more powers in life

I am in Reno.  With my new driver’s license and voter registration.  Bit by bit I am adding layers as a new Nevada citizen.

But I didn’t want to leave the topic of Powers without sharing a bit of the town with you.  Even though I lived there only four or five years, those years formed a lot of who I am.

The photograph at the top of this blog is Powers's main street.  Almost all of the businesses are in these two blocks.

The building at the left is the Powers Market.  The business my mother's cousin built and operated.  It has now subsumed the variety store next door. 

The Rexall store and the department store on the other side of the street are now a thrift shop and a restaurant.

At least, the buildings are still there.  The theater and barber shop are gone.  Replaced with a rather jarringly modern police station.

At the far end of the street is what I knew as Jack's Fountain as a child.  I thought my mother worked there as a waitress (when it was called Ethel's Fountain Lunch) and has multiple tales of her own.  But see her comment below.

When I was about six, I found a twenty dollar bill in the vacant lot next to Jack's.  In 1955, a Jackson could buy far more than today.  That was before the era of fiat currency.  In today's dollars, it would be the equivalent of finding $200 in the street.

I reported my find to my mother and we took it to the police station.  I am not certain what happened to the money after that.  I vaguely remember my good deed eventuually resulted in the money coming my way.  But that may simply be the wishes of a 6-year old boy.

----------

This is the Powers elementary school.

My mother attended it for six years.  I attended for only three years.  During the second grade (the room at the right side of the building), Annette Blondell and I had a reading contest -- seeing who could read the most books. 

I suspect Mrs. Utterback, our teacher, simply wanted to keep us from bothering her that we were bored.  As a result, my reading skills now far outstrip my penmanship.

But those steps at the front of the school have their own tale to tell concerning the Cotton boys.

When I was in third grade, I was leaving the school and found one of the local bullies beating up on my first grade brother.  I came to his rescue, menacingly telling that bully: "No one beats up on my brother except me."

I suppose that is what passed for familial honor in my youth.

My older cousin Butch taught me a far different lesson under these trees.  When I was in grade school, the tree branches came to the ground -- making a fine hideaway for the boys to meet and do things that teachers preferred boys not do.

Such as playing marbles.  Butch taught me the principle of "winner takes all."  It was the first time he deigned to let me play with the older boys.  And the last.  They picked me cleaner than a roll-over artist in a declining housing market.

----------

My best friend in grade school was Mike Pinson.   We did everything together.  Climbed cliffs.  Rode our bikes around town.  Caught frogs and polliwogs for Mr. Miller, the high school biology teacher, who paid for our wares out of his pocket.

After we moved to Portland, my family would visit Powers during spring break.  Because our break did not match that of the Powers schools, I attended classes with Mike in junior high and the high school.  It was the only way I could spend time with him and my other Powers buddies.  Besides, I simply loved school at that age.

Mike's parents owned and ran the Atlantic Richfield station in town.  The type of station where the attendant would wash your windscreen and check your oil, water, and air.  It was a class establishment.

Here is what it looks like today.

There are no brand name gas stations left in town.  Powers, with its population of over 1500 when I lived there has dwindled to around 600 today.  Many of its service requirements are now met by towns twenty or more miles away.

----------

What Powers still has is what has been an attraction for years: natural beauty.

When I was making my retirement plans, I had considered Powers as one of my first stops.  Instead, I opted for Mexico.

But it is still on my list.