MINA, NEV. — On an overcast morning in stark western Nevada, where towns are mostly remnants of mining booms past, Pam Eddy dresses each table in her modest cafe with French mustard and fancy tomato ketchup. Coffee drip-drops, an ABBA album hums.
An hour crawls by. Nothing.
Pam's husband, Bob, loses himself in photos of Mina's more prosperous youth. Bob is white-haired and blue-eyed and sports a maroon trucker's cap, which depicts a cowboy, a crayfish and the oxymoron DESERT LOBSTER.
Go ahead, ask him about it: He'll muster an almost-smile.
Here in Mina -- population about 200 -- Bob and Pam Eddy have pursued an improbable dream. For about 14 years, they've tried to bring seafood, or their version of it, to this remote patch of desert. They've sparred with the state, pleaded with lawmakers and become heroes to sagebrush rebels over their "desert lobsters."
Bob, 67, thumbs black-and-white photos with time-worn hands, remembering when Mina was less reliant on outsiders. It's pronounced "mine-ah," and is either named for the Spanish word for "mine," a female prospector or a local prostitute. A century-old railroad and mining town, Mina once supported its own restaurants and a nearby post office. Even a Ford dealership.
"My dad was here during the Great Depression, and there was no depression," Bob says.
But the railroad has closed, old buildings have burned down, and the population has fallen from nearly 500 in 1970. Still, Bob dreamed of opening a roadside stand.
And why not? He had a retiree's time and a clear monopoly on the sagebrush seafood market. Reno is about 170 miles away; Las Vegas, 280. Drivers barreling between them have to pass through on two-lane Highway 95.
Trying to make the most of his location, Bob had been raising thousands of desert lobsters -- actually Australian red claw crayfish, which can weigh more than a pound -- mainly in a greenhouse just south of Mina. His 10 tanks (8 feet wide, 22 feet long, 3 feet deep) were partly buried to keep the water from dipping below 80 degrees.
"You can feed them peas; you can feed them alfalfa hay," he says. "They eat just about anything. You can even feed them cow manure."
Each day, Bob sold a handful of live blue-and-red crayfish, for $14 a pound, to pit-stopping truckers and tourists. The crayfish gained a following. Fans included Bob Beers, an accountant and former Republican state senator, who in 2007 championed the creatures on the state Senate floor.
