On the Back Roads by Bill Graves Read Free Book Online Page B

essentially. It’s easy to buy a lot here and order a house delivered. Wood is very expensive in a state that is mostly sand, which may explain the lack of frame houses here.
    The Powder Horn, a gun shop, was closed. I got out to read the bronze plaque in front. It read On This Spot in 1897, Nothing Happened. Clever, but not as original as the frog-crossing sign.
    Beatty’s three hotel-casinos, one at each end of town and one in the middle, survive on travelers who drop in off U.S. 95, visitors from central California, and Death Valley tourists. In spite of it Valley a year-round tourist spot.
    At the north end of town, I pulled into the Rio Rancho RV Park, Cottonwood fluff swirls on the ground. Between shade trees in front, half circling a fire pit, enough wood was neatly stacked to relieve the chill of many evenings. Each RV site had a redwood picnic bench. Each site also had sand-filled coffee cans, painted white and stenciled BUTT. Cigarette smoking is still big in Nevada, unlike neighboring California, where it is almost against the law.
    The main building sits back from the road. Its front is a long, covered porch with chairs. A half-dozen people, all Norman Rockwell characters, appeared comfortable and very satisfied there, watching people like me stir up the cottonwood fluff.
    Ray Stevens, the manager, left his chair to greet me. “And we also have free wine and coffee,” Ray added, “from seven in the morning to seven at night.”
    â€œSeven in the morning? Wine?”
    â€œSure, welcome to Nevada!”
    I plugged in the motor home and joined the Rockwell group. Within an hour I had met almost everyone in the parkand had learned about the town from Skinny Forsyth. He has lived here since 1961, but not in the RV park. He comes by every day to visit.
    Looking for videos, ice, snacks, or maybe some wine, most of the overnight visitors eventually come by the porch. They quickly get caught up in the sit-and-visit lifestyle that permeates this place. Life at Rio Ranch—for some here, life it-self—focuses on the porch. Within a day, I was part of it, too.
    The post office is next to the park. Much of Beatty parades by the porch to pick up mail during the day. After a couple of days, I began to recognize those who walked or rode a bike. As for those who drove, someone else on the porch usually knew the car.
    Take the late-model sedan that Fran drives. “There goes Fran,” someone would always say. According to Skinny, “When anyone in town needs help, Fran is always Johnny-on-the-spot.” She owns Fran’s Ranch, the local brothel, just outside town.
    Among the hard-core porch people was Bill Bridgeman from Arizona. After walking his four dogs, Bill’s day begins here with Ray’s coffee at 7:00 and ends here at dark. In between, when his wife Liz watches the soaps, Bill usually visits a casino and invests in the nickel slots. Bill wears tattoos from his years in the Navy and bib overalls from those as a Missouri rancher. Now, at age seventy-one, he is interested in old cemeteries. He wanted to show me one.
    So we took off in his pickup. On our way to the ruins of Rhyolite, we passed huge, multicolored piles of crushed rock from a mine called the Bullfrog. The flags of Canada and the United States flew over the mine offices. Bill said that the flags of both Canada and Australia are common fixtures at the mines in this state.
    I asked him why.
    â€œI had the same question when I first came here,” Bill said. “Mining companies are international in scope. They go where the minerals are. Obviously, what they want they find here in Nevada.”
    Rhyolite was the fourth-largest city in Nevada in 1907, with 6,000 residents. Fifty freight cars a day arrived here on the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad, and more on two other lines.
    The elaborate railroad station in Rhylolite, much of which still stands, was the finest in Nevada in 1908. It still is in my book. It