Trailer Life: Elko, Nevada

A fellow can impress another cowboy with just about anything

Nevada thrives on Fun Books-a 20th-century creation of the gaming industry. Every casino has them. A packet of coupons is what they are, with tear-out tickets good for everything from a free drink at the bar to three bucks if you win two at the blackjack, craps or roulette tables. Coupons vary with each casino, but an industry standard is one good for a shrimp cocktail for 99 cents.

You get the Fun Book when you check in-be it a hotel/casino on the Las Vegas Strip, or a motel or an RV park most anywhere. They happily hand them out at tourist information centers around the state. I even saw teenage kids one day distributing them at a highway rest stop. Since they are promotional gimmicks, they are not hard to come by.

The most generous Fun Book I've seen was given to me at the Stockman's Casino in Elko, Nevada. One coupon was good for a $5 roll of quarters for which you pay $2. That's an instant, guaranteed return of 150 percent on your money-a spectacular investment, but only if you walk out with it. if you start dropping those quarters in a slot machine, the economics of that deal make no sense at all.

Across Railroad Street from the Stockman's is the Commercial Casino. The enticement there, the prime gimmick, is the "Legendary White King Polar Bear." Standing upright in a glass case, towering over a little, round gumball machine, the bear is more than 10 feet tall and weighs 2,000 pounds-or did before they stuffed him. Claimed to be the largest ever killed, it was taken by Eskimo hunters near the Arctic Ocean in Alaska. What's it doing in Elko, Nevada? Obviously, because you and I come to Elko with our hands full of quarters and not many of us make it to Alaska.

Between Railroad and Commercial streets is a wide swath, now a long parking lot, that was once the Central Pacific Railroad. Track crews pushed through here in 1868, giving birth to the town, as they built the railroad eastward. Yes, eastward!

It was at Promontory Point, Utah, east of here, that the Central Pacific linked with the Union Pacific in May of 1869. There they drove the Golden Spike and created North America's first transcontinental railroad.

The Chinese laborers with the Central Pacific track crews were abandoned by the railroad when the work was done. On foot, hundreds of them headed west and many ended up in Elko. They raised vegetables and kept salad bowls full here in the summer. Their gardens, which they watered by hand, were on the northern banks of the nearby Humboldt River-well-traveled ground that had once been the California Trail. As chance would have it, the railroad they built freed up that land. It replaced that trail that for two decades was the primary route to California.

Few Chinese are here now. The most visible ethnic group in Elko are the Basques-traditionally sheepherders from the western Pyrenees Mountains in Spain and France. Scottish sheep ranchers brought bands of sheep into Nevada from California and Oregon in the 1860s. The Basques, with their proven herding skills, became the preferred employees on the sheep ranches, not just here but throughout the West.

In the fall, after the sell-off of the lambs, the demand for herders decreased. Basque hotels were built in town to accommodate the unemployed herders. In Elko, and elsewhere, these places still cater to the Basques, but they have opened their doors to the rest of us to share the famous Basque cooking-- served family style.

When the sheep came here and started grazing on public land, the cattlemen saw it as a threat to their livelihood. After all, they were here first. The land was theirs, in their opinion, and they had no intention of sharing. A range war developed. As things do, given enough time, it settled down. Sheep and cattle ranches now cover the landscape, but cattle far outnumber the sheep. In fact, this is definitely, unequivocally, cowboy country.

Ranch families, five and six generations on the land, rope and ride for not much money They do it because it is an instinctive way of life, pure and worthy, that they revere deeply. A matter of family pride and preservation, cattle ranching here is more a way of life then a livelihood.

Waddie Mitchell, pictured seated with a coffee cup in hand, started cowboying when he was 16, which meant that he never finished high school. "it was a world of cowboys. That's how I saw it anyway. It just came time for me to be one and so that's how that happened."

Waddie is 50 now, still a cowboy, but he makes his living telling stories. He never has taken much to being called a cowboy poet, but it's a title that has stuck-it tells what he's about and who he is. Sporting a bright red kerchief under a white shirt collar, and a black hat trimmed in white, he looks every bit the cowboy-right down to the wax-tipped mustache-but with a touch of freshly laundered affluence.

"Cowboy poetry sounds like one of them oxymorons to me-the words just like to contradict themselves. Been around it all my life and recitin' it since I was a kid, but sure never considered it poetry. No, poetry is for sissies and for women, I thought. These were cowboy stories set to verse."

Sitting on a hay bale, under an old juniper tree, Waddie was holding forth. A group of us sat around listening intently. We had ridden out with Don Farmer, in his covered wagon, to have lunch by the o1d juniper. This was "The Eagle's Nest," Don's place in the rolling hills south of Elko. It's all ranch land. Don calls this spot Amy's Valley, named after his daughter, who is now a nurse in town. "She and I used to ride out here and camp when she was five and six years old," Don said. Around us were sage and what Don called bunch grass. "Being proper, it's really great basin wild rye. A horse will feed on it well, but it doesn't do much for cattle," he said. To the south were the beautiful Ruby Mountains-- the "Nevada Alps."

The sun high overhead, lunch finished, we were drinking coffee that had been boiled in a big pot. Were it not for the white Styrofoam cup in Waddie's hand, what I was seeing and experiencing in Amy's Valley was the same as if I were here a century ago, or the century before that.

I don't believe I ever found it." Waddie had been asked about his love of story telling and poetry. "It was just always there for me. My dad's ranch was remote. We lived 60 miles from town, 30 of which was dirt road. We had an old Whitty light plant, but we were essentially without power. Closest phone was 45 miles. There was no television and poor radio, which meant we had a lot of time for visiting. Storytellin' was a big part of my entertainment as a kid. Between dad and the hired ranch hands, stories were shared often. Some of the men recited the classic poems and I learned and recited them at an early age.

"When I left home and started buckarooin' for a living, I was around bigger crews, which meant men would come and leave more often. Cowboys would have a poem or two and we would trade. They were not hard to come by. Never did start writing poetry till I was 23 or 24 years old. Didn't spend much time at it, didn't need to. A fellow can impress another cowboy with just about anything."

Waddie appeared on the Johnny Carson Show in the mid-1980s. When the Carson people called him from NBC in Burbank and left a message for him, Waddie didn't know who Johnny Carson was.

"Never had heard of him," Waddie said. "And the phone was so dang far away it took me a couple days to get to it and find out what he wanted." TL

The annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering is held at the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada, January 22-29. For information, call (888) 880-5885.

Bill's e-mail address: roadscribe@aol.com.