Where I Stand—Mike O’Callaghan: A book for vacation

Thursday, July 12, 2001 | 8:41 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

EVERY YEAR THOUSANDS of new residents pour into Clark County and call it home. Some have been here for several years and have come to believe this is Nevada. They are only partially correct and sadly they are missing much of the Silver State. This can be corrected by spending vacation time in Ely, Elko, Winnemucca, Fallon, Reno, Carson City or Yerington rather than returning to the place they had left behind before coming to Nevada. This is a big state and its people have big hearts.

Author and newspaper columnist Rollan Melton is one of these big-hearted people who shares personal experiences in his compilation of "101 Nevada Columns" published by the Nevada Humanities Committee. The book contains but 101 of Melton's almost 2,000 columns published in the Reno Gazette-Journal since his last book of column collections "Nevadans" was released in 1988.

Since the passing of newspaper columnists Jack McCloskey and Walter Cox there is only one Nevadan who has the personal touch of Melton and she is the Sun's own Ruthe Deskin. Ruthe, a native Nevadan, has for 50 years told Southern Nevadans about the North Country where many of her family still live. Melton's columns zero in on the everyday life of people and places that are of interest to any avid newspaper reader.

I have been reading Melton's stories and columns for many years and the 101 chosen for his book are good selections but it could have been better if it were 202 columns. I'm sure that 101 more selected by me would be worthy of inclusion.

Let me give our readers a taste of Melton when writing about the naming of a school after the late Alice Smith in 1989: "Fifty years ago, a black couple, Alice and Alfred Smith, trying to put poverty and prejudice behind them, left Mississippi and came to Reno. But life seemed just as shabby for them in Nevada.

"Nobody wanted to rent to black folks; Reno casinos were off limits to the Smiths; the restaurants didn't admit them. Alfred, an expert tailor, found work at last, for grubby wages; Alice finally got jobs as a domestic, for a few cents an hour."

In a 1990 column he wrote about a lady shining shoes at the airport, and he concluded: "But Reno's newest bootblack isn't shedding a tear. Aileen Martin aims to batter down the notion that bootblacks can't make it in a big way.

"At her two-seat stand on the ground level at Cannon, Martin is stopping traffic with her engaging chatter, the snap-crackle-pop of her flashing brushes and rags, and a string of one-liners that doesn't let up from the time she opens for business at 7 a.m. until she shuts down some 12 hours later."

Just two years ago Melton wrote about popular professional football player and wrestler and now Reno businessman Don Manoukian. Melton gave readers what he called Manoukianisms.

If you can't make that vacation trip to Northern Nevada and want to get a feel of that part of our state just get a copy of "101 Nevada Columns" by Rollan Melton. It should be in our local bookstores in about two weeks.