• Independent Media for Truckee • North Lake Tahoe
• Friday, February 10, 2012

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Summer Sunbathing, photograph, taken at Lake of the Woods, 2010 Kyr Leontovich of Windswept Studios has been living in Truckee for eight years and loves Tahoe. His camera goes everywhere with him as he is always hoping for that one good shot. Hiking, biking, camping, boating, he loves it all. Info: kyr@windswept-studios.com

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Tahoe Summer Annual

Welcome to the 2010 Tahoe Summer Annual by Moonshine Ink! This special edition is our brazen attempt to extend Tahoe summer past its all-too-short, fleeting duration. In your hands, you hold a surefire ticket to remembering the season long after swimming in local waters is feasible and the barbecue is back under its storage tarp. Moonshine published a well-received Summer Photo Annual in August 2009, but this installment is a bit different. The parameters were extended to include everything creative, not just photos. It turned out to be a wise move as the wealth of creativity submitted to this distinctive edition is remarkable. Enjoy the following 15 pages (wow!), experience this tasty sip of a beloved season, and be sure to keep an eye out for the Tahoe Winter Annual, coming in March 2011. Info: annual@moonshineink.com

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Message to Myself in May

By June Saraceno
2007

Part the flesh of the old skin you’re in.
Push away from the sediment of self.
Rub the rock of rebirth, open your back on the bark.

Shed the ungainly cells, the habit of sameness.
Suspend separation, breathe seamlessly into begin.
Speak up the lightening language of sky.

Open the wings of watery blue on dry land and above.
Hatch from the horizon of flesh-bruising birth.
Rise from dim shallows into the iridescence of pulse.

Call yourself into the summer.
Light out for the light with your heart in your mouth.
Emerge softly new in the green fields of yes.

June Sylvester Saraceno is author of “Altars of Ordinary Light,” as well as a chapbook of prose poems titled “Mean Girl Trips.” She is a professor and English program chair at Sierra Nevada College and founding editor of The Sierra Nevada Review.
Info: jsaraceno@sierranevada.edu, (530) 587-9210
 

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Home, Coming 

By Michelle Filippini
2007

I live in Incline Village, the town I vacationed in as a kid. It’s a transient place, like most resort-towns are, and I’ve watched people come in and out of my life over the past 10 years. Like a crusty local, I complain about the vacationers with their arrogant driving and loud ways in the local supermarket, snatching pool floaties, overpriced beach towels, and cheap sun visors from the aisle shelves — all of it tagging them as outsiders as surely as their vanity plates and Keep Tahoe Blue bumper stickers. I don’t mention, unless pressed, that that was my family 30 years ago, minus the personalization and attitude, and that the real reason I live here is an attempt to recapture the happy childhood memories I didn’t realize I was having at the time.

A trip to the beach during the height of summer is usually all it takes to remember. Far from the shore on my air mattress, I can close my eyes and pretend it’s 1976 and that ungainly family on the sand belongs to someone else. Eyes open, they’re impossible to miss — they’re the ones who have enough supplies to last through late fall. Beach furniture, toys, and a full-size cooler loaded with every condiment known to man and sandwich-makings. It’s all there. I know, because it took all of us several trips to the parking lot to haul it all out from our enormous green station wagon. The shame is stultifying, and I try to maintain a distance of several yards from anyone related to me by blood. I am 11 but hoping to project a worldly air that belies my tender age and underdeveloped body.

Later, we will watch the fireworks and boat parade out of Boston Harbor on the television in our condo and marvel at the eastern part of the country’s patriotism, but first we must get through this day at the beach. I am ignoring my friend Bernadette, who is my guest on this vacation, because I am angry that she already has the figure of a very mature teenager and that she laughed when my sister pointed out the undershirts I still wear when we were folding laundry on the bed that morning. Also, I was fairly certain that she had had further contact with the two older boys that were staying in our condo complex, even though I was the one who had first noticed them when we arrived here a week ago. Bernadette may have been voluptuous and popular, but I was skinny and fast, and me and my air mattress left her in the dust out on that cold lake.

From the beach, my mom’s voice mixes with the sounds of someone’s radio: “You think that people would have had enough of silly love songs.” Hereafter, that Wings song will become forever linked with that summer in my mind. Radio was king, and my sister and I were rapt listeners, holding our fluorescent Toot-a-Loop transistors to our ears and dutifully keeping Top 10/50/100 lists of each year’s favorite songs. Songs we especially liked, we recorded right off the radio with our tape recorders.

I lose track of time out on the water and realize that I’m hungry. And burning. (No one used sunscreen back then). I scan the lake for Bernadette but she is nowhere. I look for Camp Palacio on the beach and see that they are all eating lunch: mom, dad, Lisa, her dorky friend Jan Fosberg, and Bernadette. I try to maintain the sophisticated orphan persona on my air mattress for as long as I can muster until my childish hunger pangs get the best of me. I join my ridiculous family, and eat.
It’s time to go home, and I have the familiar sadness pangs that I always get when I leave this place. My mom is frantically trying to get us all packed in a timely manner before my dad famously “loses his temper.” But first, we have to clean the condo (we all feel very hip telling people we have a “condo”). We rake the shag carpet and polish the chrome faucets in the bathroom until it’s condolicious. “Goddamnit, Ruth, are you ready yet?” My dad has spoken and it’s time to go. We all pile silently into the crowded car, which is packed to the ceiling. Summer is officially over.

No one talks much on the drive back. It’s not until many years later that I understand the quiet between my parents. My dad puts on Mystery Theater and I am grateful for the distraction. I like these old radio shows, even though I know they’re corny. For the three-and-a-half-hour drive, at least, I feel safe.

I’m older now than my parents were when we went on those family vacations. I still go to the same beach, but of course it’s not the same. It’s all changed; everything, everyone is different. Still I go. Out on my mattress, the sounds and smells of summer are all around me, and for a few minutes I am not afraid.

Michelle Filippini is currently the senior development writer at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published in Kanilehua, The Sierra Nevada Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Language and Culture, Suss, Eclectic Flash, Glint Literary Journal, Moonshine Ink, Quiet Mountain Essays, and MFA/MFYou.

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Panning Gold

By June Saraceno
2007

The bald eye of sun glares into dappled pine
for the brief flicker of chickadee, listening
mule’s ears.

In the yellow haze of midday heat
a snicker of stream bares its sandy teeth, glinting
fools gold.

Mountain buttercups chin up to yellow grasses
insect shells empty below pollen motes, floating
straw bridge.

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When You’re Strange
Intriguing bits of Tahoe/Truckee recent history

By Robert Frohlich
2008

Calling yourself a Tahoe local can be a precarious proposition. Oh sure, you own a dog, maybe even two, and they’re furry. You drive a big pick up truck, are a notable bartender at a popular tavern, and have a well-worn mountain bike. Maybe you’re a retired CEO, a ski bum, or a realtor. You’re a party planner or a party crasher. You’re a masseuse or a trust-funded environmental activist. You order the right wine with the right meal in the right restaurant. You’re as good uphill as downhill. You even vote locally, for chrissakes. But, can you recall the following strange and fascinating history?

Tahoe City Big Tree
Situated smack down the middle of North Lake Boulevard near the Watson Cabin, Tahoe City’s Big Tree symbolized a community and times past. Since 1947, below its storied branches, Tahoe City had celebrated an annual Christmas Tree lighting and party for local children. Although its massive height and trunk had survived an endless wash of Sierra Nevada seasons, in 1994 it died from undernourishment of drought and infestation of pine beetles. Caltrans, responsible for the tree because of its road easement, had it cut down in October of that same year. Members of the township tried desperately to save it from destruction. As lumberjacks toppled a century worth of Tahoe City history, grade school classes and their teachers lined the roadside while community members wore T-shirts that read “Rest In Pieces.” Today, its trunk, saved from the woodchopper, is now a sculpture guarding downtown Tahoe City and greeting visitors above Commons Beach.

Truckee Evacuates
Since its beginnings as a waystation in the 1860s, the town of Truckee has survived its share of vigilantes, bank robberies, train wrecks, and other infirmities of civilization. Nothing has ever come close to as gross a human error as when on July 21, 1980, a Southern Pacific railroad car leaking phosphoric acid used in making fertilizer forced the evacuation of 1,500 residents and all of downtown. The mistakenly unsealed 100,000-gallon car, en route to Ogden, Utah, stopped in the middle of town after four of its seven-person crew became ill. The acid, a liquid that turns into a gas when it hits the air, sent 18 people immediately to the hospital. Masked firemen and rescue personnel directed the train seven miles out of town where emergency railroad experts were able to get a lid on the near disaster.

Incline’s Kings Castle
Arguably, no other casino at Lake Tahoe has lived as storied and short-lived history as the Kings Castle Casino in Incline Village. Nathan Jacobson opened the 450-room hotel in 1969. Spread over 32 acres of land that included 500 feet of lakefront, the Tudor-themed structure trumpeted an atmosphere of medieval elegance unmatched since King Arthur. Jacobson, a fiery promoter from Las Vegas, hosted top-flight entertainment in his 900-seat Camelot Theatre, adult reviews in the 300-seat Jester’s Court, plus celebrity golf, tennis, and snowmobiling tournaments. Within four years, wracked by debt and lawsuits, Jacobson sold his bankrupt business to the Central States Pension Fund. Having lost much of its glamour and poorly operated, the property was purchased by Delaware-based Hyatt House Inc. in 1975 for $19.25 million.

Jerry Garcia Plays Squaw Valley
Squaw Valley’s greatest musical moment perhaps came in August of 1991 when Ski Corp and Bill Graham Presents hosted more than 10,000 strong over two days at Gold Coast. The peaceful crowd was treated to glorious vistas, sunny skies, and the Jerry Garcia Band. A supporting cast of bands included David Grisman, Jimmy Cliff, Booker T. and the MGs, Tower of Power, Rhythm Tribe, and the Neville Brothers. Bill Graham brought a crew of 250 to run the event that along with Squaw staff conquered incalculable obstacles in presenting the music in the rugged outdoor beauty. “We have never had a project away from home that has gone as well as this,” Graham told media. Squaw Valley Founder and CEO Alex Cushing quipped, “This is the proudest day for Squaw Valley since the 1960 Olympics.”

The Kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr.
Aside from the stealing of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. on December 8, 1963 was the second most infamous kidnapping in American history. Perpetrated by two greenhorn criminals, Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler, the two 23-year-old former high school classmates snatched America’s best-known son, age 19 at the time, from his room at Harrah’s South Lake just before he was to perform with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. Sinatra Jr. was released three days later, unharmed. The kidnappers only received $240,000 for their implausible scheme. Keenan and Amsler were quickly caught and convicted. They received life sentences, but both were released within five years.

The Harvey’s Bombing
In the early morning hours of Aug. 26, 1980, three men wheeled what looked like a piece of office equipment into the second floor offices of the 11-story Harvey’s Resort Hotel at Stateline. The “machine” — as the men sometimes called it — was actually a homemade bomb filled with 907 pounds of explosives. The bomb, designed with a dizzying array of triggering devices, could never be rendered safe, the bombers said in a letter they left behind that morning. The only thing authorities would be able to do is find out how to move it out of the casino to a safe place in the desert, where it could be detonated without destroying any buildings or killing any people. But the only way to get that information, the bombers said, was to pay them $3 million in unmarked $100 bills. Harvey’s had 24 hours to act. “Any deviation from these conditions will leave your casino in shambles,” the bombers warned.

The area was evacuated and the bomb squad assessed the situation. The bomb itself was split into two parts. The bottom half, it appeared, contained the explosives, the top part the triggers. It was felt that if a small, deliberate explosion could separate the two sections of the bomb, the bomb could in effect be rendered useless. The charge was set. However, the attempt failed and the bomb went off, destroying Harvey’s Casino. Although no one had been harmed due to the site evacuation, authorities were very aware that there was still someone out there capable of making such a device. The hunt was on. The culprit turned out to be John Birges Sr. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died of cancer in jail in 1996.