The Lord created the world. Mankind built the cities. And the Devilthunk up the small town.
Wise old saying
Part of Silver State survival lies in learning local code. For instance, when a pol uses the tired slogan “one of us,” it means that whomever opposes him (and it’s usually a him) is somekinda furriner or a prevert, probably from Las Vegas.
Same mentality applies when Carson City sneers at Reno/Sparks and when the rural 14 diss all of the above as “the big cities.” Gomorrah South?
That’s a foreign country. Real folks don’t go there.
One of the first things I learned about Nevada’s Cow Counties was don’t dare pretend to be one with them. You’re not and never will be. Same thing with Sparks and Reno.
“Reno is very cliquey, very clannish, you’ve got to fit in. So wear a tie and get a haircut,” my ad agency boss Bob Brown ordered when he moved me north from Las Vegas in 1971. I was aghast that Mississippi West still had whites-only hotels.
Brown, a former Las Vegas Review-Journal editor, was a buttoned down Republican conservative. My other boss was 179 degrees different. Former pro gambler Jerry May had once made a living winning money from casinos for notorious Reno mobster and Golden Hotel owner Bill Graham (not the rock promoter).
“There’s nothing wrong with Reno that about 12 selected funerals can’t cure,” the card-counting Big Kahuna in the pink shoes told me.
I lived through those funerals only to find that the deceased were simply replaced by their kids. The downtown casino overlords made sure that no Las Vegas-style strip would ever grow up here to challenge their power. Thus the infamous “red line” surrounding downtown, beyond which unlimited gambling licenses were not granted. Incest makes ugly. Just go look.
Another of my earliest lessons came with the realization that Nevada was actually a small town, just spread over a huge geography. Still is.
I also learned that the north has a heart where the south is often cold.
“You’ve got to give the town time to know you,” super cool auto salesman Bert Strochsheim told me in 1971. “Treat it right and when you need it, the town will take care of you.”
Another long ago lesson: The company town will forever exploit the great unwashed. Us. Nevada’s “extractive” industries, gambling and mining, will enjoy extremely stingy and sometimes zero taxation while foisting upon the little folks the costs of community.
Which is why 2016 Washoe County voters were given no choice other than a regressively higher sales tax to fund new schools. The school district’s citizens committee considered several options, including a hotel room tax, but wilted under the power of the overlords.
Big business extracts, exploits, exudes and execrates this High Desert Plantation. Mining has raped and pillaged the land with impunity for more than 150 years. Now comes news that the sprawling Tesla-Panasonic battery factory east of here will get state permission to further foul the air. You didn’t notice that in the news? Once again, you gotta translate the code.
Tesla will still be required “to maintain compliance with state and federal regulations and ambient air quality standards,” according to the Orwellianly named Nevada Bureau of Environmental Protection. (Reno Gazette-Journal 7-17-2022)
They failed to mention the reason Tesla’s dirty factory can slide where it could not in most other places.
Nevada air is already so clean that major polluters can build dirty plants here and remain below federal ceilings. Witness NV Energy’s filthy coal-fired generator at Valmy, Humboldt County.
But the current Reno GazetteJournal staff simply hasn’t been around long enough to translate the code. So the residents of the company town cough up big corporate welfare tax breaks that are hard to swallow as we struggle to breathe.
IMMORTALITY. Last week, I nominated two of Nevada’s first (1977) Pulitzer Prize winners for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.
Why RGJ editorial writers Foster Church and Norman Cardoza are not already in the Silver State’s rogues gallery remains a mystery. This year’s inductees will be announced at the organization’s annual convention and awards banquet scheduled for September 24 in Las Vegas.
Alas, Church and Cardoza’s chances of winning this fall are somewhat remote. NPA now tries to install honorees close to home. Fair enough.
When my first nominee, the Kazoo-Journal’s Guy Richardson, won in 2012, the honors were bestowed in Pahrump just north of LV. All five of my 2022 nominees are northerners: Church, Cardoza, David Toll of Gold Hill and Jake Highton and Don Dondero of Reno.
That doesn’t mean I can’t install Norm and Foster in a much more exclusive club right now. The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniators Hall of Flames has just two qualifications. Your writing had to have had max impact. And you gotta be dead.
Foster Church died in Oregon last month at 80. Cardoza, now in his nineties, still lives in Reno. So he hereby becomes the second inducted while still writing on this planet, the first being the late Tribune alumnus Prof. Highton. That brings the membership to boxcars, an even dozen including the abovementioned Bob Brown. Stay tuned.
MORTALITY. Word arrived last week that attorney and former Reno-Sparks NAACP President Jeffrey Blanck has died. Watch NevadaLabor.com for memorial service information and other details. May my friend and colleague Jeff rest in peace.
Pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.
Take care of each other and be careful out there.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano, a 53-year Nevadan, is editor of MississippiWestNV. org, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, Rentvolution. org and NevadaLabor.com. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
