Love a cause for celebration on Friday the 13th

Linda and Roger Kerley celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on Friday the 13th.

The Minden couple were married in 1944, after being introduced by friends.

Roger was an engraver and had a deferment from the draft.

Linda was an 18-year-old girl living in Huntington Park, Calif., where she'd lived since her family came west from Illinois eight years before.

The couple lived at Sunset Beach, right on the ocean.

"My husband had his own business, so he wasn't home much, and I got to stay at the beach," she said. "We had nice neighbors. It is a small town surrounded by water on two sides."

While Roger was working, Linda served as post mistress in nearby Surfside.

"The office was a lot like it used to be in Genoa," she said. "I loved that little office."

The couple retired to their County Road home in Minden 15 years ago.

"My husband wanted to move up here because things don't rust," she said. "We had to buy a bicycle for the kids every year. Here you can buy one and it will last. My husband picked the house because it had an alley and a big garage. I like the ditch. I call it the crick and my grandchildren love it when it flows."

Linda, who has five children and seven grandchildren, just had a pacemaker installed.

"I'm going to be more active, or that's what the doctors say," she said.

For her anniversary, her grandchildren brought her clam chowder from the Carson Valley Inn.

"You've got to support the home business," she said.

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I spent 20 minutes chatting with Sen. John Ensign on Monday when the rest of the press was late to a soiree the senator was hosting to discuss John Kerry's record on the nuclear dump.

The senator and I both went to Clark High School in Las Vegas. He graduated in 1976 and I got my diploma in 1978.

Neither of us spent very long at Clark. He attended Whittell for his first few years and then was moved down to Vegas when his dad got a job at Circus Circus.

I did my freshman year in junior high school and graduated a year early.

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What folks enjoying Karl Horeis' adventures in Germany may not know is that he is planning on heading south next month. Way south.

Karl applied and appears to have gotten a job washing dishes in Antarctica.

Now when I was in the U.S. Navy, that was the sort of thing you were threatened with as a punishment.

But for Karl, it will be just another grand adventure. I told him he should at least try to get a book deal out of it.

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I had some fun with the Carson Valley Inn's Bill Henderson on Thursday.

I'd assigned R-C intern Tracy Tierney to do a story on the Inn's 20th anniversary barbecue. Being a good young journalist, Tracy wrote out 10 questions in preparation for the in-depth article.

When she got a hold of Bill, he was in no mood to rehash the whole thing for the umpteenth time and expressed that. Tracy was a little bit miffed, but like a good reporter, she just assumed that Bill was a jerk and moved on.

Bill, who is no jerk, called me a few minutes later to apologize for being gruff with Tracy.

I was understanding, but when he asked to apologize to Tracy in person, I couldn't help myself.

"She's not at her desk, Bill," I said. "I think she's crying in the bathroom."

Bill's a pretty savvy guy, but I had him for about a three-count before he caught on.

Kurt Hildebrand is editor for the Record-Courier Contact him at khildebrand@recordcourier.com or at 782-5121 ext. 215.