I've Had Better Days

  “I’ve  Had Better Days”

I wish I knew Harry Reid.  There’s a story I’d like to tell him.  It’s about Senator Dean Rhoads and his wife, Sharon.  He knows Dean, who has been in the Nevada State Senate since 1985 and is as firm a Republican as Harry Reid is a Democrat.  You might imagine that each of them stays on his side of a barbed wire fence.  That’s not true.

Just a couple of weeks ago I ran into Dean Rhoads at the Tuscarora post office.  Although there are only eleven fulltime residents in town, if you can call it that, (there are no services),  the post office serves one of the biggest, best, and most authentic ranching communities in the West.  The Independence Valley begins about fifty  miles north of Elko and claims the hay meadows,  private holdings and public  grazing lands  that extend to the Idaho border.

 Two miles south of  Tuscarora is the Rhoads’ ranch, where Dean’s wife Sharon was born and raised.  I’ve heard it said that Dean Rhoads is the only member of the Nevada State Legislature who makes his sole living ranching.  You know, a working  ranch, not some boutique outfit.

When Dean came into the post office, Julie Parks, the current postmistress, and I were talking about Harry Reid’s re-election prospects in 2010.  I had just read an article in the Wall Street Journal claiming Senator Reid  may be in for a tough race.  “What do you think, Dean?” Julie said as she handed him a rolled up bundle of mail.

Before he could answer, I blurted, “It seems to me that Harry Reid forgets he’s from Nevada.”  

 “That’s not true,” Dean said.  “We’ve worked together  over the years on many ranching and mining issues.  He’s a good man.”  He said goodbye to Julie, nodded to me, and climbed stiffly into his dust-covered truck.  I got the message.  He wasn’t going to let me bad-mouth Harry Reid regardless of the barbed wire fence that separates them politically.

Well, I’ll tell you the story about Sharon and Dean.  Maybe you know Harry Reid. I think it would do him some good to hear it.

This happened a few years back.  After unpacking the car and getting settled in for the summer  in Tuscarora, I went to the post office to see my high school friend, Sharon Packer Rhoads, who was postmistress and well as  running the ranch by herself on the alternate years that the Nevada legislature was in session and most of the year Dean was in Carson City, the state capitol.

As always, I started the conversation by saying , “What’s new around Tuscarora?” 

She said, “Not much.”  Then, as an afterthought, she said, “Well, last August Dean was thrown from a horse and broke his leg pretty bad.”  She handed me the contents of my box: a stack of sale advertisements, a special hunting supplement of the Elko Daily Free Press, and a wad of papers addressed to Boxholder.   “He was out in the sagebrush nine hours before we found him.” She could tell by the look on my face that she better  tell me the story. 

She said they were gathering steers on the Wilson allotment. By midday, she and the two cowboys had brought in the strays and figured Dean would be coming along any time.

          “We didn’t know he was in trouble because his horse didn’t come back to the ranch.”  She               p        paused,  ”You know, like they do in the movies. It    just  stood by the horse trailer, up in    the          o         foothills, waiting for   a ride. “

What had happened, she said, was that Dean’s horse stumbled and pitched him into a scree slope.  His leg got wedged between two rocks, and, as the horse scrambled to get upright, it came down on Dean’s leg and broke it in two places.  This happened about nine or ten in the morning.

It wasn’t until late afternoon that somebody stopped by the ranch and said, “There’s a horse about eight miles back just standing by a trailer.”

Sharon said,   “We knew we better go look for him. I don’t know if you know that country or not.  The Wilson allotment is a stretch of land about twenty by twenty-five square miles.  We finally found him,” she said, “but it was very rocky and slow going.”

They got him back to the ranch and she headed for town in a big old  Suburban owned by a young couple living on the ranch, thinking her husband would be   more comfortable “because we could lay him out flat in the back.”

All the time Sharon was talking in a matter-of-fact way, she was occupied at the big work table where she sorts mail.  At this point she did pause, look at me, and said, “And then I got a flat tire.

         I’ve changed plenty of flat tires in plenty of vehicles, “ Sharon continued, “but I could not get that               hood open to get the jack.  I tried and tried and finally said to myself, ‘I’m just going to have to  r        drive it to Lone Mountain on the rim.’  Finally, about a mile and a half this side of Lone Mountain    s         some bow hunters came along, stopped, and changed the tire for me.”

I breathed a sigh.  She had gone the  twenty-seven  miles from the ranch to Lone Mountain.   She only had another twenty-five to the Elko General Hospital.  Imagining  poor Dean in the back of this big old ranch vehicle, I listened for the conclusion. 

Sharon continued:  “We get to the Emergency Room at Elko General and there aren’t any bone doctors.  They tell me that Dr. Wright is on maternity leave and that the other doctor won’t be in until Monday. We just ended up flying him down to Reno.  There were some more complications,” she said, clearly uninterested in turning this into anybody’s episode of General Hospital, western-style. “He has three pins in his leg, but he’s doin’ pretty good now. ”  That was the end of the story.  Sharon gave me a smile that said, “Gotta get back to work.”

          I went back  to the post office the next day, which was Saturday, to say hello to Julie Parks, who was, at that time, the part time postmistress,.  Julie was sorting mail, folding the canvas mailbags that go to  the fourteen mailboxes   of the ranches on this  particular rural route.  After we exchanged greetings I told her about hearing Sharon’s story the day before..  I shook  my head in wonder and admiration at their  toughness—no complaining, no dramatics

 Julie nodded.  “That happened on a weekday.  I think it was a Thursday.  Anyway, about 6:30 the next morning Sharon called me from Reno.  She wanted to know if I would work for her.”

“Hi Julie,” she said.  “How are you doin’?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “ How are you doing?”

“Well,” Sharon said, “I've had better days.”

I thought of Sharon's story after my conversation with Dean Rhoads and as I watched the way he grabbed the steering wheel of his pickup to hoist himself stiff-legged into his truck.

It seems to me it's a mess back in Washington right now.  Although we hear talk from Washington about"working across the aisle,"  when  compromise happens,  it's often portrayed as a defeat or a defection.


I think Harry Reid probably is proud to be a Nevadan.  When I read his official biography on the Congressional website, I was reminded of how much he has in common with Nevadans like Dean and Sharon.   I like to think that he would understand the essence of Sharon's story:  in the hard scrabble, high desert ranch life of northeastern Nevada, you toughen up; you don't complain, and true grit is not a cliche, it's a character trait you develop to survive.  You speak well of your neighbors and you are proud of what you have in common, not what separates you.