This year I had the pleasure of spending a nostalgic Christmas day in Virginia City, Nevada, now a national historic monument.

The old western town is the home of the famed Comstock load, once the world?s largest silver deposit, discovered in 1859. The ore mined here played a major role in building San Francisco into an important city, and financed the Union?s victory in the Civil War.

It was here that Mark Twain landed his first job as a writer for the town?s first newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise, after failing to find any silver of his own. I have read his complete works (Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Innocents Abroad, etc.), and owe much to the legendary humorist for my own oddball, ironic sense of humor.

Walking the creaky boardwalk, one admires the many sagging brick, false front buildings, their rusted cast iron shutters nearly falling off their hinges. You almost expect to run into the former riverboat captain around the next corner. Where bordellos, saloons, and gambling dens once flourished, one now finds T-shirt purveyors, gem merchants, candy shops, and period antique stores.

You older folks will remember Virginia City as a central location in Bonanza, the most popular American TV series of the 1960?s. Every week, the determined, but moral, Cartwright family prevailed over a never ending assortment of villains and the formidable challenges of living in an untamed West. Visitors today still flock to the site of their imaginary ranch, the Ponderosa, named for a local pine tree.

The site is still littered with the detritus of the mid 19^th century mining boom, preserved in an eternally arid desert. Wander aimlessly at your own peril. Abandoned mining shafts are everywhere, marked, or not.

I first came here as a kid during the early 1960?s, eagerly collecting old bottles turned blue by a scorching sun, as well as a shoebox full of Indian arrowheads.

I understand that this sort of thing is now illegal. This time, I satisfied myself with throwing a few 100 pound chunks of colorful basalt into the back of the truck to decorate my cactus garden at home.

The highlight of the day was a trip on the Candy Cane Express, operated by the old Virginia and Truckee Railroad. We chugged an hour out into the barren desert mountains, entertained by an assortment of cider bearing elves, singing Christmas carols, and blowing the steam whistle at every opportunity.

The weather was blustery, with intermittent snow flurries. A heard of mustangs, or wild horses, ran along side the tracks, thrilling the children more than Santa Claus, and enthralling the vacationing European photographers.

The federal Bureau of Land Management estimates there are 200,000 of these beasts still roaming free in the western wilderness (down from 2 million 100 years ago). You can adopt one with the payment of a $100 fee, if you promise not to eat it.
On our return, we repaired to the Bucket of Blood saloon for some complimentary sarsaparillas, an ancient predecessor of Coca Cola, and some rollicking country western music from the Comstock Cowboys.

There we toasted a Merry Christmas to all.

 

Mustangs Taking a Break

 

I spent a sad and depressing, but highly instructional evening with Dr. Stephen Greenspan, who had lost most of his personal fortune with Bernie Madoff. The University of Connecticut psychology professor had poured the bulk of his savings into Sandra Mansky's Tremont feeder fund; receiving convincing trade confirms and rock solid custody statements from the Bank of New York.

This is a particularly bitter pill for Dr. Greenspan to take, because he is an internationally known authority on Ponzi schemes, and just published a book entitled Annals of Gullibility-Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It. It is a veritable history of scams, starting with Eve's subterfuge to get Adam to eat the apple, to the Trojan horse and the Pied Piper, up to more modern day cons in religion, politics, science, medicine, and yes, personal investments.

Madoff's genius was that the returns he fabricated were small, averaging only 11% a year, making them more believable. In the 1920's, the original Ponzi promised his Boston area Italian immigrant customers a 50% return every 45 days. Madoff also feigned exclusivity, often turning potential investors down, leading them to become even more desirous of joining his club. For a deeper look into Greenspan's fascinating, but expensively learned observations and analysis, go to his website at http://www.stephen-greenspan.com/.