Friday, Oct. 31, 2003 | 11:30 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Way out in the land of lobbyists and legislation, Nevadans working for the federal government still have to go to work today.
The kids here don't get Halloween off school, but stay home for hurricanes and snowstorms.
The Kit Carson Trail does not lead here and it's the Potomac River that flows, not the Truckee.
There isn't a slot machine for miles.
Instead of Smith's, Vons and Albertson's, people go to Giant, Safeway and Superfresh.
There is humidity here. Lots of it.
It seems like a different world at times, but Washingtonians for whom "Home Means Nevada" still took time to celebrate Nevada Day.
Sure the state's day may be more of a Northern Nevada celebration, with parades and other activities taking place in Carson City, but it didn't matter for the estimated 100 expatriates, most from Southern Nevada, gathered at a Nevada State Society party Thursday night at a swank Capitol Hill restaurant. There was talk of Las Vegas high school rivalries, the next trip home and how people who just moved here were adjusting.
As votes on the $87 billion Iraq aid package took place a few blocks away, the Nevadans ate blue-frosted sugar cookies shaped like the state. There was celebrating to do that did not involve costumes.
The Battle Born state was admitted into the union 139 years ago today by President Abraham Lincoln, who needed the vote to pass the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery. The state has held a formal celebration of Nevada Day for 65 years. Only Hawaii and West Virginia hold similar holidays.
The Washington version was a bit low-key, no chili supper or pancake breakfast, no parade or beard contest.
But there was a plaque of the state seal and the entire room sang the state song. At least the first verse.
Some mouthed the words, faking it. Some hummed. Some just nodded along.
Afterward party-goers compared notes on when they learned the song. Most remembered it from elementary schools, with a teacher banging it out on a classroom piano. Those who did not know it used as an excuse that they were not officially from Nevada.
Asked it they knew the whole song, people's eyes grew larger, with a combined look of confusion and embarassment.
David Cherry, press secretary for Rep. Shelley Berkley's, D-Nev., brought sheet music with him to the event, just in case. Berkley had been at the party earlier in the evening, but had to leave to cast a vote before singing commenced.
In 1932 Bertha Raffetto wrote "Home Means Nevada" and the state Legislature adopted it as the state song in 1933.
Most Nevadans asked about the song Thursday knew at least the melody or the refrain, but all had memories associated with it.
Bruce James, public printer of the United States as head of the Government Printing Office, hails from Crystal Bay near Lake Tahoe, said every time he hears it, he thinks of a Pony Express stop outside of Battle Mountain. He said he's been to almost every small town in Nevada.
Frank Partlow, Jr., James' chief of staff, adopted Nevada as his home state in 1964. James pointed out that was typical: Only 12 percent of the people in the state are born there, he said.
Partlow said he knows the refrain and that he likes the words to the song. "I love the idea that I'm a native Nevadan now," Partlow said.
John Edward Hasse, curator of American Music at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, said most people now do not even realize states and cities have songs. In the early days of the United States, people thought of themselves as Marylanders or Virginians, not American citizens, so state songs were common.
"It harkens back to that time where the local identity was pretty darn important," Hasse said. Often people do not to know all of the words to such songs, but they will know part of it, especially if they learned it as children, he said.
Regardless of how much they know, it can bring people together under one identity.
"Music has an extraordinary power, almost primal, to invoke memories from our past," Hasse said. "We associate it with birthdays, holidays and with our youth."
Former Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan said he had to miss a few Nevada days "with much angst" during his 12 years in the Senate. Bryan sang the entire first verse and refrain on the phone Thursday, adding that Nevada Day is his favorite holiday even though, growing up in Las Vegas, he didn't know much about it.
He participated in a grade school event this week in Las Vegas where he was impressed by the children who not only knew the song, but facts and history about the state that Bryan said he did not know at their age.
Overall, it seems, living in the nation's capital, with its humidity, underground modes of transportation and heightened levels of security, has not stripped Nevadans of their identity.
For now Washington is filling in as the place of a thousand thrills and the loveliest place they know.
But it won't mean home.
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