The King is Dead

 
Bruno Selmi 1923-2017

Bruno’s County Club was the most notable building in Gerlach when Burning Man first arrived there in 1990. Constructed in a style typical of frontier architecture, the front wall extends above the roof to create a more impressive façade. Over the years, we would come to know Bruno himself as an impressive character, even larger in life.

Giovanni “Bruno” Selmi arrived in the United States from Lucca, Italy, on 18 November 1946 at the age of 23. His brother, Giuseppa “Joe” Selmi, had ranch in Dayton, Nevada and put him to work as a cook.

Joe Lucchesi & Bruno Selmi- about 1950 (Photo from the collection of Jody Fritzpatrick)

It was Joe Lucchesi’s mother, Lena, who encouraged Bruno to move to America. Bruno later found a job in Empire at the gypsum plant where a few fellow Italians were being hired because they didn’t need to know a lot of English. At night, he would tend bar and deal 21 at a local bar-casino in Empire. In 1952, he purchased the Longhorn Bar in Gerlach for $6,500 and renamed it Bruno’s Country Club.

Bruno bar tending in the original Country Club -about 1958

The Selmi family: Frances, Skeekie, and Bruno – about 1955

The original Country Club burned down in 1983 and a larger Country Club was rebuilt.

(Photo by Wally Glenn)

I met Bruno after our second Burn at Black Rock. We, the organizers, had just finished cleanup and rolled into Gerlach for dinner at the “Country Club”. There were about ten of us. After dinner, the waitress placed the tab on the table, then Bruno came over, picked up the tab, slipped it into his pocket, and said: “I buy you dinner.”

He had an Italian accent and a direct, efficient way of speaking English that focused on getting his message across. Even then, he knew that Burning Man was going to be good for business, and he had spent most of his life making Gerlach his business. By 1990, Bruno owned the Country Club bar-restaurant, the motel, the gas station, several houses, a trailer park on the west side, and a nearby ranch.

When Bruno arrived in 1946, highway 447 was still a gravel road all the way from Gerlach to Pyramid Lake. During the 1950s and ’60s, cattle ranching was a big business in northern Nevada. Rodeos were popular events, and you can still find remnants of the corrals south of town out past the railroad tracks. Bruno’s Country Club was just one of several bars that catered to the local cowboys, but he was a no-nonsense bartender who, on more than one occasion, showed a drunk cowboy the way out of his bar.

Bruno on horseback, about 1955.

Over the years, Bruno developed an understanding of the local business ecology and slowly built an empire at the end of the road. After he opened the restaurant, his ranch produced much of the food, which augmented supplies the train brought in. The restaurant served his famous ravioli, which was based on his mother’s recipe.

He was a tough, independent character, but he always had a capacity for kindness. If someone came into town destitute and hungry, he would feed them. But if they asked to see the menu, he would throw them out.

Bruno hosted an annual BBQ, where he invited local ranch owners, Reno businessmen, politicians, law officials and judges. Eventually the founders of Burning Man qualified for his guest list.

Gerlach was our last stop before heading out to the playa for the long Labor Day weekend, and we developed an arrival ritual. Our first stop was Bruno’s gas station (it was a Texaco back then), where Bill Stapleton would top off our gas tank and fill us in on all the latest news and gossip around town, and tell us what the conditions were out on the playa. After that, we’d stop in at Bruno’s bar for a cold beer before heading out to Black Rock to camp out on the playa and burn a giant wooden man.

(Photo by John Story)

Bruno was a powerful figure, and among ourselves, we took to calling him King Bruno, a term that had already been carved on a rock by Doobie Williams, who created the nearby Guru Lane folk art site in the 1980s. In the restaurant, there was always a vacant chair at the end of the counter. We quickly learned that it was Bruno’s chair, and nobody else sat there.

Bruno was never politically correct and always expressed his opinions without reservation. One of the opinions he had in common with the local ranchers was a dislike of wild horses, because they competed with cattle for forage on the open range. One time the Bureau of Land Management was rounding up wild horses in the Black Rock, and a bunch of protesters came up from Reno. That evening they were having dinner at Bruno’s Country Club. One of the young ladies having the ravioli exclaimed; “This is great, what’s in it?” Bruno quickly replied; “Horse meat”

In time, the event grew and the crowds came. During Burning Man, the restaurant was packed. At night the bar was crowded, the motel was full, and the gas station sometimes ran out of gas.

Bruno and Cowboy Carl (Photo by SF Slim)

I always gave Bruno a couple of tickets to Burning Man, but he never went. He would pass the tickets on to his friends in high places. He said, “I got no interest in going to Burning Man. It’s not my thing, but if each person going wants to come and spend $1, that’s all right.”

(Photo by Brian Kelly)

Bruno slowed down in his later years, spending less and less time behind the bar. During his last few years, he would take a morning walk thru his town. The route was always the same, starting at his house behind the motel, then west down Main Street, then back on Sunset. Near the end of his 94 years, he would shuffle into the restaurant for breakfast, which consisted of a glass of orange juice and a bowl of cereal or hot oatmeal.

I fondly remember his last words to me, as I was having breakfast one morning. He stopped at my table, put his hand lightly on my shoulder and said: “I need a coupla tickets.”

His chair at the end of the counter is still vacant. It will take awhile for us to get used to sitting there.

2001 – a Black Rock Odyssey

Tags

Black Rock

On January 1st, 2001, I stood on the Black Rock Playa and watched the sun rise.

BurningMan is an event which often induces visions, creates expanded consciousness and provides life-changing experiences. At BurningMan ’94, I had a vision of a futuristic tribe of primitives that lived on the Black Rock Desert. They existed almost invisibly in the twilight of time after the TechnoRapture, when accelerating computer intelligence reached self-consciousness. In an attempt to recapture the feeling of that vision, I decided to spend the last night of the year 2000 out on the Black Rock playa in the dead of winter, under the stars, naked but wrapped in a blanket of dead animal skins.

Surviving a winter night in Northern Nevada is challenging enough with modern gear, but I wanted to do it in the Buffalo-robed style of Native American heritage. Real fur would be the only material which has the insulating and ascetic quality for this vision quest. How does one get fur in this age of PETA? My solution was thrift store mink coats, cut up and sewn together for a blanket.

I arrived in Gerlach a few days before New Years Eve to prepare for the experience, which included time for contemplation, reading and visiting with BurningMan staffers and some of the locals. The winter rains had not yet arrived to erase the footprints of our Y2K burn, so the playa was still drivable.

Helen Thrasher Memorial Library.

I spent some time at the Helen Thrasher Memorial Library, a warm, cozy place, filled with books, historical objects and Internet access. At that time there was a sign on the door which read “No Dogs, No Smoking & No Sex Beyond This Point.” I’ve spent many evenings here, quietly reading or sometimes engaged in lively discussion about the meaning of all things. The place was named after Helen Thrasher, who was one of the pioneer women who helped create the community of Gerlach and one of the few people to live in three centuries. At that time, she was 106 and living in Portola, California. I intended to visit her sometime, but she died the next year.

The town of Gerlach has always had an interesting mix of characters. I wondered if it’s an effect of the tiny trace of radioactivity in the drinking water that comes down from the Granite range. It was a couple years later that the US government made the town install an expensive filtering system to remove the tiny trace of radioactive element. The cost of water for the town quadrupled.

The last days of 2000 were spent with trips around the local area. I drove by the gravel pit on Hwy 34, just past the 12-mile access and noticed some cattle trucks and a temporary corral filled with horses. The BLM was engaged in a wild horse roundup to reduce the local population. A private contractor with a helicopter and bunch of cowboys had been hired to do the job. Two weeks prior, they had rounded up over 800 wild horses in the Black Rock area. They were getting paid $230 per horse. And those horses were only worth about $50 each on the open market. The federal government now runs a giant horse prison out near Pyramid Lake.

Had lunch with DPW’s Mr. Metric out at the Fly Hot Springs and then took a quick dip into the sacred waters where my goddess amulet slithered to the muddy bottom in ’97. It was in one of the Fly pools that the Water Woman sculpture stood for a couple of years. I found and retrieved the last remnant, a 3-foot long wooden lock of hair, which hung down her back.

Bill Stapleton, RIP

On New Years Eve, I stopped at the Gerlach gas station, which was then a Texaco and run by Bill Stapleton. Both Texaco and Bill Stapleton are now long gone. Bill told me that conditions on the Playa were favorable. The surface was spongy, but dry and passable. That evening, I loaded the fur blanket, some water, two burn-barrels and some firewood into my old yellow pickup truck and drove north on the Playa. “Bring everything you need to survive” echoed through my brain. Navigating by the outline of the mountains at night, I headed towards Double Hot Springs for a midnight rendezvous with DPW’s Bill Carson and Ranger FearlessOne.

Bill Carson

Ranger FearlessOne.

Arriving at Double Hot just minutes before midnight, I was handed a glass of champagne. After a suitable toast, I elected not to get wet in an environment where the air temperature was rapidly declining towards zero. After bidding goodnight, I drove back onto the flat of the Playa. The sky was full of stars as I steered towards the constellation Orion. Feeling the changes in the Playa under my tires, I pulled up to a spot that seemed right.

Dueling Burn Barrels.

Primitives Camp was located at N 40° 54.194, W 119° 05.062, altitude 3,887 feet, one mile east of the BurningMan ’96 site. I set up the two barrels about 10 feet apart. My nest was between these two fires. The air temperature was 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

What is it like to be in 3 degrees?
— At 3 degrees, your breath looks like a steam locomotive.
— At 3 degrees, your 2 gallons of drinking water is a block of ice.
— At 3 degrees, your CD player will not play CDs.
— At 3 degrees, the 6-pack of beer you brought is slush.
— At 3 degrees, the LCD screen on your laptop displays alien hieroglyphics.
— At 3 degrees, you pour water into a coffee pot, and watch in amazement as a layer of ice crystallizes on the surface before you can get it over the fire.

Wrapped in Mink- 1 Jan 2001

 

It’s damn cold at 3 degrees. My mind recalled the story of a local rancher who got stuck in the mud out on the Playa one cold January night in 1922. He died of exposure inside the cab of his Model T. Personal survival is an option in the Black Rock Desert. Danger can survive this, I thought to myself, and besides, the goddess is here. After firing up the barrels, I curled under the fur blanket for a while to warm up and then strip down. It seemed warm enough. I drifted off to a night of broken sleep, rolling over from time to time and moving my head as the frost formed on the blanket just below my nose. The hours passed.

Finally, I awoke with my head and face a numbing cold. The fires were down to a few live embers in the bottom of the barrels. The rest of my body was still fairly warm under the blanket of mink. I said a prayer of thank you to the furry little critters. The moisture in my breath created a semi-circle of frost on the top of the blanket. I discovered that shivering, a muscle spasm reaction of the body to cold, uses a lot of energy.

The sky was just starting to lighten above the mountains to the east. Still under the blanket, I pulled on some clothes and then threw off the blanket, jumped up and madly tossed more wood into the barrels.

The sun began to lift above the mountains and the entire panorama changed from a black line of playa and into the mountain outline that which we are so familiar with. I had survived. Sleep deprivation and the magic of this place finally set in. With the sun completely up, I closed my eyes once more and the vision came… an orange-red playa surface seemed to flow towards me. I set the brain on record as I flew through Playa Space. Soon enough, I opened my eyes. The memory lingers to this day.

 

Is our experience on this desert plain teaching us to be the surviving primitives in a cybernetic future?

 

Rider on a Black Horse

Tags

cowboy, Gerlach, horse

 

 

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a horse in the town of Gerlach. Not more than half a dozen in the past 10 years and those were on the outskirts of town, along 34.

The Deep Hole Ranch was owned by Louis Gerlach

There used to be a lot more cattle ranching in the Black Rock basin surrounding the town of Gerlach, that was before the giant water-hungry farming operations came in and, over the last four decades, managed to drop the water table 50 feet.

 

A few years ago, I got to view one of the locals old 8mm home-movies of the Gerlach rodeos that used to take place during the early 1950s.

Gerlach in the 1950s

You can still find the remains of the rodeo corral on the south side of the railroad tracks, across from where the water tower is. Back then, there were two water towers and Main street was just a gravel road, which continued to be gravel all the way to Wadsworth. Main Street was finally paved in 1963.

During the era of big cattle ranches, there were lots of horses and lots of cowboys and even more bars in the town of Gerlach. In 1950, you could still find hitching posts in front of the bars and it was not unusual for a drunken cowboy to ride his horse into the bar and demand another drink, with exception of maybe the Longhorn Saloon, where Bruno worked as a bartender and didn’t put up with such foolishness. That was a few years before he bought the bar and changed the name to Brunos.

Nowadays, you might occasionally find a few cowboys who drop into Gerlach for a drink, but they arrive in pickup trucks, so you can imagine my amazement one late afternoon a couple weeks after the 2014 burn, when I’m walking down Main Street and I see this black horse tied to a utility pole down by the railroad tracks near the old train station. What’s more, a few paces from the horse, I could see a western saddle with a bedroll slung over the handrail by the station.

On rare occasions, someone might ride a horse thru Gerlach, but nobody ‘parks’ a horse in Gerlach anymore. My curiosity peaked, I walked down the embankment and strolled over towards this black horse. I know a little bit about horses, having grown up in Texas and now have fond memories as a teenager out at my grandfathers farm during the summer, where I would go out to the pasture, grab the mane of one of the horses, launch myself onto its back and then have it lurch forward at full gallop… no saddle, no reins, no shoes, no shirt. I remember the oneness that we were in that moment and the soft jolt of each hoof and the wind and the smell of horse.

As I closed the gap between me and this dark creature, it was apparent that this magnificent beast was one of the finest examples of horseflesh that I had ever seen. It was a young stud, about 8 years old with a long, silky mane, a small white dot on the forehead and eyes as black as coal. As I walked slowly towards him, his ears perked forward, and with a look of fearless curiosity, he took a step towards me, as much as his tether would allow.

It was then I noticed the small, open bag of oats that had been carefully placed out of his reach by his now absentee rider. I scooped up a small handful and thrust out my hand, palm up, under his nose and he nibbled away delightfully. I did a 360 looking around for the owner, realizing I had probably done the equivalent of leaning on a strangers pickup truck without first asking.

I really wanted to know the story behind this apparent anachronism, so I set out to find the cowboy who rode this black horse into town. In all the years of coming to Gerlach, the one thing I’ve learned is what everyone does when they first hit town: stop at Brunos. So I made a beeline over there.

I opened the door of Brunos, stepped inside the bar and scanned around for anything that seemed out of place. I looked over a line of patrons at the bar to my right and at the mostly empty tables to my left. Finally I noticed an odd and solitary figure sitting in a chair, alone at the very back wall. My brain immediately registered: Amish!

As I walked directly towards him, I noted the key Amish indicators; straw hat with a flat brim, wide suspenders and boots with laces. He seemed to be about 30 years in age. When the distance closed, I noted some irregularities; his jet-black hair spilling past his collar was a little too long for Amish, his red suspenders were attached to his pants, not with buttons, but the suspender loops were tied to the belt loops of his jeans with strips of rawhide. I stopped at a polite distance as he tilted his head back and our eyes met. His eyes were Asian!

I realized that I had stumbled across some kind of hybrid western buckaroo. Now there is quite a bit of difference between a southwestern cowboy and a buckaroo. A buckaroo is derived from the Spanish vaquero horsemen and are indigenous to the Great Basin and Central California region. Buckaroos are what you call real cowboys in Nevada.

I introduced myself and told him that I assumed that the black horse was his and that I wanted to know what his story was. He said that his name was Steve Ikeda. His father was Japanese and his mother was French. His great grandparents were interred at Manzanar during WWII and almost lost their family farm, but an American neighbor worked their farm growing fruit and vegetables to pay the mortgage until they got out after the war. Steve grew up near Sacramento and worked cows and horses for a living. The black horse was part of a small herd that ran wild on a neglected 75-acre ranch. The horse was given to him by the ranch owner, but he had to rope it and break it, which he did just a few months ago. Recently, he had been offered a job on a ranch near Winnemucca, so he was now riding his horse from Sacramento to Winnemucca, a distance of about 300 miles. He was making a brief stop in Gerlach and then riding on to Frog Pond, where he was going to spend the night. I’m thinking just wow, this guy is the real thing.

I wished him well on his journey and walked out of the bar. The next morning, I noticed hoof prints in the yard next to the Gerlach Burning Man office. Apparently he rode into the yard, got water from the faucet and left for Frog Pond. I did some research a couple weeks later and discovered that the Ikeda family grew and prospered after the war. In 1970 they opened a fruit stand near Sacramento. In the 1980s they begin making pies from the fruit that grew in their orchards. Now I like to stop at Ikeda’s Country Market just off I-80 in Auburn, CA. Probably the best pies I’ve ever tasted.

And this was on the playa that year:

“Rustang Sally” by Mutoid Waste Company, BurningMan 2014

The Black Rock Saloon

Tags

BlackRockSaloon, Gerlach

The Black Rock Saloon is Burning Man’s private social club in Gerlach.

There’s lots of interesting decor inside the Saloon. Photographs of DPW staff members hang on the walls. Several of the original signs that once stood at the highway-to-playa entrance, are reminders of Burning Man themes from years past.

There is a reverence to some of the altar-like pieces scattered about.

“Fifteen years and six continents
Five lives and countless memories
The trail of duty and the path of peace
These boots have traveled them all
They began their journey in a distant desert
They now end their journey in this one-
The place so many of us call home”

And there is a certain style of humor that burners appreciate.

The original building was constructed in the 1940s and has served as a bar/restaurant for most of its life. When Burning Man first arrived in 1990, it was called Norm’s Cabaret.

Sometime around 2001, a porch was added to the front and the name was changed to Black Rock Saloon when it was acquired by Joan Grant, who also owned a ranch in the nearby Hualapai Valley.

In 2004, Burning Man acquired the Black Rock Saloon for use by it’s staff and volunteers.

There is a lot of history in this bar. During the 1940s & 50s, rodeos were held in a large corral south of Gerlach, and it was one of the 6 or 7 bars in town that was popular with the cowboys. There is a story, that on more than one occasion, a drunken cowboy would ride his horse thru the front doors and up to the bar and demand another round. In the 1990s, the local justice-of-the-peace, known as “Judge Phil” would stumble into the bar carrying his loaded AR-15. During the early 2000s, the Black Rock Saloon became a favorite hangout for burners passing thru town. After Burning Man acquired the bar, the post-event donations from participants insured a good supply of free drinks and food for the clean-up crew after working on-playa all day. It became a custom for DPW members to carve their playa radio names into the long bar during an evening of drinking. Over the last decade, this bar top has acquired a luxurious patina with hundreds of names carved into it.

Here are a few:

AfterFive
Alabama
Alipato
AuntieSocial
Austintatious
BallyHooBetty
Barbarella
Beany
Bewitched
BlackThorne
BloodyKnuckles
BobTuse
BolognaHole
Boo
Booyah
BuzzKill
CobraComandante
CowboyCarl
Coyote
CrazyTalk
CustomerService
DagoBay
DarkAngel DA
DeadPan
Detour
DirtyBacon
DrunkenNurse
DumpsterCoon
EasyGoin
FeralKidd
FlufferNips
Flynn
FreeBeer
Fuckin’Andy
Gameshow
Goatt
Hazmatt
HighCenter
Hormel
InSane
JeneRator
JetFuel
JustGeorge
Kamikaze
LoDog
LowRent
MakeOutQueen
MissHandler
MissMilitia
MissRoach
MrBlue
MrMetric
MrNightshade
NicoPeachez
OhMyGawd
PheonixFirestarter
Phixx
PillowTalk
Playground
PornStar
QuietEarp
Reposado
RestStopBuddy
RhodaHell
RideThatPony
RugBurn
Sailor
SansaAsylum
SF-Slim
SgtSlaughter
Shooter
ShotGunn
Skitch
SleepDep
Smokes
Spoono
Stabby
TheHun
Thirteen
TrailerParkRomeo
TrainWreck
Truffels
VaVoom
WeldBoy
WheelGunner
WildeChilde
WingMan
WitchDoctor
WonderDog
Zombie

Along with these names are a few quotes that hint at historical events or express ideas that reflect the character of DPW.

Frankly, we don’t give a damn about your camp.

Then there is the legendary “Who Shot Flash?”

It was one dark night in 1998, that Flash Hopkins, an abrasive character and self-proclaimed mayor of Gerlach, walked out of the nearby Miners Club and into a hail of .38 slugs. Bleeding from two bullet wounds (one in the leg and the other to his posterior), he stumbled back into the bar and exclaimed; “Give me some whiskey, boys. I wanna die like a cowboy. I wanna die like Eli Wallach.” He survived, resigned his claim of mayor, left town and stayed away for several years. Annette Silas, a bartender at the Black Rock Saloon, was later arrested for the shooting. (Whatever you do, Don’t mess with the bartender.) This tale has been retold around burn barrels along with this admonishment: “Don’t go fishing in Lake Lahontan without a Annette.”