I found Nevada to be a comforting place last week. So many of my trips south have been for funerals or to close up the Estate, and my apprehension over this trip was deeply rooted in that experience. I sat in my window seat on the HorizonAir (Alaska), trying to concentrate on the book I am reading. I finally gave up and just stared out the window at the clouds and the glimpses of earth below as we followed the line of Cascade Mountains south. Finally, Pyramid Lake loomed into view, and I caught a good view of the island. We prepared for landing and my heart began to race.
Nevada will always be home. Other people travel there to gamble and wonder at me when I tell them that I have never even pulled the arm of a slot machine. I’ve put $5 into video poker, but that’s as much as I can allow myself to gamble: gambling is for tourists. Natives walk past all the glitz and glamour and don’t bat an eye.
My cousin and her husband met us (my brother and I) at a casino for dinner the first night. We left together, passing the women reliving Farrah Fawcett’s heyday and the cocktail waitresses in their skimpy uniforms, and my cousin asked, “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?” I replied. “The ’80’s hair-dos, the carpets that make you want to puke, or the girls who have to shave in order to work? And I don’t mean their arm-pits..” We laughed, because – no, I do not miss that.
I miss the vast expanse of sage brush, blue mountains, snow-caps, unpredictable weather, ice cream cones in Austin, major deer in Eureka, and alkali flats. I miss The Loneliest Highway (U.S. 50), the shoe tree, and the brown hills that outsiders call “mountains” but we call “hills”.
I returned with my take of the family heirlooms and furniture.
The Fairy Soap box (bottom), and the Star Thread box (top) are the only furniture I claimed. I claimed the three chime clocks, one of which is the Lion clock.
The Fairy box is full of 1960’s Country/Western cassettes that need to be converted to CD. The thread box is full of Lions’ Club pins and honors.
Five drawers of this. And I have a box-plus of more Lions’ Club pins. I do not really want the pins, except those that have my father’s name engraved on them. I know he was proud of his service in the Lions’ Club, but they mean very little to me. I will probably post them on eBay eventually.
This, however, means the world to me. It is “the Lion Clock”. The lion atop it is an award given to my father from the Lions’ Club in 1975 and has little to do with the clock, itself. There are two bronze lion heads on either side of the clock and from those lions it has derived it’s name. It needs some work.
I happen to have a dear friend who works in clocks and I will soon be approaching him about the repair needed to the three chime clocks I dragged home. I haven’t even unpacked one of them. And of them, the Lion clock is the dearest to my heart.
On a side note, the first night my husband spent in my parents’ house, he was awakened every hour, on the hour, by the various chimes. I slept through them all, having grown acclimatized to their chimes at an early age. I long to hear that chorus again.
Jaci Dawn 