I got out of my truck yesterday, parked next to the Carson River under a massive cottonwood tree and was greeted by the squawking, gravelly serenade of a huge magpie.
Instantly my old friend Tim Findley came to mind, a famous newspaper reporter who worked for the “Rolling Stone” during the Hunter S. Thompson days. He also worked for the “San Francisco Chronicle” and covered the occupation of Alcatraz, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Hell’s Angels.
And he retired to Fallon.
He did some work for Anne Pershing at the LVN until a Senator got mad about stories he wrote and then he didn’t write there anymore. He couldn’t NOT write, not dig, not pick. He loved a juicy story and CJ Hadley at “Range Magazine” had him digging into government agencies and the impact policy was having on natural resource producers.
I got to know him from going to many of the same meetings. I was doing water back then and there wasn’t a Lahontan Valley, Truckee River water meeting Findley wasn’t at with his big ol’ camera. He would always push at me, “Why are they…, why are they…”
And then one day he got this crazy idea to start a newspaper.
It was probably around 1994 and some of us had been thinking about it and talking about it for a while in a “what we really need” but no one actually knew what they were doing or believed they could sort of way.
But Findley had chops and he got us all together and wrote some stories and he put them together and had it all copied at Jeff’s Office Supply and stapled it together and we launched “The Magpie” a little newsletter that lasted probably three editions.
This week I heard from several of you about how much you liked our new format and how proud Anne would have been. I felt her a lot last week, and I agree.
But I had forgotten about Findley until the magpie in the tree was chatting me up.
Forgot about his encouragement and his relentless picking and pushing in that gravelly, aged-by-smoke-and-red wine voice of his. He would have been proud too, and apparently was, judging by the black and white lecture I was getting from above.
So, while we remember all those who coached us and encouraged us and gave us the “chops” to make this paper, we’ll be right here…
…Keeping you Posted.
Rach
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