Reno in the good ol' days

I love the photo on this old postcard. Ah, Reno in the good ol' days. I lived in Sacramento, Calif., for many years -- between the '70s and early '90s. Reno is across the Sierra about two hours away from Reno over Donner Pass. In college, my buddies and I would drive there to cruise South Virginia Street which is pictured in the postcard. A city with gambling seemed exciting then.

Driving down Virginia Street was a visual delight -- neon lights everywhere -- in your face big time. The wide front entrances of casinos never closed. On cold days you could feel the heat pouring out. On hot summer days you'd feel the air conditioning before you ever stepped into the buildings, right before you got a whiff of the casino itself -- cigarette smoke and grease from the slot machines. I've heard it said that the doors on Nevada casinos don't have locks because casinos operate 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

When Indian casinos came along in California and elsewhere, you didn't need to drive to Reno to play a slot machine. Las Vegas, far to the south, was much bigger than Reno by then and just piled on the attractions making it a destination with a whole lot more than just gambling. It thrived despite the competition from the Indians. But Reno began a slow decline. Virginia Street today is still glittery, but the excitement is gone. There are bigger and better casinos on the outskirts of town, but none of those come close to the grandeur of the casinos in Las Vegas.

Reno really was a "big little city" 30 years or so ago. I'd say that now it's a "little big city" with freeways, shopping malls, suburbs, and casinos are that are not very remarkable anymore.

My computer and how it runs my life

It's about 5 p.m., Friday. My eyes are tired of looking all day at the computer screen. Every Saturday, my online newsletter at RVtravel.com is posted. I've been doing it for about nine years now. Sometimes I can get an issue done ahead of time, but most times I go right to my deadline on Friday evening.

It takes me almost two days to write and put together the newsletter. It's a grind. Still, I love it. Every week, when it is done I get to celebrate another few days where I can do something else, maybe even turn off the blasted computer. It's hard for me to remember my life before my computer. I do recall that in the beginning I used it only to write. And that was it. Then the Internet and email came along. Then came high speed Internet. And that was when my life in the real world got all whacked out by the constant temptation to dive into the cyberworld to write yet another story or research something or check the weather or my stocks or look for some cool YouTube videos or see who had emailed me in the last 4.3 minutes.

I still have about one hour of miscellaneous work to do on the newsletter this evening. Then I will have dinner. Then I will pass out from being brain dead because I lack willpower to get away from my computer.

The computer is a miracle. It's also a curse.

Visiting cemeteries

I like to visit cemeteries when I travel. You can usually glean sometime about the people buried there by examining their headstones. You can learn about their towns and sometimes about hardships of living there, for example when you see many children's graves or those of adults who died young. In many old West ghost towns, it seems every other grave is a child's. Sometimes you come across a headstone that makes you laugh -- like this one of Douglas Kiss. Whether he wrote the epitaph himself or someone else did after he was gone, the message is a good one. I think I would have liked him.

When I visit a cemetery I almost always pause at a few graves to ponder the person below me. Who was he or she? Most often you can't determine much, but I enjoy just stopping to say "hi." I hope that long after I am gone someone will visit me, too.

I believe the best headstone slogan of all time is this one:
Remember me as you pass by.
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you will be.
Prepare for death and follow me.

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My new blog

Please check out my new blog "Why We Need English Teachers," a collection of photos I have snapped through the years of misspelled signs and other English irregularities.

I was never much of an English student in my school days, but I improved when I grew up and began to write for a living. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new blog. If you know any English teachers, please tell them about it.

A flagger sign and a wooden Indian

I took this photo about 20 years ago, back when I was shooting black and white. I have always liked the photo. But until now I don't think I have published it anywhere or even shown it to anyone. I don't know if the photo is anything special or just ordinary. I do know that I have never been able to write a caption for it that made any sense. Do you have any ideas? Does this photo bring any thoughts to your mind? Please leave a comment.

Immortality in a picnic table

A lot of people carve their names into things. Or they paint their names onto things. Favorite places are rocks -- like in these two photos -- the top one in the Southern California desert, the other at Independence Rock in Wyoming where western emigrants passed by in covered wagons in the last half of the 1800s. They carved their names so that friends and family behind would know they had made it that far west.

A lot of people carve their names into picnic tables or into trees. In Calaveras Big Trees State Park in northern California, a trail leads by a fallen redwood with signatures of soldiers from more than 100 years ago. Basque sheepherders from about the same period carved names and images in Aspen trees: most of the trees are gone now.

We don't tell stories with our paintings and carvings these days like American Indians did with their pictographs and petrolglyphs. I think people leave their marks today for a couple of reasons: to come back later to be reminded of their previous visit or to gain some sort of immortality.

Immortality won't happen, though. All the carvings and paintings will eventually fade. A recent TV program concluded that if humans were to disappear from the Earth anytime soon, that in about 10,000 years (or thereabouts) every trace of them would vanish except for one thing: Mt. Rushmore.