Breakfast in Pahrump

Breakfast in Pahrump

We drove into Pahrump, Nevada, late on a Sunday morning after a few days in Vegas. The October sky was clear and bright; the mountains in the distance sharp against the sky. We were heading for Death Valley to explore some canyons. We gassed up the car and went into a casino for breakfast. We found the cafe and grabbed a table in the non-smoking section. No real difference exists between smoking and non-smoking, just ashtrays and a few feet of distance separating the two sections. Shirley and I ordered waffles and coffee and settled back in our chairs.

On the other side of the cafe, a small group caught my attention. At one end of a long table sat a young Marine Private in his dress blues; the white hat with its patent leather black brim resting on a chair beside him. He seemed so terribly young to be wearing a dress blue. He was quiet and absorbed in the breakfast in front of him. At the far end of the table sat a large older woman wearing a huge sweatshirt, smoking as she leaned back in her chair, knocking her ashes off in the detritus of her breakfast that sat on the plate in front of her. I took her to be the Marine's mother. On one side of the table sat a young couple totally engaged with each other, eyeing and touching one another without a care in the world. Across from them, a young woman sat and busied herself with a small child strapped into a stroller. There was a sense of aloofness around this group, and no conversation.

I tried to imagine what this breakfast was about, here in this sad casino on an October morning. I could not remember seeing such a low ranking Marine (especially someone as young as this) in dress blues. I wondered about the reason behind this gathering. I did not think they were together for a wedding, as the casual dress of everyone else did not mesh with the occasion. Was it a sendoff for this young man? On the other hand, could they have been at a funeral, the funeral of a friend perhaps. The young mother tended to her baby, the couple wanted to be somewhere else alone, Mom smoked and had nothing to say, the casino slot machines hummed away in the background.

I remembered a silent breakfast with my father at Union Station in Hartford, Connecticut, back in 1969. We were having a final meal together on a dark and cold January morning, and I would soon board a bus that would take me to Fort Dix in New Jersey to enter the Army. The specter of Vietnam loomed silently between us. My father smoked and had eggs, and I had eggs as well: we did not talk. After breakfast, we walked over to the terminal together and I prepared to get on my bus. The last thing he said to me was, "Be good and take care." We shook hands and he pressed a twenty into my palm. I climbed into the bus and watched him disappear as he stood on the curb, watching the bus and me as we pulled away from the station. Now, I was revisiting this memory here in a casino in Nevada almost 40 years on.

The Marine and the others finished their breakfast and got up to leave. The Marine carried his hat out in front of him in a manner that would have made the honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns proud. They filed out quietly, the mom said thank you to the cashier.

The world goes on as before: young men and women enter the armed services, and some find themselves sent off to war. Amid all the uncertainty and fear, silent families gather with nothing to say, and the generations grow up apart.

I wondered where the young Marine would be in forty years, whether or not he would be alive. I wondered if he might, as an old man, see a young fresh faced soldier at breakfast one morning, and if the sight of that soldier might send his mind back through the years to visit this breakfast here today, this silent breakfast in Pahrump, Nevada?