BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History Advertisement

Twenty years ago, I used to hang out at a cozy little piano bar at the Frontier Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. A beautiful songbird named Tiffany sang and played piano there. She was a dream come true and there hasn't been anyone like her in Vegas since.

One night, a guy came in, took a seat at the bar, and ordered a drink. Pretty soon he said, "Boy, did I have a wild day."

"What happened?" someone asked.

"I rolled my van on I-15. I didn't have my seat belt on and I walked away."

"Wow," Tiffany and a couple of others exclaimed.

Then he added, "That's when I knew that God had a plan for me."

I thought about what he said for a moment, then replied, "I'll tell you what. Go roll your van on I-15 again with no seat belt on and see if God's plan has changed."

I wasn't really trying to insult the man's belief in his god. My intention was to sensitize him to the big part that chance, or randomness, plays in our lives. I believe that life is very much a crap shoot. You walk away from an accident today, and next time, under the same circumstances, it's a one-way trip to the morgue. It's like playing the Big Wheel in a casino.

We human beings have a tough time with the idea of chance. I don't know of a culture in the world that places such a high value on the role of chance in their view of things. The Pueblo Indians, for example, will not allow that chance plays any part in accounting for what happens. For them, everything is orderly and determined.

People typically take comfort in believing we are in some manner masters of our fate. The outcome of our lives, we like to think, is determined either by our own thoughts and actions or by some sort of divine plan or by a combination of the two.

We see very little room for randomness. Even Einstein could never accept the idea of randomness in quantum mechanics, the science of subatomic matter. "God does not play dice with the universe," he famously said.

But Einstein was wrong. God does play dice. He does it everywhere, all the time.

Nowhere is this more evident than on the Western frontier. Chance played a huge role in determining "Who did what, where, and when," and "Who made it big and who failed."

In no activity on the frontier did chance play a bigger role in determining winners and losers than in prospecting for gold and silver. Nature didn't put much precious metal in her mountains and valleys; and where she did, she often did a pretty good job of concealing its presence. Most discoveries on the frontier were made on the basis of chance as opposed to real prediction.

Moreover, when it came to prospectors looking for the golden glitter, it was a case of "many are called, but few are chosen."

Many searched for the door to Easy Street, but the opportunities for even modest success were limited by the nature of the game. Real success in prospecting came only to a select few. Most prospectors were not lucky. And, of course, it was the winners who got the accolades and all the press and on whom history later focused. History cares nothing for losers -- there are too many of them. Who wants to hear all the sad stories and bad news?

Yet, losers have a story to tell. In the rare cases when the loser's version has been preserved, it is often more interesting, richer and more human than the winner's tale. Take the case of the old man who lived in a cabin in Troy Canyon on the east side of Railroad Valley in Nye County in 1908.

In that year an automobile race, dubbed the Great Race, was run from New York to Paris. Teams from the United States, Italy, Germany, and France pitted their cars against each other in a grueling road race across the U.S., Siberia, and Europe.

The racers departed New York Feb. 12, 1908, on a route that took them across Nevada. The Italian team, driving a Züst automobile whose back seat had been removed in Ogden, Utah, to make room for a large gas tank, reached Ely March 26. From Ely they drove to Current, traveled south down Railroad Valley, and then west to Tonopah and Goldfield.

Reluctant to camp on the open plain for fear of coyotes -- yes, coyotes -- they spent the night in Railroad Valley as guests of an unnamed old Frenchman who lived in a stone cabin in Troy Canyon on the west side of the Grant Range.

A member of the Italian team, Antonio Scarfoglio, wrote a book on his team's adventures in the Great Race titled Round the World in a Motor Car. He provides a lengthy account of the old Frenchman. I will quote from Scarfoglio's wonderful description of this man whose dreams never came true.

"A fine old man with a flowing beard, dressed in leather, with a felt cap on his head. . . . He took us inside, to a large, well-lighted room. On the walls were bunches, wreathes, and garlands of paper flowers, red, blue, and violet ... There was an iron bedstead in a corner, a glowing hearth, a table, some books ... In another corner was a photograph of a lady with two little children beside her ... The grand old man towered amidst his household go[o]ds, and his Herculean body seemed to increase in size on contact with the little delicate things among which he lived ...

"Then, simply and calmly, sitting on the edge of the bed, he began to tell his story. He told us of his beautiful country far away, of a poor but serene and happy life, of an adored wife and two children, and of the great longing that seized him. Toiling beside his wife and children in his distant home, he was seized with despair because he could not give to the objects of his affection everything they desired ... With eager eyes he would read in newspapers reports of an El Dorado somewhere across the sea, to the west ... So he went, alone, leaving everybody. He arrived, suffered, but found nothing ...

"He endured the pangs of hunger, perished with cold, wandered over sea and land in search of fortune, for 30 years without cessation. Spring and summer passed over his head and winter whitened his hair. He heard nothing from his wife and she heard nothing from him ... He traveled breathlessly on the track of fortune, from Alaska to the Transvaal, from Canada to Australia, with his pack, and bundle, and rifle, and tin of corned beef ...

"But he never found fortune ... He had squandered his life, cast it to the four winds. He had thrust far behind him all affection and all joy; cut every bond, and untied every knot which united him to humanity. And now, after 30 years, he is hopeless, weakened, and exhausted ... His hopes of happiness have passed ... He will never see his country or his family again; he will never leave this spot ... He will last until his eyelids are tired, and then he will stretch himself on his bed in the midst of his paper flowers and smiling photographs, and will die, quietly, like a man who, having no more strength for climbing, allows himself to roll gently down an incline ..."

The Italian team spent the night at the old man's cabin and left for Tonopah the next morning. Scarfoglio wrote, "... the hermit accompanied us as far as the mouth of the gorge, and remained standing on the edge of a rock with his hands shading his eyes until we disappeared from sight."

There were winners and losers in the big casino that was the Western frontier, and, as with the casinos on the Strip in Las Vegas today, the percentage of big winners was vanishingly small.

Note: The American and German teams reached Paris in July 1908; the Italians, in September. The French dropped out and sold their car to a Chinese merchant in Peking.