“….where the romances bloom and they fade….
A great Philadelphia lawyer fell in love with a Hollywood maid.”
The nineteen-year-old Janis Joplin had never been to Reno, Nevada, but she liked to sing about it, slightly altering the venerable Woody Guthrie’s lyrics, planing down the rough edges, presenting them in more poetic form. I heard her sing this song more than two dozen times in 1962 Austin, Texas….in her living room, at Threadgill’s drinking emporium, at backyard parties, with and without her three-man-band, The Waller Creek Boys. The song has eight verses, not always suitable for time constraints. Sometimes four of them were sung, sometimes six, on a good night all eight. Janis loved this song.
One night at her small house near the University of Texas campus, she gently caressed Philadelphia Lawyer in its entirety, smiled and put down her autoharp. “Killeen,” she said, “don’t laugh, but I would like to have been the Hollywood maid in olden times Reno, Nevada. Lawyers and wild cowboys fightin’ over me in the streets. It can make a girl lightheaded. Don’t you just grieve for exotic lives unlived?” Then, lest she be scorned, she broke into an expansive cackle and went to the refrigerator for a beer.
Bill inspects the colorful corridors of the Peppermill Resort & Casino.
The Early Days
“Now, Bill was a gun-totin’ cowboy with ten notches carved on his gun
And all the boys around Reno left Wild Bill’s darlin’ alone….”
First, there was the Truckee River, an inland stream which flows west to east from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake. Travelers heading for the California gold rush of the late 1840s and ‘50s needed to cross it and the most expeditious spot was at current-day Reno. The discovery of the Comstock Lode in the nearby Virginia City foothills in 1859 made the crossing even more important for the growing trade in mining and agriculture and Reno was officially established in 1868, the same year the transcontinental railroad--which paralleled the Truckee river--reached town.
In 1874, the University of Nevada was founded as a land-grant university, and in 1885 the primary campus was built on a rise of land overlooking Reno from the north. From its inception, the school was an integral component of the young town’s identity and contributed to the city’s reputation as a cultural center, giving rise to Reno’s nickname, “The Biggest Little City In The World.”
Reno became a quickie divorce destination in the early 1900s. In 1931, Nevada legalized gambling and Reno was the leader in establishing the very model of a modern major destination for hotel and casino gaming, a paragon eventually replicated throughout the world. Virginia Street, the primary north/south artery through downtown, became Casino Central, surrounded by hotels and retail stores. The transcontinental Lincoln Highway (now 4th Street) passed through the heart of downtown, spawning a raft of motor lodges to cater to the post-war automobile tourism boom.
What would we call Reno today—hardscrabble….rough-edged….pedestrian? Not exactly, but you get the drift. If glamorous Las Vegas is the high-roller’s paradise and urbane South Tahoe is the gentleman’s gambling grounds, Reno would have to be the hangout of Joe Sixpack….the workingman’s digs. It is a city of dusty low buildings, easy to negotiate streets, a pleasant but unspectacular riverwalk and, as you might suspect, the world’s largest bowling alley. Excuse me, that would be “stadium,” as in “National Bowling Stadium,” a 45 million dollar, 350,000 square foot colossus encompassing 78 lanes with seats for over 1000 spectators for your kid’s birthday party. And you thought Chucky Cheese was a big deal. Reno is also home to a Triple-A baseball team, the Reno Aces, which plays in a nifty 10,000 seat stadium in the heart of downtown. Oh, and the city sits in a desert valley in the Sierra Nevadas, so the skies at dusk light up like a Christmas tree, leading those mouthy chamber of commerce types to declare that Reno has the best sunsets in America. They say that in Santa Monica, too. But hey, where else can you get a zippy divorce, take in a ballgame, bowl a few strings and catch a great sunset, all in less than a day? Not in Bangor, I can tell you that.
“Big fish bites if ya got good bait.”---Taj Mahal
Invasion Of The Pie People
“One night when Bill was returning from ridin’ the range in the cold
He thought of his Hollywood sweetheart, her love was as lasting as gold.”
Siobhan and I arrived in Reno bright and early Saturday morning after a pleasant drive through lifting mountain fog. I had asked Google to find me the hotel closest to the airport (we had a 6:50 a.m. flight) and they came through in spades. If you threw a rock from the Hyatt Place parking lot, you could hit the airport on the noggin. When you ask for an incredibly early check-in time (in order to watch the televised-at-noon Florida-Georgia football game), there is always a price to pay, of course. Our cost of admission, alas, was a room on the interstate side of the hotel. You could hit that highway on the noggin with a rock, too. Siobhan motored off to the nearby Peppermill Casino spa to have some of the neon removed from her hair while I settled in for a little football. And that’s what I got, a little football. The Florida Gators, decimated by injuries, suspensions, and Paleolithic Age coaching, were run over, around and under by the unsympathetic bullies from Athens. If I had it to do over again, I would have gone to the spa to have the neon removed from my hair. Oh, that’s right. Sometimes I forget.
Reno Bowlerama. 78 Lanes, almost no waiting. Hardly ever.
The Riverwalk And Beyond
“As he drew near to her window, two shadows he saw on the shade;
‘Twas the great Philadelphia lawyer makin’ love to Bill’s Hollywood maid.”
Early the same evening, we trooped to Reno’s earthy downtown, irritatiting as it was to be stopped by every other woman commenting on Siobhan’s positive coiffure change. Less neon is, as we all know, an old Reno standby. It was the weekend before Halloween and costumed mothers were gallivanting around the riverwalk and downtown, trailing little witches and fairies. There was a disturbing lack of zombies in the crowd, but maybe that’s just Reno. The various businesses had candy-dispensing clowns in front and the Bozos had no shortage of customers. Down in the fast-flowing Truckee, an optimistic angler plied his trade. The vibe was middle-American, not unlike Poughkeepsie. The casinos seemed something of an afterthought, or maybe just a well-integrated part of the town’s structure rather than mere gambling dens….less raucous, with a gentler pace. In 2014, 540 people converged at the Peppermill Casino to play—of all things—checkers. That’s a Guinness world record, pal. Reno has gratefully ceded its prior designation as Divorce Capital of the World to our own Panama City, although they still make the top ten list of heavy-drinking cities, ranking third for liver disease.
You probably didn’t know this but Washoe, a chimpanzee raised in Reno, was the first non-human to communicate via sign language, learning 350 different signs. Stewie, the world’s longest cat (48.5 inches), resided there until his recent demise. Reno was named after a man who had never been there, Jesse Lee Reno, shot dead in a Civil War battle in Maryland. Sex toys are ILLEGAL in Reno! Visitors to the Cal-Neva casino just down the road can jump in the pool and swim in both California and Nevada on the same lap. It’s illegal to change the weather in Reno without a state recognized permit. University of Nevada Reno professor Esmail Zanjani created the world’s first human/sheep chimera, an animal with 15% human cells and 50% human organs. In Reno, it’s illegal to lie down on the sidewalk. The city only nets 7 inches of rainfall each year and the temperature there once dropped to minus 17 degrees. The average commute in Reno is a mere 15 minutes. Reno experiences thousands of tiny earthquakes each year, but none that you’d notice.
If I skip visiting Reno, will my life be less enchanting? Not necessarily. But I have it on good authority there’s not a better place to get the neon out of your hair.
Above, sights from the Reno Riverwalk. Below, the finished product.
Arrivederci, Reno
“Now tonight back in old Pennsylvania, among her beautiful pines,
There’s one less Philadelphia lawyer in old Pennsylvania tonight.”
But hey, it was a business trip and business was performed. We also traveled the length and breadth of lovely Lake Tahoe, enjoyed the brisk energy of lakeside mornings, got to see the sun set in the majestic Sierra Nevadas. We also ran across wonder photographer Bill Stevenson in Tahoe City and bought an extraordinary print of the lake taken just below Vikingsholm. We asked Bill what he did to inject all that color into the photo. “I waited,” he said. “Hours and hours and hours." And I didn’t mind one bit.” The result of Stevenson’s long wait is presented herewith for your edification and enlightenment. Kinda makes you wish you had a job like Bill’s.
That’s all, folks….
