By William Daugherty in 1891
Bodie, California, Kathy Weiser-Alexander.
Joe Potter was one of the old-time sports that is yet remembered in nearly all the mining towns of Nevada He died in Bodie, California some ten years ago, and without intending any offense to his memory, the following anecdote is related to illustrate his bluff manners.
Joe used to live in Eureka in 1871-72 during the small-pox epidemic. Just previous to the outbreak of the dreaded scourge, Joe had found himself delinquent to his landlady for room rent which she reminded him of on several occasions. She, in fact, waylaid him so often that Joe was, if ever in his life, really distressed in his desire to pay, but he could not raise a dollar to spare for that purpose and he was at his wit’s end when smallpox broke out in camp.
Joe’s room was in a little house off by itself, and he immediately hung out a yellow flag, and for the months that followed during the epidemic, he never saw the landlady. After a long siege of chipping on borrowed checks, he one night made a winning of a hundred dollars and left the faro table to spin around the block and catch his wind. The strikers were laying for him, having heard by a telegraphic system peculiar to themselves that “Joe won a hundred.” Before he got out of the faro room, three or four struck him for $5, $2.50, and a dollar, and knowing how it was himself, he handed it out but, when he reached the door he was surrounded by a half dozen opium fiends with further requests for a half dollar to hit the pipe.
At this, Joe straightened back with a blunt refusal and some profanity as he pushed them aside and said, “Go to h–l. Do you think I’m a post office?”
Cyrus Noble Whiskey Ad showing Faro Players
By William Daugherty, for the Reno Evening Gazette, March 13, 1891. Compiled and edited by Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, updated January 2021.
About the Author: Written by William Daugherty wrote for the Reno Evening Gazette in 1891. The Gazette was first published on October 12, 1876, and continued for the next 107 years. In 1977, it was merged with the Nevada State Journal and continues to exist today as the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Note: The article is not verbatim as spelling errors, minor grammatical changes, and editing have occurred for the ease of the modern reader.
Also See:
Pioneers on the Nevada Frontier (Reno Evening Gazette)
Tales of the Overland Stage (Reno Evening Gazette)
Nevada Mining Tales (Reno Evening Gazette)