12/19/06
The trip to Fernley from Orange County, California was uneventful. I took the desert route thinking that tire chains might be required in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I didn’t have chains.
Fernley, Nevada – elevation 4153 feet, population around 20K, thirty-six miles east of Reno and twenty-seven miles to Fallon in the other direction. Fallon is to Fernley as Mount Pilot is to Mayberry.
Nobody is absolutely sure how Fernley got its name. Originally it was known as Canal Town. There were two sets of records on the matter. One was lost in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the other went up in smoke in the Fernley courthouse fire around ten years later.
Pyramid Lake lies to the north on the Paiute Indian reservation. The lake is best known for the war fought there in 1860 that erupted when the Williams brothers, who owned the local trading post, kidnapped two young girls from the tribe. Today you can pay seven bucks to go trout fishing there for a day.
About twenty miles to the west of Fernley, on interstate 80, is the little town of Mustang, home of the famous Mustang Ranch Coffee Shop and Whore House. It’s neatly situated on the adjoining borders of three counties and any time one of the county big wigs decides to impose a little Christian morality, the girls just move their trailers a few yards across the border into another county. I have received some fairly explicit instructions from my wife not to stop the car when driving through Mustang.
The climate here is not to my liking with seasonal changes that bring back memories of Akron, Ohio. Naturally, my first shopping trip was to the Western store in Fallon for a pair of Georgia boots, thermal socks, and a Fidel Castro hat.
Saturday morning – snow on the ground. Time to sharpen my ice walking skills – little steps, avoid inclines, hands at the ready to break the fall. And driving – I haven’t driven on snow packed roads since that black ice episode in Salt Lake City twelve years ago.
Fernley is essentially redneck country as evidenced by the local radio station choices limited to country western music and black back bible preaching. Although the people I’ve met here have been cordial and outgoing, the “I don’t care how it’s done in California” bumper sticker proudly displayed by the locals epitomizes the underlying small town mentality and is probably, to some extent, the reason that transplanted Californians refer the place as Ferntucky.
All real men in Fernley own a garage full of fishing tackle and an arsenal of weaponry. It’s quite probable that Bambi’s mother was killed by a Fernley resident. I rather doubted that my single action, twenty-two caliber pistol would be considered adequate to hold off the impending terrorist invasion. Guns can be purchased at the pawnshop or at the Tru Value hardware store in town. Pistols require a two week-waiting period. Shotguns and rifles are cash and carry.
You can legally walk down the street with a gun on your hip in Nevada and concealed weapons permits are readily available. In November of ’06, Nevadans voted down a measure that would permit citizens to possess an ounce of weed for personal use. Cheating a casino will get you twenty-five to life if the judge is in a good mood.
I found a Mossburg model 500 shotgun at the Tru Value – twelve gauge, pump action, eight shot, pistol grip – suitable for home defense and liquor store hold ups. I always wanted a gun like that. Maybe I’ll pick one up if I get lucky at the slot machines.
I spent the first four days in Fernley at America’s Best Motel, which is a real catchy name for a place that is marginally habitable. Then to the Super 8 on the east side, situated directly behind the Silverado Casino.
For the next eight days running, I walked over to the Silverado every evening and played the penny machines and drank scotch until my eyes went crossed. Liquor is free when you’re gambling, but if you tip the hostess well, your glass will never be empty.
I pretty much broke even on video poker, but I kicked ass at the keno machines. Keno is a game in which you pick two to ten numbers from one to eighty and hope that your numbers are chosen out of the twenty drawn by the random selector. The odds on hitting any single number is one in four. But here’s the kicker - the random number selector is not entirely random. If you can figure out the flaw in the selector, you can make a small fortune. So I analyzed the draws, evaluated the sequences, factored in the margin of error and hit for sixty-five dollars on a one-penny bet. Actually, I probably just got lucky.
After twelve days of living in motels, I finally get the keys to my house. Picked it up on a “short sale” for around ten to twenty percent below market because the last guy defaulted and the bank wanted to avoid foreclosure costs. But short sales are notoriously troublesome. Paperwork gets lost or some guy at the bank lets it sit on his desk for two weeks before he looks at it. Banking is not just a profession; it’s a personality disorder. Nothing went smoothly. Thank God I had a talented real estate agent.
The house is beautiful - one year old, nice neighborhood, three bedrooms and a den that will become my personal library and computer room. The back yard is a jungle of tumbleweeds. No telling what’s living (or dead) underneath that mess. Maybe I’ll turn it into a Balinese water garden or maybe a Japanese style landscape with one of those little arched bridges – presuming that the local nurseries sell anything other than wagon wheels and hitching posts as yard décor.
I’ve been without a news source for a while. Unless you’re looking for sale ads or want to read about Pa Kettle running his pickup truck into a gas pump at the Texaco station, the Fernley newspaper is of little value. For all I know, we may have already pulled out of Iraq. I wonder if they found those missing climbers on Mount Hood. Are Brad and Jen back together? I sure hope Oprah is doing okay.
Charter Communications is coming out on Wednesday to hook up my television and internet, which really pissed me off because I had a confirmed appointment for Monday. There’s also a question as to whether Charter actually provides internet service in my area. It just depends on who answers the phone at the call center. I got two no’s and a yes. Then I find out that the cable guy doesn’t run wires into the rooms and I’m supposed to call an electrician for that. That’s not the way we do it in California.
I think I had a birthday at some point during this ordeal. There was a cake with a candle on it and a bunch of presents and people singing the birthday song. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I had a birthday. So if I was born in ’46, six from six is zero. Then you borrow ten from the zero… no… wait a minute. You borrow one from the two in the thousands place, then one from the ten from in the hundreds place then subtract four from… Oh Jesus! I’m sixty years old.
To be continued…
