First day of spring break. 8 a.m. A light drizzle falls as three elementary-school-age boys fish in Idlewild Park. I watch them from my dry car, though other adults walk by and offer advice on bait and location.
The fish aren’t biting. Maybe there are no fish in this little pond adjacent to Idlewild’s few amusement park rides. The quiet cars of the child-size train are reflected on the pond’s surface. A plastic grocery bag, upside down with a bubble of air trapped inside, floats across the pond like a sailboat.
At a nearby picnic table, an older man in a thick, warm coat sits with his possessions in four large, black garbage bags at his feet. He fiddles with the bags to close them against the rain.
A man dressed in shorts jogs by. A dog runs at his feet.
The tallest fisherboy, dressed in a light Fubu jersey and striped athletic pants, moves across the drive to a larger pond. He casts and reels in. Casts and reels in. Still nothing, though his friends soon follow him to the bigger pond.
Spring break. All the time in the world to catch fish, to play in the rain, to revel in the lack of institution.
In the news, no one can explain the mysterious illness that has struck a bevy of teen volleyball players staying at the Reno Hilton.
In Iraq, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner and his 300-person staff get started with the reconstruction of a nation. Garner has experience with this sort of thing. In 1991, he led Operation Provide Comfort, which supplied food and shelter to impoverished refugees in northern Iraq. Incidentally, Garner’s also the president of the thriving missile system engineering firm, SYColeman. The firm provided tech support for the recent deconstruction of Iraq.
SYColeman, interestingly enough, is a subsidiary of L-3 Communications Inc., a thriving weapons firm that makes parts for U-2 spy planes and airport bomb detectors. Business is booming.
In Nevada, a group of big businesses wary of Gov. Guinn’s gross receipts tax proposal have invested $80,000 on two 30-second TV ads telling people not to support taxes on businesses—but instead pay more taxes on services themselves.
It’s feared that consumers will believe these ads because we are nothing if not gullible. That is why we sit in Century Theaters, filling out prefab anti-tax postcards.
We will be at their mercy.
In Carson City, the Senate Finance Committee takes up AB 253, which would allocate $71.75 million to public schools to cover sales tax shortfalls for this year. Emergency funds.
The boys move slowly around the edge of the pond with their poles. One holds a hopefully large net.
Just last week, teachers of boys this age were in the news, begging and pleading with the public and the Nevada Legislature to raise taxes, any taxes, anything. Please make our schools adequate, they asked, and it’s fairly certain that these folks don’t have $80,000 for two 30-second TV spots.
On my drive to the park, I spotted a dead mallard on Riverside Drive. It was lying belly up in the road, fat beak pressed against its chest. Under the Keystone overpass, a beat-up economy-size car was spray painted with the words: “Free Car.”
The car did look somewhat oppressed, it occurs to me later.
The boys cast and reel in their lines. And cast again.
The leaves on Idlewild’s larger trees are on the verge of filling out, but I can still see through the branches of two weeping willows.
A pair of Canada geese waddles out of the pond.
Nine furball goslings follow them across the grass.