NevadaGram #233 -A Culinary Adventure in Carson and Smith Valleys

by David Toll Photographs by Robin Cobbey To celebrate the increasing freedom from pandemic worry and constraint, last weekend Robin and I embarked on a culinary adventure: Dining Out in the Sagebrush. We left Gold Hill early Saturday morning bound for Carson Valley and breakfast at The Taildragger Cafe. It's located at the airport serving as home base for the glider tours that use the skies between the Pinenuts and the Sierra Nevada as a playground. From US 395 turn east at Airport Road. I won't sermonize about what you'll find there except to say I'm sure you'll find at least one of your favorites on the menu. It's a down home kind of place . . . no matter where home is. The Taildragger isn't fancy — you can see that from the photo — but it has three splendid qualities: 1. Great Menu.Read more

Comstock Mining Update — March 18, 2020

During the time Comstock Mining Inc. was actively mining in Storey County, it escaped shutdown when the county allowed it to run haul trucks on the highway. The resulting damage to the pavement — never mind the danger to other traffic — resulted in 48 separate patches to the asphalt which still remain. They will outlast the company. On March 3 2020, with its stock at 57 cents and falling following the 5-1 reverse split on November 25 2019, CMI issued a press release emphasizing that after ten years of unprofitably extracting precious metals from Gold Canyon it is now seeking its fortune elsewhere. To its investors past and present who have put nearly a quarter-billion dollars into the hole in the ground called the Lucerne Pit, this might sound like coming a little late to the party.Read more

Mark Twain Couldn't Take a Joke

“There were many practical jokers in the new Territory. I don’t take pleasure in expressing this fact, for I liked those people; but what I am saying is true. I wish I could say that they were burglars or hat-rack thieves, or something like that, that would be utterly complementary.” — Mark Twain in “Roughing It”, 1872 Sam Clemens When Mark Twain was a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise named Sam Clemens, he was 27 years old, rumpled, unwashed and uncouth. More than uncouth he was rank, with a wildness that was never completely tamed, and which eventually made him one of the great figures in American literature and one of the funniest men we have ever had among us. But he couldn’t take a joke. In those early Virginia City days, before his humor became legendary, he was considered crude and insensitive.

Under the Trampoline

by Squaw Tom Sanders [Editor's note: This is one of a very few stories that have survived in the original form — Tom's own spoken voice. It is doubly rare in that wasn't available for inclusion in his book "Squaw Tom Speaks". For me it evokes the fond memory of Tom telling his stories into a tape recorder out in the back yard at World Headquarters of The Gold Hill NEWS until he was satisfied with the way it turned out. His stories were enormously popular in The NEWS, and this provides you the rare experience of hearing Tom tell the story and comparing it to the way it appears in print, translated from the spoken word to the printed page.] https://nevadagram.com/wp-content/uploads/Under-the-Trampoline.mp3 Well, I’m going to tell you a story about that happened in 1925. I lived in Fallon and it was the depression.