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This is Lake Tahoe. What interesting ideas we could explore if we only didn’t keep Tahoe blue! I jest of course. Sigh. It’s been a rushed week, so all I’ve got for the writeup is a story of local Sierra justice, to provide a counterpoint to that long excerpt I posted about the gold rush a month or so back. I’ll tell it to you just as it was told to me. Back in the 30’s up around where I live, there was a large, what we would call a homeless camp of ‘snipers’, or people who had come up to the hills to pan for gold because the couldn’t get work in the not-quite-so-great depression. So minus the methamphetamine, just poor people working the land for a couple dollars here and there in gold dust and eating game and wild onions. Romantic stuff. Well someone in this camp stole someone else’s shoes. Upon discovery of this terrible crime, the thief in question being found with said shoes on his person, the local sheriff decided to hold trial. Everyone trooped into the local saloon (so far the same story as the last frontier justice, right? I’m seeing a theme…) there were a hundred miners on the jury. All the witnesses were called and examined the shoes: ‘yes, they were so-and-so’s shoes not the culprit’s’. The verdict was delivered unanimously ‘guilty’, and the judge cast about in his mind to try and find a suitable punishment. ‘Well to start with’ the judge said, ‘you’ve got to buy the jury a round of drinks, and then we’ll deliberate on your sentence some more’. ‘Certainly’ says the thief ‘it’s only fair.’ He buys them all a round of drinks. After a while he buys them another. Then he buys the whole bar a round of drinks. Well hours later in the afternoon, everyone wakes up from their festive haze and realizes that the thief has absconded from the bar without paying his bill. And on his way out he’s swiped the pair of shoes again. They never found him.

It’s not Xander, Xander is still wandering around in his socks .

Description

This is Lake Tahoe. What interesting ideas we could explore if we only didn’t keep Tahoe blue! I jest of course. Sigh. It’s been a rushed week, so all I’ve got for the writeup is a story of local Sierra justice, to provide a counterpoint to that long excerpt I posted about the gold rush a month or so back. I’ll tell it to you just as it was told to me. Back in the 30’s up around where I live, there was a large, what we would call a homeless camp of ‘snipers’, or people who had come up to the hills to pan for gold because the couldn’t get work in the not-quite-so-great depression. So minus the methamphetamine, just poor people working the land for a couple dollars here and there in gold dust and eating game and wild onions. Romantic stuff. Well someone in this camp stole someone else’s shoes. Upon discovery of this terrible crime, the thief in question being found with said shoes on his person, the local sheriff decided to hold trial. Everyone trooped into the local saloon (so far the same story as the last frontier justice, right? I’m seeing a theme…) there were a hundred miners on the jury. All the witnesses were called and examined the shoes: ‘yes, they were so-and-so’s shoes not the culprit’s’. The verdict was delivered unanimously ‘guilty’, and the judge cast about in his mind to try and find a suitable punishment. ‘Well to start with’ the judge said, ‘you’ve got to buy the jury a round of drinks, and then we’ll deliberate on your sentence some more’. ‘Certainly’ says the thief ‘it’s only fair.’ He buys them all a round of drinks. After a while he buys them another. Then he buys the whole bar a round of drinks. Well hours later in the afternoon, everyone wakes up from their festive haze and realizes that the thief has absconded from the bar without paying his bill. And on his way out he’s swiped the pair of shoes again. They never found him.

It’s not Xander, Xander is still wandering around in his socks .