Most of us have forgotten the great changes that came about after the telegraph lines came to Mason. Wagons piled with wooden poles rolled down from Carson City and the Western Union men went about stringing up wires. We hung streamers and banners along the roads from Mason Street all the way to the river. Mrs. Sheeran planted red, white, and blue petunias in her flower boxes and for the duration it was like one long Independence Day parade.
A new post office was built nearby the telegraph house, all white and blue with spindly tresses like a ladder back chair. It was furnished with gleaming windows and a young, bright-eyed clerk from Yerington. The day the post office opened, this young clerk was nearly scared out of her skin by Allen Breck, the town’s old cooper who did not favor the telegraph’s presence in Mason. He charged in like a cat left inside a black iron box in the sun, calling her every name and swearing fit to make the river boil. The sheriff came along fast and took him away, but Breck did not stop there.
— Read the rest of the story over at The Assortment —
