To me, Tahoe is about health, even now as COVID-19 arrives with a spring snow storm

I hadn’t been outside in weeks already because I fell on ice and broke a hip late December, so last week I was outside getting direct sunlight and standing six feet from one of my neighbors talking when Josh drove up.  As he unloaded his trunk, I conversated, have you been on a trip. He turned and shouted at me, "No I've been skiing, in case you didn't realize it, that's what Tahoe is all about, skiing." Then he slammed his hood and tromped into the building.  I've mentioned before that the locals are kind of unfriendly to me.

But since then I haven’t been able to get the conversation out of my mind.

Because skiing is not what Tahoe has ever meant to me.

I grew up around the film industry, and from teen years on I got part time and full time jobs off that enterprise.  In the years I was young and beautiful, I temped at the studios.  (I only mention looks because when I went to those same agencies overweight in my fifties, they treated me really bad. In my twenties, they showered me with gifts to get me to stay. Finally I asked one owner, "Why? Fifteen years ago you had me working every day." He sneered at me, "That was fifteen years ago.")

As a studio temp, I'd get assignments where all I had to do was sit in the front office and answer a phone, now and then do a rudimentary task such as alphabetizing index cards.

One assignment was at Paramount studios, the executive offices where the main guys had comfortable well furnished suites. I'd sit there with nothing to do ALL DAY, if the phone rang I answered and logged the calls.  Then around 4:30 or later, the bosses would tromp in and shout, can you stay overtime? And of course I'd say yes and spend next few hours placing phone calls and making copies but honestly my main job was to look good, be part of the decoration, and I had lots of dates and went to lots of parties in beautiful homes and don’t regret an hour of it.

Often an old guy would stand over my desk and tell me stories from the old days. So it must have been during that time in my life that I learned about Lake Tahoe and it had nothing to do with skiing, it was about REHAB.

Movie stars, when they developed drug and alcohol problems in the early days, like 1910, would be poured half-comatose as secretly as possible onto a private train car and taken to Tahoe.  It used to be easier to get here from L.A. than it is now by train.  They'd arrive in Truckee then ride down to the lake where there were several sanitariums.

Guys like Fattie Arbuckle and others would hide in Tahoe to dry out, go through drug detox, in a place where none of the news media in L.A. would find them. So for me, Tahoe has always been a place you come to hide out, get healthy, recover in privacy.

Today in Tahoe they almost worship the local hospital for its broken bone business, which is ancillary to the ski industry which they also worship.

But to me, Tahoe has always been about recovery, relaxation, getting healthy after something made you sick.

Today we are covered in snow and reporting no COVID-19 "confirmed" cases.

Yesterday as I watched the spring snow fall and pile up by the foot through the window while self quarantined inside, I wondered, will the snow kill the virus in Tahoe?