Columnist Susan Snyder: Hawthorne still open for business

Friday, Aug. 26, 2005 | 4:09 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

August 27-28, 2005

Hawthorne dodged the bullet that could have killed a whole town.

"It's open! The base is staaaaaying open!" workers at Maggie's restaurant sang Wednesday when a coworker arrived to tell them she'd watched the Base Realignment and Closure Commission vote to spare the Hawthorne Army Depot.

Minutes earlier I had ordered a big bacon cheeseburger with fries from Bea Collier, who was worried about what might happen to her hometown.

"We haven't heard yet," Collier said. "One of the girls said it should be in the next 15 to 20 minutes."

For the record, Maggie's turns out one of the best burger-and-fries combos you're likely to find along U.S. 95 between Las Vegas and the Carson-City turnoff at Yerington.

Aside from gutting 37 percent of Mineral County's workforce, closing the Hawthorne depot would have made a memory out of the best meal in 300 miles.

"It would be just devastating," Collier said as we awaited the news.

"And it's not just the depot. It would affect everything," she added. "Everybody would leave. They'd have to. They'd have to go where there's jobs."

We considered the prospect of that future.

"It would be like Luning or Mina or Gabbs," Collier said, naming three dead or dying mining towns strung along highways to the south and north.

Collier was born and raised in Hawthorne. Her father has worked in the depot's electronics department for at least 40 years.

"He raised his kids here. And I raised mine here," she said.

She paused, as if considering the prospect of a Hawthorne without the Army depot again, then headed off to figure the check for another customer.

Second later, whoops and cheers came from the direction of the kitchen. Barbara Edington, restaurant supervisor, had arrived to announce the good news she'd just heard on C-SPAN.

Then everybody was talking at once.

"It's staying open!"

"I know! I just saw them take the vote."

"Most of my family's worked there for 20 to 30 years."

Edington said she had been packing her family's RV for a weekend trip to Yosemite National Park while tracking the vote on the Web and television.

"I was running from my computer, to the television and out to the RV," she said. "You wouldn't believe it. They said we were part of the Reno metropolitan area. Reno's 130 miles away."

Worlds away, actually.

Collier and her neighbors didn't need a government hearing to show them how much they all depend on each other. Such connections are easy to see in a town like Hawthorne.

But they seemed hard to explain to Pentagon officials, whose connections to politics and bottom lines are stronger than the bond to the perfect town with the perfect burger.

Still, the bottom line eventually saved Hawthorne. Inspectors found the depot was larger and stored far more than anyone thought, and as a result would cost more to close than to keep open.

"That's what I've been saying all along," Collier said.

Waiting for government officials to figure it out sure made for a long summer, she added.

"It was quite a scare."