquarters in San Francisco asking for more military men to kill Indians living in the northern California region.

As white settlers moved into Northern California during the 1850s and what later would become Del Norte County, both Tolowa and Yuroks were being housed at Wau-Kell. Neither tribe was happy with the situation because the Tolowa wished to return to their homes, while the Yurok were anxious to see them go.

But Gen. George Crook blamed the Tolowa dissatisfaction on whites who wanted them back on Smith River. Before Crook arrived in the region, about 100 of the Tolowa had returned home, and he agreed with federal Indian Agent H. P. Heintzelman that they would never return to the reservation without force.

When the Indians learned that Crook’s orders were against provoking incidents and fighting with them unless they fired first, a number of Tolowa slipped away in small parties. But since they realized they could not all leave in that way, they organized a different plan.

A Yurok tribal member told Crook that the Tolowa were planning to murder him, destroy his boats, kill Heintzelman and his employees, then sack the federal Indian agency and go home. This caused Crook to form plans to strike first, surrounding the conspirators at daylight and prove their guilt.

When Crook bedded down that night, he took weapons with him, leaving a box of brasses inside the entrance of his tent so he would be awakened if anyone tried to come in. But the Indians had decided to eliminate Heintzelman first and had sent for him to come to their village to see an ill man.

As the agent and his surgeon headed that way, they were attacked. Able to fend the Tolowa off for a few moments, Heintzelman’s rear detachment was able to scatter the attackers when they got to the scene.

Crook knew about the attack when a runner brought him a note telling him that Heintzelman was killed. It proved later not to be the case, but Crook summoned his soldiers, crossed the river and moved against the Tolowa.

The fight ended with 10 dead and many wounded. Twenty-six warriors and a number of women and children were captured and made to swear they would stay on the reservation.

The rest of the Tolowa fled into the mountains.

We call it the Roff Building, mostly because we don’t know what else to call it and it sits on the corner of Roff Way and West 1st Street.  Roff Way gets its name from a prominent Reno family that helped settle the area in the 1860’s.

Built in 1936, my wife and her business partners opened their sandwich shop in the Roff Building. Very few records exist showing the buildings use before 1970. 

They closed the sandwich shop in early 2011 and opened a drinking establishment simply known as “Bar,” later that year. The new business is doing very well.

Nathan Roff came to Nevada in 1863, and found work the harness and saddlery business in Washoe city, at the period of that town’s high-tide of prosperity. He remained there until 1868, when, at the public auction sale of lots, he purchased four lots and thus became one of the earliest settlers and founders of the City of Reno, where he remained until his death, in 1897.

Nathan’s son, Nate Roff was born at St. Louis, Missouri, February 4, 1852, and was very young when he came out west. He graduated from the College of California in the class of 1870, after which he returned to Washoe City, and learned telegraphy.

For some time he worked for Western Union Telegraph Company, and later of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad Company. For five years he was deputy land register in Carson City.

Nate was also a clerk in the Nevada legislature at nearly every session for a twenty-five year period, was chief clerk of the assembly twice and clerk of the senate three times.  Eventually, he became a state senator representing Washoe county.

Roff was a Republican until the silver issue split that party into two, then he became one of the organizers of the Silver Party of Nevada. He was also Secretary of the State’s Central Committee for several years and  worked for U.S. Senator Francis Newlands.

Praised for her boundless energy,  family and friends gathered in San Antonio to remember her.  Jessica Ghawi, who narrowly escaped a shooting in Toronto earlier this year, has been laid to rest.

“If this coward could have done this with this much hate, imagine what we can do with this much love,” her brother, Jordan told those gathered inside the Community Bible Church in San Antonio.

But most of the service focused on the life and energy of the aspiring sports journalist.

“What we will not do today is focus on how she left us,” read Peter Burns, a friend from Colorado, holding a note from Ghawi’s mother, Sandy. “Jess was a force to be reckoned with. She was a jolt of lightning. A whirlwind. A Labrador puppy running clumsily with innocent joy.”

Burns talked of the funny way Ghawi sneezed, her near-addiction to Nutella chocolate, how she was sloppy and always lovable. Ghawi’s boyfriend, however Jay Meloff, noted that while others described her as a tough, redheaded spitfire, he saw her as a “beautiful, warm-hearted and passionate woman with a capacity for love…as mushy as they come.”

Ghawi was a 24-year-old pretty, blue-eyed redhead who moved to Colorado about a year ago. She had survived a June 2 shooting at a Toronto mall that left two dead and several wounded.

Her blog post last month reads: “I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath.”

She went by the name “Redfield,” a play on her red hair, because it was easy to say and remember, both professionally and on her social media accounts. She was a regular tweeter and her last post to the micro-blogging website stated in all capital letters, “movie doesn’t start for 20 minutes.”

Meanwhile, the body of a 26-year-old U.S. Navy veteran and Reno resident who also died in the shooting has been flown home for burial. Jonathan Blunk’s body arrived at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport, with the Patriot Guard escorting him to the Mountain View Mortuary.

Blunk had high hopes for the future, with plans to re-enlist in the Navy and the goal of becoming a Navy SEAL, having served three tours in the Persian Gulf and North Arabian Sea between 2004 and 2009. Blunk was also a certified firefighter and emergency medical technician.

He died in the shooting after throwing himself in front of friend Jansen Young and saving her life. Young told NBC’s “Today” show, that Blunk told her to stay down.

A 2004 graduate of Hug High School, Blunk most recently lived in Aurora and worked for a small flooring company. His estranged wife, Chantel, lives with their 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son in Reno.

A memorial service, open to the public will take place August 2nd at the Mountain View Mortuary with a private service the following day.

Odd how the national media grabs onto a particular person involved in a tragedy. In the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, in Littleton, Colorado, it was Rachael Scott, one of 15 people to die that April 20th.

At the time of her death, the 17-year old senior was an aspiring writer and actress. Shortly before her death, she wrote an essay for school stating, “I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion then it will start a chain reaction of the same.”

I had the good fortune of having her half-sister in one of emergency medical technician classes at Truckee Meadows Community College. I remember her pain and grief at the loss of her younger sibling.

In “The Dark Knight Rises” Massacre of Aurora, Colorado, the person in the media spotlight is Jessica Ghawi, an aspiring sportscaster and blogger. She was one of 12 people killed when a man armed with several guns started randomly shooting into a crowd enjoying a midnight movie.

I knew Jessica via the Internet Ghawi but under her blogging nom de plume, Jessica Redfield. It’s because of her senseless death, that I feel compelled to write this down.

In her blog, she wrote about the June 2nd Eaton Centre shooting that she escaped, “It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how a weird feeling saved me from being in the middle of a deadly shooting.”

Also since that time I’ve heard over and over, a call for tighter restriction on guns and ammunition. This makes me very angry!

First off, liberal-do-gooders and nanny-statist like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor Stephen Baldwin, need to shut their mouths. People are dead or wounded, family, friends and loved ones are hurting and should get chance to heal before you go off half-cocked about the horrors of gun-ownership.

“Soothing words are nice,” said Bloomberg, “But maybe it’s time the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they’re going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country.”

Yeah, half-cocked is what I said, especially you Mr. Mayor, with your armed body guards and armored limo. Hypocrite!

Baldwin told CNN, a red flag should have gone up when James Holmes purchased 6,000 rounds and equipment in such a short period. He said the Patriot Act put certain rules in place such as monitoring, but as “technology advances, maybe there should be some new thinking.”

As for you Baldwin, adding more regulation, applying new laws, and creating more “Big Brother” is not what gun advocates aspire too. Obviously you are as good a constitutional scholar as you are an actor.

Not once have I ever bought into the belief that, “Guns kill.”  That’s like saying “Religion kills.”

Both premises are wrong. People kill, some misuse a gun, some misuse religion.

Is it the car that kills or the driver operating it?

The 2nd Amendment, ratified December 17, 1791 along with nine other amendments, make up the Bill of Rights. It reads:  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It’s time U.S. Citizen’s took back their God-given right to “keep and bear arms,” and then wear those “arms” openly and proudly. I’m sick and tired of the politicians and activists dictating to me and you what we can or cannot do.

Who made them a god? No one — as they’re either elected, or worse, self-appointed.

It’s time we gre a pair and followed in the foot steps of those who raised up this nation. You and I should be able to wear a pistol or revolver openly on our leg or around our waist anywhere we want to go in this supposed “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.”

Forget old-west characters like Wyatt Earp and such, who stripped cowboys of their weapons upon entering a town. That’s tyranny and in the end only those with power will have what those not in power can’t have.

In this case that would be a gun!

It’s a shame that carrying a concealed weapon into a movie theater in Colorado is illegal. Had one person been armed besides the murderer, the odds are that killer wouldn’t be alive, sucking air while sitting in jail.

Furthermore, it’s a shame that I can’t carry a gun openly in my workplace as protection and a deterrent against violence. I have co-workers who have carry-conceal permits, but they cannot carry a firearm inside the building!

While it seems counter intuitive, having a known firearm, does cause those who would otherwise do another person harm, to stop and rethink their action as they realize they can get killed jus’ as easily as doing the killing.

Here in Nevada, it is legal to carry a weapon openly displayed on your person, but it’s also illegal to transport a loaded weapon on certain roadways. It’s a real catch-22, that been placed on you and I by lawmakers.

I’m left carrying a knife instead.

My son and I went to the movies in Sparks to see the latest Batman flick. Before going, my wife called, asking that we be careful, since by then the Aurora shooting were nearly nine-hours old news.

On our way, I said to him, “As your dad, if someone starts shooting, I want you to lay down on the floor and play dead. However, man-to-man, if you’re so compelled and see the chance to kill the son-of-a bitch with your knife, do it.”

Not all parents will agree with me, but Kyle is 20-years-old and knows right from wrong. I trust him to do what needs doing.

In the movie, while locked in an underground prison, Bruce Wayne must find a way to escape. The only way to do this is by climbing a circular wall, which is not only high, but also uneven.

Those who’ve attempt escape tie a rope around their waists to prevent a fall to the death. Wayne tries it this way then realizes the rope is holding him back from reaching his goal of freedom.

I found a simple but elegant truth in that scene: It’s time to untether ourselves from those who think they know whats best for us and risk the fall for the greater freedom.

As for Jessica, no one was in that theater to protect her right, or that of the other 11 people killed to continue in this life. And since people like Bloomberg, Baldwin and their ilk aren’t willing to act as human-sheilds and Wyatt Earp is already dead, we ought to start protecting ourselves like free-men and woman!

It’s time for some personal responsibility and that’s the beauty of an armed-citizenry.