Postcard - A Maine Street Memory

I am reading through some previous editions of “In Focus,” as the Churchill County Museum prepares to launch another edition this coming summer. I have found that if I set aside a piece of literature, news, or history and return to it later, I read it with new perspectives and fresh eyes. Such was the case when I reread a delightful memoir about growing up on Fallon’s Maine Street in the 1930s and 1940s (“In Focus,” Volume 10, 1996-97). The author is Mary Nevada (Walker) Lambert, and the title of the article is “Maine Street Brat.” She gives us views of the alleys, back streets, and behind-the-scenes characters that give life and color to history.
Lambert: “I was raised, with my sister, Evelyn (Keller Locke) and my brother, Bob, in our mother’s photo studio [her mother was Mary Walker Foster] on Maine Street, Fallon. [The studio was a couple of doors north of the Fallon Theater.]

…One thing different about living on Maine Street was our unique play area, not the usual front and back yard of the average child. We had the back alley and the roofs of adjoining businesses—all perfect for imaginary adventures. We spent hours of fun with the scraps of paper from the neighboring newspaper office [located in the first block of East Williams Avenue on the south side…a large brick building still standing.] The paper was used as play money, plane tickets or boat tickets for journeys into exotic imaginary lands, such as darkest Africa or the Far East.

…The garbage of the variety store (Sprouse-Reitz) [on the southeast corner of Maine Street and Center Street] offered all kinds of adventures when we found broken dolls, dishes, doll furniture, colored yarns, ribbons, material, jewelry, etc. One time the store manager told our mother that he had one doll and one doll crib left in stock and he put them in the garbage for the girls.

…At that time there were a lot of homeless men, hobos, who made the rounds of all the alleys looking through the garbage. I don’t remember having any fear of them. The common remark concerning them was, ‘They lost everything they had in the crash,’ meaning the Wall Street Crash in 1929. Who knows if it was true or not. Nearly all the remarks I heard concerning them were compassionate. One never went to the hobo town along the railroad tracks, but I never knew of any being cruel to those homeless men. A lot of the men were always accompanied by one or more dogs. They were a common sight to see us playing in the alleys. We knew several of the dogs by name, and visited with the men as they made their rounds. One of the dogs that we called ‘Whiskers’ showed up at our door for years.

…Fallon, like many other rural Nevada communities, had a red light district [approximately North Taylor and B Street area], which advertised houses of prostitution. Before the “girls” could get their business licenses to work they had to have their picture taken for a file at the Sheriff’s Office. When they came to Mother’s studio, they were usually accompanied by the madam of the house. Once when they came, Mother had been making dresses for my sister and me. The sewing machine was open and material was out on the sewing table. When the madam saw the work in progress she commented to mother that she had a lot of dress material and she would like to give to Mother to make dresses for us children. Not wanting to be rude, Mother accepted her kind offer, although she wondered if the material would be appropriate for little girls’ dresses. When the material arrived it was new yardage with designs for children. Mother accepted it for what it was, a gesture from one working woman to help another hard working woman.

…Life on Maine Street was interesting and good.”

I have room to bring you only a few excerpts here. In any case, the first time I read Lambert’s memoir, I read it as her adventure story, complete with a historical view of Maine Street and its businesses. This time, I relished it for its examples of neighborliness, sincerity, kindness, and compassion, which I hope are still part of our story today. 

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