History for the Holidays
Last Saturday, the Nevada Historical Society located on the University of Nevada-Reno campus, hosted a day long event dedicated to “History for the Holidays,” which brought together local artists, authors, and musicians. The event boasted an art sale, free raffle prizes, seasonal music, crafts, and of course our favorite, a book signing room.
Rusty and I quickly loaded up his truck with copies of the new James Crawford: Master of the Mint at Carson City books not wanting to catch a chill in the cold winter air. For extra kicks, along with bringing his books, Rusty also brought a completed 10-piece type set of coins from the Carson City Mint—which you can imagine was the talk of the show. Leaving our little worker bees behind (that is Marie, Maya, and Rachel) to work the store, Rusty and I set out for the historical society early that Saturday morning.
After settling in and setting up, we had some time to spare before the event kicked off, so Rusty took me into the research library, otherwise known as the place where Rusty spent the majority of his days researching for the Crawford book. Once there, he showed me the ropes of researching—well, the very basics of “real” researching that is. And man let me tell you! Researching is no joke! I mean, being in college, I am used to researching for papers, but I of course always have the luxury of using the internet and using references already written on the topic at hand. But being that no one has ever researched Crawford related material before, those two sources were not options. And before that day, I had no idea what “real” researching was all about. And boy, does Rusty deserve all the credit in the world and an award for the patience of a saint for scanning through countless newspapers and other materials searching for anything related to the mint and/or Crawford. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know how he kept on track, because while we were looking through some newspapers, I found myself not just scanning the information, but reading the articles word for word and looking at each ad to see how much grocery items cost back then (and it wasn’t much!).
At noon the front doors opened to the public and people streamed in from the cold weather on and off for the next several hours. In total there were eight local authors that attended and were selling their bestsellers to the public. Towards the end of the afternoon, the old time folk music musicians came into the book signing room for a little Christmas caroling and that sure put everyone in the holiday mood. Rusty and I enjoyed the music so much that we took turns singing with the folk group! But, how odd that we were not asked to join their group for future events…
All and all the event went off without a hitch. I was glad to meet and talk with all the good folks of the historical society that have become good friends of Rusty’s over the years, and to finally see how “real” research was done…and the snacks weren’t that bad either!
Until Next Time,
Amy