I want some coffee!

Many of the kids I knew in Reno during the 1940s had skis. During the season there was a weekly bus trip available to any kid interested. The bus hauled you from Reno to Mt. Rose on the Nevada side of the Sierras. That Mt. Rose ski area is actually on Slide Mountain- Mt. Rose is across the other side of the highway. I did visit the area a few times in warm weather to fish in Galena Creek but I never visited the Mt Rose ski area in-season. Mt Rose & Mt Rose Ski area But skiing wasn't on my winter agenda - that took another 30 years... I was 42 when I finally rented some skis and took a lesson at Mt Reba above Angels Camp!  My closest friends either went ice skating or messed around with a sled. The sled was great exercise- drag 15 pounds of steel & wood up a hill for 15 minutes then get a free ride down hill that lasted less than 2 minutes. The uphill part would have been less of a pain if the sled didn't also work like a snow plow. Didn't take long and ice skating l...

There are several Reno's in the US. thanks to the USPS, however, Nevada has but one. However if you ever lived in Reno, Nevada you learned quickly there were actually 2 Reno's masquerading as a single city- There was (probably 'is') the town with the casinos, hotels, nite clubs, bars and hookers which catered to visitors who came to gamble & party; these businesses are scattered along Virginia St starting (at least in the 1940s) at the railroad tracks then continuing south in the direction of Carson City a little over 30 miles distant. And then there was the rest of town where the residents lived. You could go weeks without ever having to deal with the crowds of visitors and those that catered to them. Well... unless you were a kid and wanted to see a first run movie at the Majestic, Grenada or Crest theaters for 25 cents (50 cents for the matinee at the Crest). Or if you were ok with re-runs, then for 14 cents you could go to the Tower on Virginia but well away fro...

 ... except what you choose to recall." With apologies to Merle Haggard, here's a little of what I choose to recall about my time growing up in Reno- "The Biggest Little City in the World" according to the Reno Chamber of Commerce. I mentioned previously my time in the Catholic day home run by the Sisters of Mercy in Reno. That didn't happen completely by necessity of wartime. My mother, Doris Ross, may have had a father of Scottish decent (yeah- I'm named after Robert the Bruce, a genuine bad ass in the history of Scotland), but mom had a mother who was very much an Irish Catholic. And mom was raised a Catholic herself. Something that nagged at her about her marriage to my father was that he was emphatically agnostic: 'Fate', he was sure, was at the root of everything which happened to a person. They talked thru the dilemma and predictably my father said yes to me being baptized. I guess it was fate. I recall the baptism clearly. A guy in a black dre...

... I usually reply 'Reno, Nevada'. And that's true to the extent the listener/reader doesn't presume that's where I was born.  When I was about 4 years old my father, Wilbur (Bill) Vernon Bowman (b. 1911, d. 1995), was offered a job as business & office manager at Johnson Chevrolet in Reno. He was hired by then-owner, Marsh Johnson. It was 1942, the US was at war and it was only a matter of time before my father got his draft notice.  One of my memories of how the war affected me at the time was a train ride from Reno to Stockton. I traveled with my mother, Doris Agnes Ross (b. 1910, d. 1980) on a steam-powered passenger+freight train. There was standing room only; soldiers in uniform had exclusive priority for seating. One such soldier stood and offered his seat to my mother (the one with the whiny brat who was making a scene). I guess I sat on her lap and probably slept the remainder of the ride as I remember nothing else. WW-II in a child's nut shell. Th...

I never imagined I'd find myself writing anything positive about the town where I was born. When asked where I'm from I most often respond Reno, Nevada cuz that's where I lived from age 4 thru 14. But if you hold my feet to the fire I'll admit that in Feb 1953 we left Reno and returned to Stockton, California where I finished high school. Then I left again for (6 months) active duty in the Marine Corps. When I was discharged from Active duty I found a job in Stockton with Standard Stations Inc (Chevron these days), then off to college in Inglewood (in the LA area). Stockton is in the northern center of the California farming area called the Central Valley. That valley stretches from Bakersfield in the south all the way to Redding in the north- about 450 miles of nothing but farming. Stockton is larger than many of the towns in the valley. During and after the depression of the 1930s, population grew to about 35,000 and then ... died. Or so I thought. Today I understand ...

... so now we have to wait for the results. We may not get what we want, but we're gonna keep voting anyway! Snow birds are arriving here in the park. I just checked to see what our current population is only to find the WiFi is on its ass again cuz of too many people. Well... ok. A *slight* exaggeration. We had a lightning strike on one of the WiFi towers and it needs repair. But that's 2 days from now, so what's the excuse today?! My quick-to-complain answer is "insufficient data capacity". To celebrate the greatest voting event since June Primaries (it's now the end of October), the Admiral went into high-production mode making covers for all our EarthBoxes . Making cold weather covers for the EarthBoxes   We're starting to get a freeze most nights here in Benson (we're at 3600 ft elevation... same as Reno, NV). The covers guard the veggies and flowers during the evening. With a little imagination it appears we have a wagon train of conestogas passi...

The easy answer is "Arizona". More specifically Fort Bowie is a desolate piece of land which the US Cavalry took from the Chiricahua Apache in the early days of the Civil War because they wanted to suppress the Apache in the Apache Pass area and they wanted an edge against the Confederate Army who had already taken Arizona and made it a confederate state. And also because there was water there. While the site of the fort is desolate, the view along the trail back toward the Willcox basin is nothing short of spectacular. This photo (from the National Archives) was taken before monsoons started- probably spring time. I'm writing this mid-September which is toward the end of monsoons. Right now the green is overwhelming. One of those 'you had to be there' kind of things. View from the site of Fort Bowie National Historic Site looking North (thank you National Archives!). Well... sort of North. It's located in what is today named Dos Cabezas Mountains. This shot ...