Dear Editor,

Need to Change Billboards!

When planning our Memorial Day get-away weekend two months ago, we deliberately chose Hawthorne. Yes, it’s a long drive from North Las Vegas, but it has everything we want in a get-away: affordable motel, good food options, lovely scenery and a fun golf course. The plan was to arrive on Saturday, May 26 and leave on Tuesday, May 29 and go play golf twice, once on Sunday morning and again Monday afternoon, after the Memorial Day Ceremony.

On Sunday morning, May 27, around 9 a.m., I drove over to the Walker Lake Golf Course at the Depot. It was a perfect day for golf-cool and overcast. I drive up to the gate, hand the guard my Nevada driver’s license and was asked, “Have you been vetted?” What? We’ve been coming to Hawthorne for long weekends and vacation time for the past ten years. We even owned a house in Hawthorne from 2010 to 2014. I’ve played this course dozens of times with no incident. What do you mean vetted? When did that change?

The patient guard explained the vetting process and then advised me that the office was closed because it was Sunday. I would have to come back the next day, Monday. I reminded her that Monday was Memorial Day and since that particular holiday is sacred on military installations, I doubted anyone would be in the office on Monday, either. Oh, well. Sorry, she said.

So we cut our trip short and returned home after spending only two nights, not three, in Hawthorne.

Those welcoming billboards that invite you to play a round at Walker Lake Gold Club say nothing about “vetting.” I wonder how many other visitors driving through Hawthorne with their golf clubs in the car are turned away on weekends and holidays. Yes, I know now that the information about vetting is on the golf course’s website and that it can be done in advance. I did not know that when I planned my weekend or arrived in town. Why would I have known? Why would I even think anything had changed? Oh, yeah, and it’s not on the billboards.

Very disappointing,

Laurie Diefenbach

North Las Vegas

Dear Editor,

The Reflections of the Past-60 Years Ago Section of the paper (May 17, 2018) brought back the memory of when Mr. Hughes and Danny transported the dead cougar to their home (in Hawthorne). We lived nearby, three houses north of their residence. As I recalled, there was a medium-sized crowd of people at the fence watching the carcass being skinned. I think it was suspended in the air. Dad wouldn’t let us go across the street to get a better look. Afterwards the hide was stretched and nailed to the side of the shed. I remember looking at it on my way to school.

There was a song that came out around that time about a wallaby that was dying and all his friends came to pay their respects. It was sung with an Australian accent. It went: “…tan me hide when I’m dead Fred, tan me hide when I’m dead. So we tanned his hide when he died Clyde and that’s it hangin’ on the shed.” Every time I heard that song I thought about that cougar hide.

Many years later, Danny recounted to me (during a casual conversation) of that time they shot the cougar. He said it was getting dark when the dogs finally treed the animal. His dad told him to “shoot him in the stomach’ while he held the flashlight (which by then was barely casting any illumination).

After the shot went off the animal sprang from the tree, then it turned into total bedlam as the dogs and cougar tumbled down the mountainside in one last desperate struggle.

Sincerely,

Melvin Brown

Schurz

Dear Editor,

Since I don’t use and have deactivated my highly addictive Facebook account, I will respond my remarks in this forum.

A recent Question of the Week was “What roads in Mineral County would you like to see the county focus on?”

With our state confused as to the determination whether or not to halt all high profile vehicles, (ie. semi trucks, RVs and camp trailers) during high damaging winds that tend to cause tip overs and accidents, ultimately ending up closing the highway to all through traffic for sometimes many hours stopping any emergency situations to get through. Therefore I would recommend actual alternate and passable routes such as the pole line road from Walker Lake to Hawthorne. This way the outlying community will be able to access emergency services in one way or another. But then again, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for this to happen. Fallon is only an hour drive north.

Lawrence Worthen

Walker Lake