Commentary
Once upon a time, Americans looked back wistfully on our formative days.
Such a time was 1976, the 200th anniversary of the founding of our great experiment in government by the people — more specifically, property-owning white guys, but that was then and this is now. Sorta.
We live in a time when black-robed ammotextuals act as unelected governments, viewing all laws and regulations as if it were still 1776.
The Bicentennial Celebration of 48 years ago was certainly a more innocent time. Nobody even objected to recognizing it as “bi.”
The most trusted man in America, legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, closed each of his dominant evening newscasts with a historical note, concluding with “that’s the way it was 200 years ago today.”
Which reminds me of a plane ride I took to Denver 48 years ago this month, a business trip. As fate would have it, I got seated with a bunch of comedians, Fats Johnson and his band which had just concluded a gig at Tahoe.
Before I knew it, they were trying out their act on me.
Fats and his guys had a running gag lampooning the hallowed Cronkite.
The best of the zingers I still remember almost half a century down the road.
“Two hundred years ago today, Ben Franklin invented bifocals. He took one look at his wife and promptly invented…cosmetics! (baddaboom baddabing)
“And that’s the way it was 200 years ago today.”
I was soon laughing so uncontrollably that cabin attendants finally ordered me to calm down or face arrest upon landing.
Sparks-Reno-Washoe circa 1976 was quite a different place. The city councils had already begun flailing about, spending what would become billions trying to make dying downtowns attractive. The result is visible today: cheaply built rabbit warren apartments on “B” Street…er, sorry, “Victorian Square.”
The latter was so anointed when Sparks City Hall decided to turn the main drag in front of the Nugget into auld London of Sherlock Holmes’ day. At least they didn’t make Rail City beat cops wear foot-tall helmets like the British bobbies of London. (I’m not making that up. It was part of the original plan.)
Downtown Reno hasn’t fared any better. The city has yet to pay off the 1990s railroad trench construction millions, the magic solution that never happened.
Ga-ga city officials will never admit it, but both downtowns remain quite ugly. Alas and alack, the rest of the community reflects that DNA.
Much has been said recently about the mutual inability of the Washoe County School District and Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority to hold onto chief executives.
Maybe the answer lies all around us. They come here for a big salary and with high hopes, perhaps from communities that are not re-jiggered mining camps. Places that left you feeling good when you drove around.
That ain’t us. Not no more, at least.
We once kept the blight downtown. Now, it has spread. Casinos spawned an underclass of the exploited, underpaid and disconnected, the classic transitory boomtown mining camp.
When various mining booms petered out, Nevada was destitute. So in 1931, our forefathers made a second deal with the devil. (The first was the federal Mining Law of 1872 which still plagues us today.)
At the dawn of the Great Depression, it took some serious backroom backslapping of prudish lawmakers to legalize what everybody already knew: there was (gasp!) gambling going on here.
It’s now accepted political science that the best way to legalize a vice is to cut government a piece of the action.
There’s even an old Sons of the Pioneers song about it: “Cigareetes and Whuskey and Wild Wild Women.” (Fats Johnson and his crew probably sang it in their act.)
When the Comstock Lode federal freebies went bust, remaining people moved from Virginia City to Lake’s Crossing on the Truckee River, which became Reno. Southern Pacific moved its railyards west toward people and Sparks was born.
It became a pretty place save for racial apartheid. Nevada stumblingly came into the 20th Century about 60 years late. Sparks and Reno were fairly pleasant backwaters by the Bicentennial Year.
Then came the boom spawned by the MGM Grand (now the Grand Sierra). A half-dozen casinos opened up within a few months in 1978. And, as Bill Harrah hisself noted, a half-dozen others soon closed. New casino executives were living in tents on the Truckee. (I filmed and interviewed them.)
It took several decades to digest the MGM boom and the little towns on the mucky Truckee were getting along until Nevada’s greatest corporate welfare queen came to town. His name was Elon Musk and Nevada public officials could not resist turning on the red light for him.
That political venereal disease abides today. Otherwise honest and well-intentioned people seek public office and soon succumb to the Silver State version of Stockholm Syndrome.
I remember from psych 101 in college that if you place sane and rational people into an insane asylum, within a couple of weeks, they begin to show signs of mental instability. Thus it is with many Nevada officials.
They get wined, dined and seduced with all the attention their wonderfulness deserves. They go thru serious withdrawal pains after they leave office and their rich and powerful former friends stop returning their phone calls.
So drive around our sprawling, ugly modern day boomtowns. Downtown Sparks is infected with cheaply built rabbit warren apartments worthy of Cold War Communist East Berlin. Drive down just about any busy street in this little valley and you can see their spawn.
Downtown Reno at the arch remains butt-ugly. The hearts of our communities reflect the reality which blithe residents have been bribed, schmoozed or propagandized into allowing.
And it ain’t pretty.
Which may go a long way toward explaining why newcomers who take six-figure salaries to come here start updating their résumés right quickly. Mining camp boomtowns soon get depressing.
Those of us who remain do the best we can with what we’re left as bonanzas always devolve into busted borrascas.
Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 55-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
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