Shar Peterson is a slim, attractive, intense woman with striking hair that appears to have been styled by a Van de Graaff generator. The executive director of the Battle Mountain Chamber of Commerce is always smiling, and she was smiling at this very moment, but I knew she wasn't glad to see me. After our first phone conversation, Shar had talked to some of the town mothers and fathers, who apparently had not shared her vision about the terrific publicity potential of this armpit thing. As Shar put it, "Some people are taking it as a negative."Shar had apparently been strongly encouraged to dissuade me from my mission, to argue the case against the armpit. Once enthusiastic collaborators, we were, at the moment, potential antagonists.
I sat down. Laid my cards on the table.
"Shar," I said, "this is not a handsome town."
"We understand that," she said, her smile defiantly unbroken.
Shar was doing her level best to show me the highlights of Battle Mountain. It was not easy. It was, in fact, a grim little exercise in desperation salesmanship. Shar is an excellent guide and spin artist, but being executive director of the Battle Mountain Chamber of Commerce is a little like being regional sales manager for Firestone tires.
Heading out on Route 305, Shar pointed out several distant hills in the Shoshone mountain range.
"That looked better before the fires."
And:
"Usually, in different weather, that's a nice view of the valley."
And:
"The people aren't exactly xenophobic. You just have to earn their trust."
We saw several distant peaks with bald smears caused by mining. "They'll look normal afterwards. They'll just be a little less high."
Shar wanted to show me some of the nicer houses, but they were scattered around, so to get to them we had to pass homes that looked like the sort of place Snuffy Smith's wife, Loweezy, is forever brooming out.
Shar came here many years ago, when her husband got a good job in a local mine. He still has it, and so she is still here. She loves it, she said. She said it three times.
I said nothing. We passed one of the more expensive homes. It features a rather startling facade of faux boulders that sort of look like stone, the way cardboard sort of looks like oak.
"I have two choices," Shar said at last. "To make myself miserable or to learn to love where I am. Do you know what I mean?"
I did.
"Okay, maybe we're an armpit," Shar said. "If so, we're shaven, and clean, and sweet-smelling because out here in the desert, we're arid, extra dry. "
The woman is very good.
| Land of the Lost | Nevada
