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The Presbyterian church
The old door shook. It wasn’t his intent to harm anything. Fact is, the once-reverend W. W. Ronin wouldn’t think of making light of the buildings that had given him succor over the years—initially in Greensboro, Pennsylvania where he was in training, and later in Wichita, Kansas as the second rector of the St. John’s Episcopal Church, when it was still made out of logs and situated between the confluence of two sometimes over-flowing rivers. There was still something sacred about religious places, even if he didn’t embrace the faith they sometimes contained. The church wasn’t just about “the people,” as he used to say while preaching, one hand on the lectionary, the other searching for a Bible in the event his people asked an unexpected question or two over the meal that many times followed services. Church was the building, too, though he didn’t understand that at the time. He lifted his knee up to his chest and pushed again, the bottom of his foot—the ball, actually, not the heel as it dissipated too much force to use his boot that way—and the old wooden doors, crafted from pine planks harvested in the Sierra mountains, just up the Kings Canyon toll road he figured not that it mattered, splintered into pieces like the old man’s leg caught under the wheel of an errant coach from Benton’s Livery on Carson Street last week. The door swung back and forth, its lock shattered, shards of it rolling lifelessly across the entry way of the building, erected in 1861, before Nevada was even a state. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain’s) brother, Orion and his wife Molly attended there, though Clemens was now dead, having died a year ago, about the same time he began to wonder if there was anything real at all to the Protestant convictions he once proffered as an Episcopal priest on the American frontier. He dumped the shorter of his two Colt handguns over the back of his holster, until it was level, and then slowly extended it forward into the midnight darkness of Nevada’s oldest sanctuary, as long as you didn’t count the Mormon meeting place in Genoa, or the Catholic church which was actually finished before the Presbyterians were, though the Calvinists had started earlier but ran out of money. Read more…
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The Honorable Howard Hickson
He’d probably blush, hearing that such a distinguished title had been tossed his direction. But as an historical fiction writer currently focused on Nevada in the 1880s, I want to give this distinguished Nevada historian a “full salute,” as some say. Howard Hickson’s work has benefited me each time I’ve researched a novel. He’s deepened my understanding of Nevada’s people and places. Director Emeritus of the Northeastern Nevada Museum in Elko, he’s been long retired. In a brief e-mail exchange this evening–thank you, Howard, you were kind to respond–he told me he was no longer involved in research. All the more reason for the rest of us to get busy I suppose. I’m currently most fond of Mint Mark: CC – A History of the U.S. Mint in Carson City. I just received a copy of the 1972 paperback in Oregon this morning. I finished it before breakfast and later found myself bragging to friends about things I’d been hoping to find out for a long time. Some of what I learned from Howard’s life-long involvement in Nevada history will no doubt be included in my seventh narrative in the W. W. Ronin series of Westerns, Bathhouse Row. For example, his 2002 book, Elko, One of the Last Frontiers of the Old West, was an extraordinary boost to my research for books three and four, The Pinkerton Years and True Believer. A resident of an assisted care facility in Elko, Nevada, you can find some of what Howard has written here. Savor it. I’ve bumped into a few of Nevada’s best over the years. In the late 80s and early 90s, the late Vic Goodwin and I used to have lunch together at the Ormsby House Rotary meeting. Also gone, Willa Oldham and I sat more than a few times in her living room discussing books and writing. Both of these dear saints were members of the First Presbyterian Church in Carson City, where I was pastor. Hell, even Ron James sold me a trumpet once. Now there’s a saint for sure, and he keeps on giving. Howard, and the rest of you for that matter, I don’t use this language often–my character, the former reverend W. W. Ronin even less so. But you and your writing have blessed me. A profound thank you. Read more…