It’s time for a new state song

Some things, indeed, are like the weather. Take Nevada's state song, for example. Just about everyone complains about "Home Means Nevada." The tune's darn near unsingable and the lyrics are dated. But nobody wants to do anything about it.

Isn't it time to put an end to this suffering?

OK. maybe not everyone is complaining. After all, most Nevadans -- especially Las Vegans -- have probably never even heard "Home Means Nevada." Bertha Raffetto's song was written during the Great Depression, and that pretty much will be how you'll feel if you ever have to sing it in a group.

Consider the first verse and the chorus:

Way out in the land of the setting sun,

Where the wind blows wild and free,

There's a lovely spot, just the only one

That means home sweet home to me.

If you follow the old Kit Carson trail,

Until desert meets the hills,

Oh you certainly will agree with me,

It's the place of a thousand thrills.

Home, means Nevada,

Home, means the hills,

Home means the sage and the pines.

Out by the Truckee's silvery rills,

Out where the sun always shines,

There is the land that I love the best,

Fairer than all I can see.

Right in the heart of the golden west

Home, means Nevada to me."

C'mon. Silvery rills? I can't remember the last time I was out by the Truckee's silvery rills. Can you?

The origin of the song's story, as told by Mrs. Raffeto, goes like this: After pulling an all-nighter of hurried songwriting, she sang "Home Means Nevada" for the first time at the Nevada Native Daughters annual picnic in 1932. Afterward, an old man stood up, "propped his gold-headed ebony cane against the old square piano, removed his high topper from his leonine-head" and said, "Honey, that's the prettiest Nevada song that I have ever heard. It should be made the State Song of Nevada!"

That old man was Roswell K. Colcord, the governor of Nevada from 1891 to 1894. Apparently, like Moses, he was a revered elder, and because he liked it, "Home Means Nevada" became our state song.

I'm sure at the time it seemed like a good idea. But look, without taking anything away from the leonine Gov. Colcord, I must ask: While we may be bound by our history, are we doomed to sing it?

I think not. Let's find a new song more meaningful to all Nevadans, not just those along the silvery rills of the Truckee.

And speaking of getting stuck in history, isn't it time we did something about Nevada counties that by most meaningful measures have ceased to exist? Take Esmeralda County, for example.

At one time, it was a thriving mining county, with Goldfield as its hub. At its peak around the turn of the century, Goldfield supported some 30,000 people.

Today, the whole of Esmeralda County contains more burros than people. Yet, with only a few hundred people, Goldfield must still support the required governmental accoutrements of a county.

Tonopah, meanwhile, is only a few miles up the road, with 3,000 people. But it is the county seat of Nye, whose main population lives far to the south in Pahrump, a bustling Las Vegas bedroom community of close to 40,000.

Esmeralda and Nye's county lines made perfect sense in 1905, just like the lyric "silvery rills" did in the state song of yesteryear. But this is 2007. There must be a better way.

Sherman Frederick is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media. Readers may write him at sfrederick@ reviewjournal.com.