Nevada Bob Gordon

Nevada Bob, telling it like it was. Photo: Gary Firstenberg One of the scariest words in the English language is weighted with so much emotion that we often avoid saying it altogether. Instead we call it the C-word. Chapter six of Nevada Bob's 50 Years with the Wrong Woman details this experience that he went through. The chapter is titled My Ailment. Here is the opening paragraph and then a portion from a several pages later in the book. My Ailment In early summer of 1972, about a year or so into living on the river in our log cabin, I noticed a light brown color in my urine. rough the next couple of years, the light brown turned to blood-red streaks. I felt strong and healthy, but I was naturally concerned. I sought the advice of a urologist, Dr. Fisher, in Medford. He gave me a quick exam and told me the blood could come from a variety of sources and the fact that I appeared healthy and strong suggested to him that  I really had nothing to be alarmed about. Leading up through 1...

Excerpt from Nevada Bob's memoir, 50 Years with the Wrong Woman . Bob started classes at the University of Washington in the fall of 1960.  His objective, he explains, was to learn how to communicate effectively, so he took speech classes and English classes and any class that assist him in presenting his thoughts and ideas effectively. The goal of communication is not to impress people with big words.  As many college students learn early on, fraternities do a lot of recruiting in the early weeks of a freshman's first experience of college life. Though Bob  wasn't attracted to frat life, he did go to a dance on one occasion when invited. One evening, I was approached by a group of guys. They wanted me to  come to a dance and join a fraternity. I wasn’t interested in joining the  fraternity, but I went to the dance.  They drove us to Seattle University.  It was at this dance that one of the two most important events of my  life occurred. I was wat...

That Nevada Bob Gordon lived an uncommon life only makes sense when you consider his uncommon roots. When I read this story of Bob and his grandmother Emily  (pictured here)   on a flight to Reno, I quickly understood where Bob gets his sense of humor. Here are two excerpts from chapter 2 in his book. Soon after we (Carol and I) moved into our new home, I was approached by my grandmother  Emily Sharp. Emily was a young-appearing, attractive woman in  her early 60s. She wanted to fly to Reno, Nevada, so she could gamble  because she loved bingo games. Her husband, Bill Sharp, was working  on a job that took him out of the country for extended periods of time,  so she asked me to accompany her to Reno. Carol was not interested in the slightest in coming with us. This  enabled us to take advantage of a particularly lucrative package offered  by Reno Casinos; soon, Emily had arranged for us to fly as man and  wife. During the flight, the ste...

If you're a Baby Boomer, you very likely remember exactly where you were when two specific Sixties events took place. The first, which made an indelible mark on all of us, much like a concussion, was the assassination of JFK. The second was wholly other, the first appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show . In olden times, tribes and people groups discussed their histories by noting "markers" in time. The old-timers had value because they remembered these histories. The year of the flood or the year of the locusts. For me, these two events mark a major change in my life. I was in sixth grade, living in Ohio when JFK was killed in Dallas. In January our family moved to New Jersey, and three weeks later the Beatles shook the world with their appearance on Ed Sullivan.  At the time, I knew very little about the rest of their American Tour, so it was fun to read Nevada Bob's account of his experience in Seattle as a policeman hired to protect the Fab Four on their...