Where in the World is Sparks, Nevada?

My husband accepted an internship with Nevada's State Education Department, in Special Education, located in Carson City, Nevada. He also registered for a Ph.D program at the University of Nevada, Reno. This was an opportunity for him, personally and professionally but it would be a major change for our family. I felt I hadn't been included in this decision and wanted to be. It wouldn't have changed the outcome, so sure was my husband about his choice, but it may have eased my longing for more meaningful communication between us. Well liked among his colleagues and good at his job, Frank seemed to have no problems with communication, professionally. I hadn't found that to be true in our personal lives, together, as a couple. In retrospect, I wasn't a communicator, either, by nature. I had learned to navigate conversation and communication through performance and during my short professional life while working with the public, but my ability to do this with success, in my private life was lacking. Did I expect my wants and needs to be known without expressing them? And did my husband struggle with similar deficiencies when it came to expressing real thoughts and feelings? I don't know. I do know that I was a people-pleaser, a good one, but I was not happy, even sometimes a bit resentful, in that role. Raising kids in Nevada wasn't something I wanted to do but on the other hand, how bad could two years, there, be? The initial plan, as I understood it, was to return to Salt Lake City, once the Doctorate was complete. In the mean time, a colleague at the Resource Center rented our house. 

Our daughter, Jennifer, had been planning just about forever--in her young mind--to walk to kindergarten with her pal, Steve, in a few weeks. Moving could end my going to Weston to see Mother or offer help to family there, in caring for her and lessen the connection between my children and their Grandma Morgan. The kids would miss Grandpa South's chocolate stash in his desk drawer and the hot pink peppermints in the jockey box of his car; They'd miss duck feedings at Liberty Park with Grandma South and burgers at Dee's. I knew we'd all miss meeting Grandpa at Snelgroves for ice cream and the annual whole family "Nutcracker" event. And Grandma's chicken and rice. None of us had been able to duplicate it. We'd sure miss that!

That U-haul truck looked spacious enough but filled up quickly even with our meager furnishings. I gave away many empty, Kerr jars and a whole lot of food storage, freezer jam and stuff deemed non-essential. Frank and Todd hit the road to get a head start in that rattly truck. I sat on the living room floor on the bare-to-the-backing-threads carpet where those same, split and worn out drapes still hung at the window, as they had when we moved in. I'd loved the yellow curtains I'd sewn to dress kitchen windows and the cupboards looked none the worse from my amateur paint job. I sat for what felt like the longest time, crying, memories hovering, images of a mind's recall, dancing all around me. Before I left, I wrote a note and drew a map for those coming to live in our house, telling them about surprises they could expect in the yard as seasons changed, neighborhood resources, something about the schools and church nearby, adding a list of neighbors they could get to know. There was nothing left to do, then, but kiss the Wilkins goodbye, and begin that long drive with Jennifer, across the desert. I knew I'd never return to that house.

The car overheated badly along the way, always in the middle of nowhere. There was a whole lot of nowhere between the some wheres driving across that Nevada desert. These delays--waiting by the side of the road until the car cooled--made for a very long trip for our five-year-old. I never did catch up with the truck and the rest of my family until the glow from the lights of the City of Sparks came into view. Frank and Todd were waiting for us near the first exit. 

We had made a quick purchase of a one-story home in Sparks. Located on a dead-end street, 15 or 20 minutes from UNR and a short drive south to Carson City, four houses and a few fence wires separated us from irrigation ditches and pasture. To the kid's delight, this was home to several horses, a couple of cows and whatever wildlife had taken refuge, as habitats were disturbed by a building boom during the late '70's. We had less space than we'd come from but moving into a house that no one else had lived in was exciting! We showed up right on schedule, ready to empty the truck. "Sorry. Check back in a few days, maybe a week." There was little we could do but park the U-haul at a motel and wait. Frank had friends in Carson City who had agreed to help unload the truck but on the day we finally got the "all clear" no one came. The four of us went to work, unloading, despite triple digit heat. Our new neighbors--I'll call them Liz and Dick--offered help. She seemed like a woman with a kind heart but I think her curiosity must have gotten the best of her, sending her across the street, her husband in tow, before her instincts for doing a good deed kicked in. So, there was a rent-a-dent U-Haul truck parked on the street. Frank had long hair and a full beard. I don't remember, but I may have had on a long skirt, cooler in the intense heat than pants. We'd all been living, mostly in our same clothes, for a week or more, give or take a day or less, in a motel, eating fast food, something we were not use to. Our boxes were not spiffy nor sealed so some exposed their contents, bolts and folds of cloth in some. There were contraptions unrecognizable to anyone who wasn't a home-canner and empty glass jars. Books, books, and books. Painting supplies--I was a "Tole" painter; Frank, a talented sketch artist--and huge storage containers of dry goods, and one chock full of chocolate chips. No furniture, to speak of, just a couple or three, maybe four beds--just mattress and box springs, no head or foot boards, no table, chairs or couch. A piano. A washer. The windmills of her mind must have been greased and spinning at top speed, by now, as Liz wondered, "Who are these people? Gypsies? Hippies? Here to start a commune or set up some kind of strange business? Some new religion, perhaps? Have I Told You the One About Pie...
    
If we were making an impression on Sparks, in return, Sparks was a bit of a cultural shock for someone new to Nevada. If you felt lucky, you could find slot machines just about everywhere, without even going to a casino. That constant noise pollution--moving parts once a handle was pulled or start button pushed, lights, bells, circus music--was something to get use to. Whole sections in grocery stores were devoted to liquor. Free of inventory tax, there was a large warehousing district with Logos, some you'd expect to see only in New York, LA, or abroad. Driving through its sister city, Reno, or the one main street of Sparks, it was hard to tell night from day with everything lit up 'round the clock. Huge, roadside billboards advertised the entertainment industry's headliner shows and more, including things I considered a part of the seamier side of life. There was no ZCMI or Zims and only fledgling attempts at culture and the arts, or so it seemed to me, given that I'd come from a city with a world-class dance and ballet company, a highly acclaimed symphony orchestra, the Tabernacle Choir, for Pete's sake! And everywhere I looked, in any direction, I saw sagebrush and dry, barren hills, despite Reno's tag line, City of Trees. I found no oasis in that! However,...scenic Lake Tahoe was less than a hour's drive away. Just up a hill, at the end of a twisty, steep and winding two-lane road, heading east at the south end of the valley was Virginia City, once a boom town sitting on top of the Comstock Lode, the first major silver deposit discovered in the US. It was also considered the place where Samuel Clemens first used his famous pen name, "Mark Twain". Truckee, CA, an old town built up around the Transcontinental Railroad was up--or down--the road a piece, south and west, near Donner Lake.

There was lots of historical significance in the area. This had me opening the door of my resistance to this whole adventure, just a crack. I was still worried about my kids living in or near "Sin City", though. Waiting for the school bus with my kids that first day didn't ease my mind much. I'd never before heard the phrase, "Oh my God!" used with such frequency by those so young or the "F" word uttered as though it may be the only vocabulary some knew. While I figured that this young crowd was simply mimicking older siblings and parents without really understanding language, its power or ability to disable or what it says about an individual, I was concerned that my kids could so easily adopt the habit. I had been raised among those who peppered their personal speech at times with "Dammit", "Hell", and "Shit" as stand alone utterances or run together, with a few creative, personal twists but on my walk home that morning, after exposure to local street talk from the very young, I thought they should all have their mouths washed out with soap!

A monthly stipend or salary was part of the deal. Unlike private business, the education system moved slowly. We found out just how slowly, having no income for the first couple of months. We kept afloat, in part, by using what food storage had made it onto the moving truck--I often wished there had been room for all of it--and limiting spending for a week's groceries for a family of four to $10 or $15. Even back in the day, that was tough. There wasn't much variety. I had slipped in a few bottles of home canned dills--a kid favorite--and some bottled fruit, a case of tuna, peanut butter, pasta, and buckets of flour, sugar and chocolate chips. Lunch for the kids and their dad, all starting a new school year, was a tuna or PBJ sandwich on homemade bread. Todd had always been a skinny kid but I noticed that he was losing weight. Burned out on tuna and peanut butter, he was ditching his sandwiches, hoping there'd be something else for dinner. On the other side of the coin, I was gaining weight by eating bread and macaroni, saving milk and fresh anything, including a little meat, for the kids. Frank made out the best he could, stretching gasoline, traveling between Carson, UNR, and home. Being a little hungry, sometimes, was a new experience for the kids. Seeing an empty refrigerator was foreign to them. I remember fixing dinner one night, using the two remaining eggs, about a cup of milk, and a zucchini squash, shared from some one's garden. That pretty much emptied out the fridge, alright. Another day, another shared squash, and more. Shredded, I used the squash to stretch whatever needed stretching. Not a favorite vegetable to begin with, someone joked that maybe I had put it in a cake I'd made. Todd didn't touch cake for awhile! 

My niece and her husband, BYU students living on less than a shoestring, themselves, invited us to dinner. As she brought food to the table, Todd's eyes opened big and round, then said in his excitement, "Mom, these guys are rich! They have meat!" From his tone, I feared my young son might clear the entire platter all by himself! With nudges under the table, I tried subtly to clue my family in about not eating too much. While I appreciated the generosity being shown to us, I wanted to be sure this couple had leftovers!

Our first five or six months in Sparks turned out to be delightful. We didn't have TV for awhile, nor a lot of other distractions. We could just be family, the four of us. Having Frank at home for dinner on a regular basis was great. I thought we might even add to our family. I was the only one on that page. 

With more extensive travel temporarily put aside, Frank was still carrying a heavy load, with classes and the internship. Maybe an old truck to tinker with would provide some stress relief. I knew just the person to find a fixer-upper. And find one, he did, a charming, old Chevy truck with original wooden bed and tail gate name placard. Sue and Randy drove their great find, all the way from Utah to us, one weekend. Frank never did any tinkering but as a family, we had some great times together, all squeezing into that little truck to explore our new surroundings. And at home, we laughed and played with one another, something I didn't feel we'd had much opportunity to do during the times when business travel had increased and dedication to his career intensified.

It had been years since I'd driven a gears-on-the-floor truck. One night, I got stranded at a shopping center. The truck would not start. Not getting the response I'd hoped for from my distress call home at a crucial time during a football game, I found one couple still in the parking lot as stores were closing. They had jumper cables!

Necessity pushed me out into our neighborhood to organize a car pool. Sometimes, I had to drive the Chevy when my turn came to get kids to school. When it came time to leave, Jennifer would hide in her bedroom. Okay, I'll admit it. I had a gift for grinding the gears when I shifted. Pressing the clutch down in that old truck wasn't so hard but letting it out again took special talents I didn't have. So there was a bit of lurching forward, and chugging, sometimes stalling out and keeping fingers crossed that it would start up again, now that we knew it had an on again/off again short that sometimes drained the battery. Sometimes, we got a honk or three from cars lined up behind. Jennifer was beyond embarrassed.

As it turned out, my husband didn't complete a full year of school but instead applied for and accepted the job as Director of Special Education for the State of Nevada in Carson City. Another change. Not much discussion. The kids and I just tried to blend in. The family remained in Sparks. My husband resumed his frequent flyer status.

The former special ed director and his wife bought a diner in Reno. Wanting a gimmick to attract a lunchtime clientele, they enlisted me to make small, individual loaves of bread that would be served with salads and soups. So from my little kitchen, I produced 100 or so personal sized loaves of bread dough, a week's supply in the beginning, all done by hand. These went into a freezer on site and were baked, as needed.

I felt lucky to find a salesman--a teen aged boy--who knew about the leaf springs on a car because I hadn't taken that into consideration when I decided to build a front patio from cement pavers. They were on sale for 10 cents, or maybe it was 25 cents, apiece! So while we loaded them into the back of the Datsun, this kid repeatedly checked those springs to be sure we weren't adding too much weight. I had a ton of stuff to do, sewing for family and the new house, getting kids to school and running them here and there to their activities but I had a whole plot of dirt that needed something done. It took several trips to get enough pavers. With each trip the teen would say, "Take the back way and ease over bumps in the road." Bless his heart. I rigged up a soil leveler of sorts from a 2 x 4 or 4 x 4 or whatever it was I'd purchased. And measured and cut pieces to build some simple planter dividers. My neighbors still seemed curious, though I felt sure we had, by that time, established ourselves as pretty normal folks. I'd done my measuring and had made the final cut with my hand saw when the guy who had been watching ambled over to say, "You could have done that a lot quicker with my power saw." Breaking up the ribbons of clay hard-pan was hard. I learned that water and soaking wasn't the answer. Gypsum wasn't exactly a miracle cure, either. I broke a shovel handle, digging. The kids and I hauled trees and shrubs in our small car, much of it from quick-sale tables. You know, the plants that look dead, already. Most things lived, given a little water, time and sweet talk.

When I'd spent time trying to figure out the instructions for hanging a side pull drapery rod without success, I went next door to ask a neighbor. He skimmed through those instructions, handed the rod back to me, saying, "It can't be that hard!" Well, okay then. I marched myself and my stuff back home and hung that thing on the wall! Men!

Grandpa and Grandma South came to visit that first December. The Truckee Meadows was still experiencing drought conditions. It was so warm, we picnicked at Lake Tahoe, needing nothing more than a sweater.

Never did I think I would live in Sparks, Nevada. My stay here started out as a two-year proposition. Now, thirty-seven years later, it is still very much a part of who I am.