COLUMN: Nevada is a waste of space
I’d like to speak today about the great wasteland, the never-ending desert, the miles and miles with little civilization also known as the 36th state of the Union, Nevada.
Nevada is the seventh largest state with 110,540 square miles of land and 50,000 miles of paved road. Now there’s nothing we can really do about the large amount of land but I don’t understand the 50,000 miles of road. Why? I know the strip isn’t near that long.
Sadly I have driven across many of those miles however, and let me assure you, driving is all you do. And you do a lot of it before you get anywhere. It reminds me of a bad horror movie when at any moment Betty Davis will show up with her eyes bugging out of her head asking you for a ride to nowhere. Creepy.
So you drive and drive only to occasionally stumble across a small ghetto ghost town of sorts pretty much abandoned for the nearest town with a Whiskey Pete’s. You know what I’m talking about, all those “cities” that solely include a gambling institution or two, a McDonald’s, a gas station and hopefully somewhere there’s an open public restroom with toilet paper and a line to the ladies’ room that’s less than a 30-minute wait. Welcome to Nevada.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is a big difference between “going to Nevada” and “passing through Nevada.” When entering Nevada on purpose, you’re most likely headed somewhere with $3 all-you-can-eat buffets, all-night services and establishments where “chips” equal money. However, if your are simply forced to pass through Nevada, you will undoubtedly encounter a whole lot of nothing mixed in with red-neck towns with hotels that actually close their front desks at 11 p.m., forcing you to drive on for hours never reaching the state line.
But Nevadans are proud, and with good reason. After all, on a Web site that for some reason lists famous people from each state, Nevada had all of 18 claims to fame. Out of the 18, I’ve heard of two, Andre Agassi and President Nixon’s wife. Some things are just sad.
Oh and how could we forget Nevada’s state flower – sagebrush? Or better yet, what self-respecting state considers sagebrush a flower? What most Americans consider a dead weed that resembles tumbleweed, Nevada deems a beautiful state flower. Perhaps the reasoning is simple – just like gambling in reference to industry, once again sagebrush is all Nevada has to offer.
The Oct. 31, 1864 admission of Nevada to the Union by President Lincoln will live on as one of the meanest Halloween pranks of all time. I also can’t help but wonder what James W. Nye of New York must have done to deserve being appointed as Nevada’s first territorial governor. Ouch.
One can’t help but wonder why such a desolate place was granted such gambling privileges. It’s simple really, if gambling wasn’t legal in Nevada, no one would Ever go there. The government had to give them something. Over the past few months I have “passed through” Nevada twice, not yet being 21 adding irony to pain. I drove for hours, prayed for decent restrooms and stayed in Winemucca of all places (which I left a curse on by the way). After my Nevada experiences, I vowed to use my journalistic freedoms to get revenge on the state that had wronged me so. My work here is done.
Hilary Ingoldsby is a junior majoring in speech
communication.
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hil14@hotmail.com