Home Means Nevada

It’s Halloween, but I don’t really care because I’ve never really liked Halloween, not even when I was a kid. I liked the candy (still do; candy is my favorite), but dressing up as something or someone else and making the forced march around the neighborhood to get it always seemed like more effort than I wanted to expend, even for free fun-sized Snickers bars. But, hey, it’s been a three-day weekend and it’s always good to have an extra weekend day.

I know some of you are confused now. “A three-day weekend?” you are asking yourself. “No one has a three-day weekend this weekend!” Well, we do in Nevada, because, y’all, it’s NEVADA DAY–a state holiday to celebrate the day Nevada became a state (October 31, 1864 for those keeping score at home).

“That’s a thing?” you ask now. “Celebrating statehood?”

In Nevada it is. We have the day off, offices and schools are closed (not banks, though, since it’s not a federal holiday), there’s a parade and other festivities.

Until 2000, when the observed holiday was moved to the last Friday in October, Nevadans celebrated its statehood holiday on October 31. That’s right. NEVADA GAVE KIDS HALLOWEEN OFF, but most kids knew–because of the fourth-grade mandatory Nevada History unit–it was because of Nevada Day, not Halloween.

I can’t speak for others, since I was born in Nevada and have lived here since, but I didn’t know this wasn’t a thing in other states until I got to college. My third semester, a friend I’d made in a class (from California) sat next to me and said, “Hey, did you know we get Halloween off?”

And of course, since I grew up here, I said, “No, we get NEVADA DAY off.” Duh.

When you think of Nevada, you probably think of this:

YES, LAS VEGAS IS IN NEVADA. And you probably know that Reno, where I was born and raised and still live quite near, is also in Nevada. But what you probably don’t realize is that these two urban centers are a full-day’s drive and more than four hundred miles apart. It takes as long for us in Northern Nevada to drive to Las Vegas as it will take for us to drive to visit our son in Boise when he makes his move (about seven hours). Nevada is a big-ass state, friends. And though Las Vegas is in the same state, it might as well be on another planet for as different as it is from Northern Nevada.

This is my Nevada:

And so is this:

And this:

Yes, in Nevada, we have legal marijuana, gambling and prostitution, but we also have the Sierra Nevada mountains, gorgeous deserts and endless blue skies.

In September, my husband, daughter and I went to a game of our hometown minor-league baseball team, the Reno Aces (we won 13-8. Go Aces!). During the seventh-inning stretch, we all stood for a rendition of the old standard, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, followed by a chorus of the Nevada state song, Home Means Nevada. And though the thoughtful staff at Greater Nevada Field helped us out by putting the words on the big screen, most of us didn’t need them, since most kids–including my daughter and me–learn the state song in their elementary school music class.

I’m proud to be a Nevadan. I love it here. I never want to live anywhere else.