RENO - A couple or three things stood out as I reclined on a dusty mountain side with "Ben Cartwright" and his son "Hoss" of "Bonanza" ... who were trying not to look rich.

Lorne Greene and Dan Blocker'll strike gold again, not in TV this lime. But in tourism in a new Ponderosa Ranch over at Incline Village which might bring in a million visitors a year to buy the jams and jellies and the other souvenirs - and get a squint at Ben and Hoss.

"It's our 10th season we're starting in 'Bonanza,'" Lorne Greene said. "I remember the first year when I work up worrying that the show'd be canceled."

"The 10th year you wake up hoping it will be canceled," Dan Blocker said.

It was 1959 when they started. The year Marilyn Monroe got interested in Yves Montand, the year of the TV quiz scandals; "Mr. K" (Khrushchev) was here, Eisenhower was President, Eddie Fisher & Liz Taylor were celebrating a year of heavenly bliss.

Still going, now an institution.

They love the climate here and the recent remark by some local who said Easterners might like it out here - "They might find it nice sometime to breathe air they couldn't see."

They're impressed that since the show's seen in more than 60 countries, much of the old world thinks America is still Old West.

"Violence, we don't need violence," Lorne Greene said. "You don't need a fight if you've got a good story."

Hoss couldn't pass up a chance. "If them violence guys don't quit it," he said, "I'm gonna kill every damn one of 'em!"

Wendy Barric, the radiocaster, likes to tell that when she was a teenager in London her mummy wanted her to marry a certain suitor hut she said, "Him, he's too skinny!" The skinny one was Howard Hughes.

Sheila MacRae'll star at the Latin Quarter for a week, starting July 10 ... Robert Mitchum put some of his "Anzio" loot into 26 quarter-horses, and says, "Supporting them is like keeping 46 daughters at Vassar" ... Hugh Downs'll know this week if his aching back requires surgery ... Composer Jimmy Webb ("Up, Up & Away") sent 40 roses to singer Joni Mitchell at the Bitter End.