Columnist Susan Snyder: Returning to a wired society

Friday, Oct. 4, 2002 | 5:11 a.m.

It took five months for the Zimmers to sell their 320-acre Colorado farm in 1927 -- according to the telegrams, anyway.

In these days of read it and delete it, Western Union missives are a curiosity most of us will never see.

"Offered eleven thousand two hundred cash for farm," attorney Webb D. Martin wrote Augusta M. Zimmer on the morning of July 28, 1927.

"I am in favor of selling at the price offered," an Anna Marie Schroer wired Zimmer later that day.

"Sell," Lena Michael and Chris Zimmer said in their one-word message.

The messages, some still in their envelopes, were stacked among old photographs and glassware in Armstrong's Emporium near downtown Las Vegas -- a city that barely existed when the telegrams were sent 75 years ago.

Floyd Armstrong's eclectic collection of antiques and abandoned nostalgia fills every nook and corner of his thrift store at 1230 S. Main St.

Long-forgotten faces stare from sienna wedding photos. Once-treasured possessions sit anonymously among old furniture, old clothes, old dishes and old books.

Armstrong says he likes the old papers best.

"Has party changed mind? Try hard to push deal through. Answer," Zimmer wired Webb on Aug. 11, 1927.

"Heirs want ten thousand six hundred. If I (can't) get that take ten thousand," Schroer wired Zimmer six days later.

Armstrong says the telegrams were among items a friend unloaded on him in San Francisco many years ago. He says he also has a piano teacher's ledger from the 1860s that shows an income of $30 a week.

"That was a lot of money back then," he said. "I had the book here in the shop for a long time, but I put it away. And now I can't find it."

The best way to find treasures in Armstrong's shop is to go in looking for nothing in particular.

"I started collecting stuff in 1957," he said. "I just wondered and thought, 'What do I want out of life?' And I thought someone's got to preserve the old stuff. Some of these things you're not going to see again."

Some would argue that some of it never needs to be seen again. Armstrong figures those people just don't understand.

He moved here three years ago from San Diego with "more than 100 truckloads" of vintage stuff. There's stuff in his shop and stuff in his house, along with the stuff for which he used to rent 16 storage units. He has cleared out all but five of those.

"I figured I'd better start getting rid of some of it," said the shopkeeper, who turns 67 in December. "I'm getting up there myself."

One of the items he says he acquired since moving to Las Vegas is the mission bell from the sign tower of the old El Rancho Hotel, which was imploded Oct. 3, 2000. He keeps the bell in his back yard.

Armstrong says most of his customers are tourists who come in seeking a bit of Las Vegas history or some western knickknack they can't find in the usual hotel gift shop -- such as telegrams telling of a family's bickering over a land sale.

"Christian won't sign. Letter follows. What shall I do with papers?" Schroer wrote Zimmer Nov. 16, 1927.

Save them.