We intended to just have a drink in a bar before dinner in the diner, but when we entered Gerlach’s Miners’ Tavern the locals old folks were having a potluck birthday party for a member of their Frogs Club. It remains unclear to us exactly what the significance of green amphibians are to the senior citizens of Gerlach, but the Frogs were kind enough to invite us to join in the feast. There was not a great deal of food in the potluck, mainly because for many years the only thing to do in Gerlach was to drink a lot and then drive out into the desert. So most of the sustenance was of the liquid variety. But the coming of satellite television has evidently provided some competition to the bars, because one person had made a decent lasagna.
In our conversations
at the bar we tried to explain our fascination with the geysers to the
geezers, but they were more interested in discussing the hunting season
for “chuckars.” I had never even heard about a creature
called a chuckar, let alone considered the shooting and eating of one.
But this was the third occasion since I arrived in Nevada where I heard
folks talking about chuckars, so it’s probably a real animal.
I’m not sure what kind of animal, because I didn’t want
to seem like a dumb recently-arrived yokel from Illinois and ask someone
“What’s a chuckar?” I think it’s some kind of
bird or squirrel.
After an exhausting day of sitting in a car and then floating about
in hot baths, we retired early.
