Thursday, April 03, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Editor's Note: Common ground

I feel like a member of my family has been lost in Iraq. It's not, in fact, the case, because I'm not aware of any relatives serving there. But the recent death of Marine Corps Lt. Frederick Pokorney Jr. in fighting near Nasiriyah has shaken me as if we were related.

As you probably know from the extensive news coverage of Nevada's first Gulf War II casualty, Pokorney was from Tonopah, a small town about 200 miles north of Las Vegas. With his sturdy 6-foot-5 frame, he was a high school basketball and football star there, a Mucker.

What makes me think of Pokorney as family is we both grew up in rural Nevada, both played small-school high school sports, both worked as a dishwasher to earn a little carrying-around money. His death 7,500 miles away struck a chord with me that I didn't expect from this TV war.

Pokorney, 31, was several years younger than me, so we didn't cross paths. But I can guarantee we shared the experience of traveling long distances by school bus for games against our rivals--White Pine, Moapa Valley, Virgin Valley, Boulder City.

I remember those trips with a mixture of dread and nostalgia. From Pahrump, all our conference games were at least a few hours away and sometimes eight or more. The long hours on the bus could get tedious at times, sapping our physical and mental strength even as we should have been gearing up for a big game. We'd lumber off the bus with stiff legs and tired minds, leaving the home team at a distinct advantage. But the trips also could be exhilarating. First, they were a chance to get out of town for a while, an escape from the doldrums, an adventure, even if our destination wasn't significantly different from where we started. Few of us had traveled much, so the mean streets of, say, Overton had an exotic feel.

One of the first trips I remember was to Tonopah in junior high. This was back in the day when the state apparently had enough money to fund interschool junior high sports. Tonopah was very cold, still some splashes of ice on the ground. We had time to kill, so a group of us took off, abandoning the school grounds and venturing through neighborhoods en route to the commercial strip along the highway, no doubt to spend some of the money our parents had given us for the trip. We were running downhill through back yards, roughly single file, and I, as usual, was watching the ground more intently than I should have. If I had looked up, I surely would have seen the clothesline that everyone else was ducking under. Instead, I ran straight into it, the line clipping me just under the nose. I hit the ground hard, blood gushing. It hurt at first, but soon became a memory that we laughed about for years.

Around that same time I was a trainer (a.k.a. water boy) for the high school football team. We got to travel with the team, and one of the trips to Tonopah ended on a grim note. Tonopah and Pahrump were archrivals for many years, before Pahrump's growth far outstripped Tonopah's stagnant population. And the rivalry was, at times, tense. After that game, I remember we had to run to our bus and race out of town, with eggs, rocks and other debris hitting the bus as we fled.

When I reached high school, the rivalry became a little more friendly, and a few acquaintance-level friendships developed between rival players. Basically, we got to know each other's names a little bit, and to share grudging respect for each other's best players. The highlight of my fairly undistinguished high school athletic career was being a four-year starter on the baseball team. At that time, under coach Rod Poteete, Pahrump was a perennial small-school baseball power. We beat up on just about everybody our size, making the playoffs all four years I was there and going to the state championships three of those years (not winning, but that's a story for another day).

One year Tonopah, which had just started its baseball program, came to Pahrump for a zone playoff series. They were badly outmatched, and we pounded them in two straight games. But I remember that Tonopah's best player was John Friel, for whom we had the greatest respect. Following in the footsteps of his brothers and his sister (who played at UNR), John was a fine basketball player, a natural, almost single-handedly defeating a mediocre Pahrump squad in years previous. But in baseball he was fairly average, probably because he had not dedicated himself to the sport. He had been a track and field guy, and no doubt played baseball that year simply to give the Muckers a fighting chance.

Growing up in rural Nevada, for most of us, was an isolated experience. We paid little attention to anything happening outside the boundaries of our small towns. Visiting Las Vegas was a big deal, a day trip, and once we got there we steered toward what we knew--McDonald's, Sears, Circus Circus, whatever. Except for perhaps our favorite heavy metal band's exploits, world affairs were rarely discussed in class or anywhere else.

This is basically the world in which Fred Pokorney spent his teenage years. Being in distant Tonopah, he may have been even more isolated than I was. He joined the Marines soon after graduating from high school. A whole lot of my friends in Pahrump signed up for the military after high school, too, largely because they saw it as an escape from the doldrums--not unlike those long bus trips to the far reaches of Nevada.

--GEOFF SCHUMACHER