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

and a transfer warehouse were all that remained. It once belonged to the Nevada & California Railway, a division of the Southern Pacific. From the sidewalk, the station looked like a collapsedhouse of Pickup Sticks that no one may touch until someone has counted the score.
    â€œIt’s been that way for nine months. The guy they paid to pull it down…well, he took off with the payroll.” Ruth stopped walking. “You know, I wonder why somebody hasn’t hauled off that wood and built something.”
    The railroad founded the town in 1905 and named it for the daughter of a railroad executive. Mina grew with the railroad and the mining industry, but it was never a boomtown like some in Nevada.
    Most of the tracks had three rails to accommodate both the standard and narrow-gauge trains.
    The narrow-gauge train, the local shuttle, was called Slim Princess. Indians were allowed to climb on top of the cars and ride free. The paying passengers and crew often shot jackrabbits, ducks, and sage grouse from the windows of the train. It would slow so that the shooters could run out and retrieve whatever they shot. On hot days, the train always arrived late. How late depended on how long the crew stopped at the swimming hole.
    Today, the railroad is gone. Even the tracks have been pulled up. With the bungled demise of the railroad station, little of Mina’s heritage still stands. What remains rests in the finite memories of old-time residents like Ruth.
    â€œThis was all bars and barber shops, but it burned.” Ruth was referring to a block of weeds and desert grass along the sidewalk. An old hotel appeared on the verge of falling over. Its brick walls were leaning at precarious angles that would tempt a Vegas oddsmaker. Heavy plywood nailed over its windows may be all that keeps the old hotel standing upright.
    It’s too early in the day for the Mina Club to be open. It’s a bar that advertises free coffee for truckers. Just outside town is a brothel called Billie’s Day and Night. It, too, advertises free coffee, but for anybody.
    Kim told me that someone wants to open a brothel right in town. Ruth couldn’t believe it. “It’s true! It’s on the agenda for the town meeting Thursday night!” Kim insisted.
    So we stopped in Jackson’s Mini-Mart to read the agenda for the town meeting. Ruth’s daughter Theora Jackson, alwaysposts the agenda and whatever else people want posted there. Sure enough, next to Margaret’s three-by-five card advertising free cocker spaniels was the one-page agenda. Under “New Business” was the following: “Linda Levier’s request for citizen support for establishment of Happy Harry’s Whore House in downtown Mina.”
    I talked later with Phyllis Perry. She works for the judge. “It’s not a real whorehouse. From a crafts class up in Luning, somebody knows this Linda lady. She’s from Hawthorne, in her forties. Her husband is a teacher. She wants to make it a tourist attraction, sell souvenirs. Claims it would put Mina on the map.”
    â€œSounds crazy!”
    Phyllis nodded. “Sure, but they’ll get a pretty good turnout Thursday night.”
    Mina’s sidewalk runs out before Sue’s Motel. Sue’s is not a place where a guest would likely find little bottles of pink shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom. But I bet for a couple of quarters, the bed would vibrate you to sleep.
    There is nothing but sand between Sue’s motel rooms and the road. There, eight guys were strapping on motorcycle gear and having a good time at it. They were on a tour, exploring Nevada’s mountain country by motorcycle—old mining camps, ghost towns, the remote places where few people go. Each day for them ends in a different town.
    The leader and organizer of the tour, Matternst from Reno, provides the Suzuki off-road motorcycles and the truck and driver to haul their baggage from town to town.