Hoping for warm weather to melt black mountains

Here are the best reasons I can think of for a two-week stretch of warm, sunny weather for Carson City: 1) To get rid of the black mountains of frozen ice piled along some streets and parking lots.

I've never seen anything quite like these grimy icebergs. On the north side of the Appeal building, in the Governors Field parking lot, there's a whole mountain range of black ice. It looks like the Sierra Negra.

Maybe the snow falling this week will cover up some of the ugliness temporarily, but you just know that underneath is a hideous layer of road dirt and car exhaust.

Melt, please.

2) My mood would improve.

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It's not a big thing, really, but it amazed me, nonetheless.

I recently pulled out my Koss stereo headphones only to be reminded why I hadn't used them recently. There was a short somewhere, so they kept cutting in and out.

Shopping for a replacement set, I noticed on the package for new Koss headphones that the company offered a lifetime warranty.

I realized my headphones also had come with a lifetime warranty. But here's the catch: I bought them 25 years ago. Would the company still honor it?

Believe it or not, I still had the receipt from 1979. They had cost $50 - a huge sum for a young newspaper reporter to spend on stereo headphones. But there was that lifetime warranty - so I'd stuck the pink receipt in a filing cabinet and hauled it around for most of my life.

Packaging up the faulty headphones, I shipped them off to Koss headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisc., with a note, a copy of the receipt and a $6 check for return shipping and handling.

Little more than a week later, my headphones returned looking like new. No questions asked.

Outstanding.

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I received a letter this week from a Reno business: Please send a business card from your company to Craig Shepard in Atlanta.

"Craig is a seven year old who has a brain tumor and is very sick with little time to live. It is his dream to have an entry in The Guinness Book of World Records for the largest collection of business cards.

"Please take time to submit one card from your company. Then retype this letter on your letterhead and send it to 20 companies of your choice ..."

STOP! DON'T!

This urban myth simply won't go away.

The kid's real name is Craig Shergold, and the request went out in 1989 in England. (It was for get-well cards, not business cards.) He got 16 million by 1990, underwent successful surgery, and recovered.

Since then, however, the chain letter continues to be passed along by people who don't take the time to check it out. There are several variations, such as Sheppard and Sheldon, but it's the same story.

Because many of the chain letters somehow link this request to the Make A Wish Foundation - which was never involved - it actually had to change its mailing address after some 200 million (and counting) responses had arrived.

Please don't fall for chain letters or Internet hoaxes. Check them out. The Make A Wish Web site has information on this and several other false chain letters.

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I watched a couple of segments of "Scenic Rail Journeys" on KNPB this week and wished in vain the Virginia & Truckee Railroad would be featured.

Although I wouldn't call myself a train buff, I'm familiar with a couple of the lines - the Durango & Silverton in Colorado and the Cumbres & Toltec, which is also in the San Juan Mountains along the Colorado-New Mexico border. Both are narrow gauge and former branches of the Denver & Rio Grande Western line.

One I didn't know about is the Branson Scenic Railway, which departs from a 1905 depot in the Ozarks resort town. It was formed in 1993, and operates by lease along lines originally built in the early 1900s. They realized it would give people one more reason to visit Branson and stay an extra day.

Someday, the V&T will once again make the trip from Carson City to Virginia City, and when it does, it will be near the top of these lists of historic railroads.

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And finally, a few questions you won't hear on "Jeopardy," sent to me by Mary Santomauro, who has time to stop for a chuckle out in Silver Springs.

n How do you catch a unique rabbit? Unique up on it.

n How do you catch a tame rabbit? Tame way, unique up on it.

n How do you get holy water? You boil the hell out of it.

n What do fish say when they hit a concrete wall? Dam!

n What do Eskimos get from sitting on the ice too long? Polaroids.

n What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick.

n What do you call cheese that isn't yours? Nacho cheese.

Mary guarantees you'll be in a better mood after reading them. I don't think it's a lifetime guarantee, but it'll hold you until warm weather arrives.

n Barry Smith is editor of the Nevada Appeal. Contact him at editor@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1221.