What would you do if you only had five days to live?
My old friend David Toll used a few precious minutes of his waning days to send $25 to the support of Sparks bus driver Michael Lansborough who is recovering from heart surgery. (See below.) Five days before his mortality chimed, David took time to help. Such was my dear friend David.
He went out in style. His justpublished memoir “David Toll’s Nevada: A 50-Year Tour Through the Most Interesting State in America” immediately sold out its initial printing. Mary Works Covington at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City got one with his autograph. A treasure.
It’s worth buying just for the cover, David manning a truly Nevadian conveyance in a field of wildflowers on the Nevada outback. That photo says Nevada better than a million words could convey. Get ‘em while they got ‘em at NevadaBookstore.org/
The distinguished Nevada author, publisher, journalist and union supporter died on Sunday, Feb. 13 at 85. His history of Comstock Lode-era mining unions remains a must-read for anyone who would understand Nevada history.
I met him and former Tribune columnist Travus T. Hipp courtesy of my late wife, Betty. She knew Travus’ wife, former Stone Ground singer Lynne Hughes (“Passion Flower”), when Betty managed Pauline’s Sportswear in Carson City. (The franchise was owned by Sparks businessman John Hanks, another dear old friend from way back when.) Lynne was working at KPTL Radio in Carson.
Travus came into our Reno ad agency office one day in 1978 selling ads for David’s reincarnation of the Gold Hill News, the legendary Comstock Lode newspaper. I scored a bunch of old copies when David gave a retrospective at the Nevada State Museum in 2017. (You may view his full address linked to the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com, along with Mary Works Covington’s 1996 magnum opus, “The Life and Times of the Red Dog Saloon,” the incubator of the San Francisco sound which peaked in 1967’s Summer of Love.)
David’s 1982 profile of Travus, assigned by Tribune editor Jo Ewalt, remains the definitive work about the greatest talk radio host in the world. Travus set the standard long before Lush Rambo (his term) perverted the medium. It took Limbaugh over a decade to equal Travus’ ratings on then-Sparks station KKKOH.
When I didn’t know a j-peg from a jaguar, David built and launched NevadaLabor.com for me back in 1996.
The Gold Hill News amassed more newspaper honors than any other rural publication before or since. His writing on NevadaTravel.net earned numerous accolades and was awarded the Nevada Division of Tourism’s Excellence in Tourism Award in 2006.
In the early 1970s, eminent Silver State author Robert Laxalt (“Sweet Promised Land”) asked David to write a guidebook and “The Complete Nevada Traveler” was born. (Originally “Compleat,” but apparently few caught the auld English allusion. Izaak Walton’s “The Compleat Angler” hasn’t had proper promotion since 1635 but he would have undoubtedly enjoyed pursuit of his favourite sport in these boroughs.)
Ten editions have been published, making it the top selling book on Nevada in the state. This work was the genesis for his internet publishing which still provides visitors and Nevadans alike a vast treasure trove of information about the Silver State. David considered his three major books a trilogy of authentic Nevada voices.
I checked the Nevada Press Association website and David’s not in the NPA Hall of Fame. Yet. Dammit! I will thus nominate him this year along with former Tribune contributors Jake Highton and Don Dondero.
Why wait? I hereby install David as the 10th member of the Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames.
David thus joins Dondero, Highton, Travus, Dennis, former Nevada Gov. Mike O’Callaghan and precious few others in the most exclusive of all journalistic clubs. (Mark Twain remains in a class by himself.)
In the Red Dog Saloon of the imagination,, I fancy myself walking in off the Virginia City boardwalk and buying a round for Travus, David and our ladies while we wait for Mark Twain’s latest column in the Gold Hill News.
MIKE UPDATE. My Sparks union brother and RTCRide bus operator Mike Lansborough is home after more than a week in the hospital. He faces a long and painful recovery from heart surgery and remains sole support of his wife and son, Logan, 10, who has no lower legs due to a genetic flaw. Friends launched a GoFundMe page
Please go there and be generous. If you would like to help by check, make it payable to Michael Lansborough and send to his attention at Teamsters Local 533, 1190 Selmi Drive, Suite 100, Reno NV 89512.
Thanks to all Barbwire readers to have rallied to help. Please join them in donating. And tell your friends.
FROM THE UNION: “Sorry to hear about David Toll,” said Teamsters Local 533 President Gary Watson.
“I personally did not know him but he sounded like a generous person and a good union man. May he rest in peace and my condolences to his family,” Watson added.
“Brother Lansborough is recovering nicely and (almost made it) to last week’s Union meeting. We appreciate you getting Brother Lansborough’s GoFundMe out far and wide. It means the world to see others help our brother,” Watson stated.
FROM MERCIFUL TO MERCILESS: KENOSHA KILLER UPDATE. My spies report that Wisconsin double homicidist Kyle Rittenhouse has indeed moved to these parts and has been shopping and buying big ticket items. I guess he had to do something with what remains of the $2 million defense fund raised by moonhowlers for his acquittal. I wonder if he can pass a background check these days. Wisconsin authorities refused his request for the return of his AR-15 assault rifle and plan to destroy it lest it become an object of religious adoration.
KILLING EDUCATION. Anybody heard anything more about that Bohach Elementary School “teacher” who assigned a black kid to trace his ancestry back to the Mayflower? Who sez there’s no such thing as White History Month. Stay tuned.
¡Sí se puede!
Take care of each other and be careful out there.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org and MississippiWestNV. org/ He is a longtime member of the RenoSparks NAACP. As always, his comments are strictly his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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