John Selden had nothing on Nevada’s political elder statesman Harry Reid.

It was Selden, the eminent English scholar and jurist of the first half of the 1600s, who famously said, “Old friends are best.” In a few words, Selden made a profound point.

Fast forward four centuries to last week in the festive backyard of the Henderson home of J.J. and Mary Anne Balk, who gathered some old friends of the now retired U.S. Sen. Reid and wife Landra for a casual lunch. It was a way of welcoming them back home.

Invitations were annotated, “This is not a fundraiser!” (That must have come as a relief to the people who’d attended Reid campaign events there for four decades.)

The conversations that took place didn’t break big news, and weren’t meant to, but the repartee of Reid’s old friends from Henderson and Boulder City -- some of the people who’ve known him longest and best -- remained nothing short of remarkable. Take a moment to think about it: How many of us at any age, much less pushing 80, can summon a few dozen people from our peach-fuzzed adolescence to sit around and laugh about old times?

Some of those friends met him back when he had hitchhiked from hardscrabble Searchlight to Henderson just to get to high school. They were folks who’d stuck by him through losses to Paul Laxalt for Senate in 1974 and to Bill Briare for Las Vegas mayor in 1975, and cheered him on all the way to the top of the Senate as the most wily and powerful political force in Nevada history.

Reid hasn’t made many public appearances since leaving office a little more than a year ago, and down the homestretch of the 2016 campaign he looked frail and far from that agile ex-fighter from Searchlight. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. He would never admit it, but it appeared having a grand piano-sized load of stress lifted off his shoulders after leaving one of the most pressurized political atmospheres on the planet has added a little spring in his 78-year-old’s step.

His memory was sharp as he lauded his lifelong pal Don Wilson about their days as high school baseball “stars” (Wilson was the batting champ; Reid mostly collected bench splinters.) He was genuinely appreciative of the outpouring of warmth.

President Donald Trump’s crude comments about African nations and Haiti during a recent round in the immigration, which generated a powerful rebuke by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, gave Reid an easy opening to slam the Tweeter in Chief. Instead, Reid lauded his longtime Senate ally, Durbin, whom he compared to a pugnacious cousin who had an uncanny knack of showing up in time to lend fists to any fight.

Asked to comment about the current state of the Washington zoo, he announced the Reids were selling their D.C. residence and for the first time in many years would have no connection the the place they’d spent so much of their lives. The Reids sold their Searchlight residence in 2014.

“When I was there, I loved my job, loved my job,” he said. “Every day I couldn’t believe I was able to do what I tried to do. As a result of that, we loved our home (in Washington.) But we don’t work there anymore. We don’t enjoy being there.”

Some would argue he’d worn out his welcome by the time he retired, but even his fiercest critics can’t effectively argue that any Nevada elected official had as great an influence on the Silver State. Reid’s impact is writ large in water and land use issues, the environmentally sensitive areas now set aside for wilderness, a national park and monuments, renewable energy and many other areas. In a state that likes to suspender-snap about its libertarian political roots, Reid worked the federal system and protected the state’s job-producing military installations while fending off the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project.

Changing the demographics of the federal bench to fit a rapidly changing Nevada is clearly one of his proudest achievements.

“I put more people on the federal court here in Nevada than all the other senators combined,” he said, noting many successful nominations of groundbreaking women and minorities to the bench. “... It’s really changed the court. It was all a bunch of white men before.”

At a time of life when a person can’t help contemplating his legacy, Reid has sent some 8,000 boxes of documents and papers and thousands of hours of video to the University Nevada-Reno’s archive, where it will be sifted and catalogued for future research. Among those focused on Reid’s environmental record will be Jon Christensen, an assistant professor and journalist-in-residence at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

When he says, “I’ve done more to change the environment than anybody” in Nevada, it’s not hyperbole. He managed to defend mining and take strong positions on wilderness and federal public land use. Those environmental stances put in him direct opposition to the latest chapter in the Sagebrush Rebellion movement characterized by the dustup between the Bureau of Land Management and Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy.

A large-scale federal land transfer to the state “would be awful,” Reid said. “With few exceptions, the states have screwed up the lands.”

He had generous praise for former Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, his partner in a new public policy institute at UNLV scheduled to take shape this year, and said he looked forward to seeing an endowed Intermountain West history professorship filled with a notable academic. Reid was also looking forward to his role as a distinguished fellow at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law.

But, when it all came right down to it, even Reid’s longest, closest friends -- people he’d known his entire life -- wanted details about his fascination with unidentified flying objects. None of them mentioned recalling his previous interest in such astronomical matters.

And speaking of astronomical, The New York Times first reported Reid’s interest was so great that he pushed through $22 million in dark money federal funding for a research program run by Nevada businessman and UFO enthusiast Robert Bigelow. The founder of Bigelow Aerospace, known for his conservative politics, he found a willing advocate in Reid. If the senator from Searchlight glossed over the wise strategy of turning a wealthy potential political adversary into an ally at a time his own popularity was waning, well, maybe that’s just part of the mystery.

As they say, the truth is out there.

Give or take an occasional unexplained sighting, now that he’s returned home it appears there’s nothing but blue skies ahead for Harry Reid.

John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.