A number of years ago, in a distant time some of you may not remember, a troubled magazine writer suffering from unresolved childhood fears wrote an article in which he described Highway 50 in central Nevada as "the loneliest road in America." When we who live along this delightful and enchanting route first learned of his smug and shallow assessment, we were damned insulted, but now the more enlightened among us are gradually beginning to realize that the poor man was profoundly disturbed and probably just couldn't help himself. Although debate among practicing psychologists persists to this day, and perhaps always will, most of the ones with licenses agree that because he could find no bustling 5th Avenues or glittering Hollywood Boulevards along the way to mollify his deeply rooted and neurotic feelings of isolation he concluded that he was lonely. In his sick and depraved mind he was confusing stark beauty and wide-open spaces with loneliness, which leads us now to believe he possessed a morbidly exaggerated sense of the role crowds and bright lights play in promoting feelings of acceptance and inclusion. Today we understand and sympathize with this anguished man and realize that he should no longer be held accountable for his regrettable remarks. After all, viewed through the lens of his twisted mind, things must have looked a lot different to him than they do to us normal people who live here in Nevada.
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