BM memories
Re “Out of the Armpit” [RN&R, Feb. 14]:
Your article on Lorrie Baumann and Battle Mountain brought back some bittersweet memories.
In summer of 1973, when I was 10, my mother moved from Reno to Battle Mountain after she was offered a job with the Bureau of Land Management. Sitting in the back seat of our Toyota, I burst into tears when I first glimpsed that dusty blight of a burg. Where was the friendly newness of Park Lane Mall and where were the majestic mountains of the Sierra?
Despite the relentless nothingness of that place, I did well in Mary S. Black Middle School until I finished junior high in 1979. I was a good student and I had good teachers.
Conversely, I remember an abundance of schoolyard fights when my trailer trash friends and I would get pummeled by ranchers’ kids meaner than snakes who had reluctantly immigrated there from far-flung states like Montana or Texas. I had a friend whose mother worked at the brothel [Washington Post columnist] Gene Weingarten mentioned in his December 2001 article. She used to have to run from school across the railroad tracks to her mother’s rental or the above-mentioned vicious cow kids would gun rocks at her. I also had a mother of ill repute. My mom was (gasp!) divorced.
When my older brothers, both coastal California boys born and bred, made very brief visits to my mom and I in Battle Mountain, they were overwhelmed by the pathetic sadness of the place. One of them commented, “If the earth had an asshole, this is where they’d put it.”
My mom again moved us in 1979, this time to the slightly less backward and even meaner cow town of Elko.
To my entire family’s dismay, my mother moved back to Battle Mountain around 1985 and stayed there until 1991 (when she retired from the BLM and settled in another whistle stop in picturesque Washington state.) She always said she didn’t give a damn about the town but loved the vast, wide-open country that surrounded it. I visited her briefly in the ‘80s and was rewarded for my reappearance in B.M. with beer cans flung at my head from passing pickups (I was going through a quasi-punk phase and wearing black trench coats) and eerie stares on main street.
I don’t know that Battle Mountain is really any worse than any of the other listless hamlets scattered throughout the gaping maw of the Great Basin Desert. The people in Eureka might be a bit friendlier, the denizens of Tonopah a little more prone to crime, the townies in Ely more Jesus-loving, but damn, it’s really all the same desert and all the same state!
I just hope in Nevada’s eternally indecisive quest to define just what it is, we don’t throw away the picturesque sunsets—even if they are best viewed from the public dump.
And as for Weingarten’s comments, the hilarious Shell gas station sign is not in Battle Mountain proper; it’s in the town of Valmy just a few miles to the west and I would describe Interstate 80 as anything but flat. Immigrant Gap, the drive through Carlin, is all steep inclines through mountain passes. Finally, if Weingarten was genuinely surprised when Baumann was fired by the “town fathers,” for a city slicker, that makes him pretty naive about journalism.
M. Murphy
via e-mail
Welcome, Wal-Mart
Not all northwest Reno residents are unhappy about the new Wal-Mart. Personally, I can’t wait. The stores in this area could use the competition. It will be great to see Safeway have to lower their ridiculous prices—$5 for a box of cereal. ShopKo doesn’t have even simple things like birdseed. Wal-Mart has great prices and is needed in this area. Sometimes people who complain about everything new should take a moment to open their minds to new possibilities. All the close-minded naysayers will be the first ones in line at the new Wal-Mart and will love this added convenience. Also, traffic shouldn’t be too bad since people claim they will be boycotting the store.
Debbie Bachman
via e-mail
Don’t bash Britney
Re “The Scourge of Britney” [RN&R Film, Feb. 21]:
I am a proud father of two beautiful daughters, ages 8 and 10, who adore Britney Spears. We went to see Crossroads, and I found nothing offensive about it. It did not push drugs or drinking. How dare you call Britney Spears a stupid whore who can’t act? What has she ever done to you? If you had daughters who adore her, I think you’d be more open-minded.
Bruce Callan
via fax