Columnists
D-Day. Normandy, France. Omaha Beach. Third wave. Running out of the landing craft into an ocean where bloated bodies from earlier waves were floating. Getting onto the beach, then heading up the steep hill toward concrete bunkers filled with German snipers. Halfway up the hill, a bullet passed through Robert
Columnists
At eleven years old, my father, Mark King, moved to a farm in Wisconsin near a tribal nation. There he befriended an Indian boy his age, and the two forged a bond grounded in the purest form of childhood friendship: shooting things. Their favorite pastime was target practice with arrows
Columnists
Roaring Camp was not the sort of place where good news happened. In 1850, if a gunfight broke out, nobody paused their card game long enough to notice—French Pete and Kanaka Joe once shot each other clean through right in front of Tuttle’s grocery, and someone simply leaned
Columnists
It was early on the Saturday morning before Thanksgiving—the kind of gray, muted morning that makes you wonder if the sun took an early holiday. It had rained more days than not that week, and everything was soaked: the yard, the fields, the road, even the air felt waterlogged.
Columnists
Cowboys in the Old West didn’t have therapists, bullet journals, or apps reminding them to drink water and ‘practice gratitude.’ What they had were long days, stubborn cattle, bad coffee, and enough silence to make a person hear thoughts they didn’t know they had. And when life got
Columnists
When my dad, Mark King, was young, he didn’t just ride horses — he made them question their career choices. Dad’s world smelled like leather, dust, and courage. He worked rodeos across the West, hazing cattle, chasing steers, and eventually—because apparently sanity was negotiable—riding broncs. That’s
Columnists
When my dad was a boy, he brought a horse to school. That sounds like a setup for a joke — and in a way, it was — but to him, it was just another Tuesday. He must’ve been eight or nine when his mother decided he was destined for the
News
The Comstock and Northern Lyon County community have been deeply touched by the recent politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk. On every street corner and in every church and coffee shop, conversation on the topic can be heard. On Saturday, Sept. 21, a large group of people gathered at Kay
Columnists
Halloween decorations are beginning to fill the stores, some classic and some strange. I saw one in Tractor Supplies of a cow draped in a sheet, supposed to look like a ghost. I half expected to see a “Battle Born” logo on the side of the sheet. Every Halloween we’
Religion
Have you ever seen a situation that seemed beyond healing, beyond any redemption, that suddenly turned around? This is a saga with a surprise ending. Lillie grew up in a small town in rural Wisconsin and, in high school during the depression, got pregnant to a rich boy who didn’
Columnists
What is the ‘wild west’ to you? For most people it’s both a place and time, a moment in history around America’s civil war when horizons expanded, and opportunities were available to those tough enough, recklessly ambitious, or simply willing to seek adventure far beyond our settled east
Columnists
King's Corner column for the August 15, 2025 issue So where did they all go? The gold rush in California, followed by the silver rush in northern Nevada, brought a flood of people to our region during those boom years. An entire generation grew up mining the Sierra