By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
In the blistering heat of a recent summer day, I sat in a large, air-conditioned, packed-to-the-rafters Las Vegas venue. I heard something few Vegas visitors get to hear while there.
A speaker approached the venue’s main microphone and read, “The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.”
No, they are not reading from 1 Kings 19:11-13 at Caesar’s Palace these days. We were at Sunday morning Mass at St. Thomas More Catholic Church on Pecos Road in the Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nevada. And yes, the place was packed.
As I listened to the reading, I remembered some of the other translations of the same scriptural image that I’d heard before, during other masses. Although the image differs from time to time, the message is the same. God—love—is found in the gentle whisper, in the sheer silence, in the small voice, in the soft breath.
In the gentle breeze.
I noted the irony. The Las Vegas most people visit is not known for anything subtle or silent, let alone anything gentle. Could I find the proverbial gentle breeze in Las Vegas?
The purpose of our recent Vegas trip was to honor family. My wife grew up there. Her sister was celebrating her 60th birthday. My sisters and I spoke at a nearby event, paying tribute to my late brother at a convention of his fellow narcotics officers.
So I do have history in Vegas, but just a small part of Vegas history is mine.
This unique corner of the American Southwest started as a marsh, but turned into a desert when its rivers retreated underground. Some waters later resurfaced as wells that flowed down a wash into the Colorado River. Ancient mammoths roamed through the desert oases that developed around these artesian wells.
In warm weather, Native Americans occupied the nearby mountains. They spent each winter in the valley, however, near the bubbling waters of Big Spring, west of what is now downtown Vegas.
In 1829, Rafael Rivera, part of a trading party headed to Los Angeles, stopped there for water. He named the numerous green spaces he saw “Las Vegas,” which means “the meadows” in Spanish.
Eventually, Las Vegas was a common stop along the Old Spanish Trail, a trade route that connected New Mexico and California. John C. Fremont visited and explored Las Vegas in 1844, literally putting the place on the map just before the Mexican-American War.
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended that war and established the Rio Grande as the southern American border. It also gave the United States control over Nevada, as well as California, Utah, and most of the West.
Sporadic settlement followed, including by Mormon missionaries beginning in 1855. Railroad magnates (including wealthy non-Mormon Utahns like Thomas Kearns and David Keith) made Las Vegas a popular rest stop for rail travelers, and the city was incorporated in 1905.
The construction of the Hoover Dam beginning in 1931 spurred a population boom. The same year, realizing it would help local businesses, the Nevada state legislature legalized gambling. Casinos sprang up along Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas.
The gaming center of Las Vegas shifted south, however, after World War II when New York gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel built the Flamingo Hotel and Casino. Siegel’s friend—legendary mob boss Meyer Lansky—backed him in the venture, until he didn’t.
Siegel contracted with a man named Del Webb to do the construction work. When Webb overhead Siegel bragging to someone about the number of people he had shot, Bugsy told Webb, “Del, don’t worry, we only kill each other.” Siegel was prophetic, and in 1947, his colleague Lansky apparently had him shot.
When the Flamingo opened in 1946, the Las Vegas Strip was born. It would be torn down and reborn over and over during the seven decades that followed.
During one of those periods of evolution—the Rat Pack Era of the 1960s—my wife Vicki’s father took a job as a college basketball coach and moved his family from the midwestern plains to the Nevada desert. Thirty years later, we took our own children to visit them often, for Thanksgiving dinners, Easter egg hunts, and Christmas celebrations.
That’s when and where I first found the gentle breezes of Las Vegas…in the residential suburbs where Vicki’s parents raised their family and welcomed mine. When our kids hear the name Las Vegas, they don’t first think of Elvis or the infamous Strip. They remember their grandparents.
That’s not to say we never found any gentle breezes on Las Vegas Boulevard.
During one trip, we stayed at the Strip’s Mandalay Bay Hotel so our kids could swim in the wild wave pool there and marvel at the sharks in the aquarium. We took our kids to see “The Lion King” playing there and during a bathroom break I got stuck backstage for several entertaining minutes, chatting with the actors who played the hyenas.
Those sweet and innocent memories help offset more recent images of the same place, when a madman shattered a window thirty-two stories up and opened fire on a crowd at a music festival across the street. There was no gentle breeze on that night.
Further down the Strip is, I think, its loveliest feature—the human-made lake in front of the Bellagio Hotel. On our most recent trip, my wife, sisters, and I braved massive crowds in front to watch the lake’s famous fountains dance in sync with Elvis singing “Viva Las Vegas.”
We then worked our way through the throngs to the other side of that lake, to my favorite place in the city. When the fountains stopped dancing and the crowd dispersed, ducks swam quietly on the peaceful lake.
From that vantage point, there is a magical view of the Paris hotel’s replicas of the Eiffel Tower and a blue neon hot air balloon. I’ve seen the real tower, of course, and the real Paris. They certainly outshine the Vegas tribute replicas.
Still, I’ve discovered more than one gentle breeze in that very spot with family and friends while the lake rested between its garish performances.
Still further down, and just off the Strip, is the Las Vegas restaurant I choose to visit with the people I care about most. The chef is not Bobby Flay. The ambience is not designed by Giada de Laurentis. The kitchen heat does not come from Gordon Ramsay.
Instead, it’s an old time (and probably one-time-mob-owned) Italian restaurant called Battista’s Hole in the Wall. The unique place has color and character.
Black and white photos, fake plants, and fiascos—bottles fitted with a close-fitting straw basket—decorate Battista’s walls. Spotless ironed white linens cover the tables.
For many years, a wrinkled old master accordion player named Gordy Jaffe traveled table-to-table providing on demand entertainment. He played and sang “That’s Amore” for us one memorable time.
The Battista’s cuisine is pure comfort food, served up during a meal that starts with glass carafes of red and white wine and ends with hot cappuccinos, whether you want them or not. I feel a gentle breeze there whenever I visit.
There have been other gentle breeze moments too. Like the time I told my son the casino house always wins right before he hit a major slots jackpot while celebrating his 21st birthday.
Or when we saw Celine Dion and then Elton John perform at the Colosseum. Or the night we took my sisters—who introduced me to the Beatles music in the 1960s—to watch Cirque du Soleil’s “Love” at the Mirage. Any time spent with my sisters is a cool, gentle breeze.
I understand and appreciate that gentle breezes blow off the beaten path and in quiet secluded places. I write about them often in this blog. But gentle breezes can blow in loud, glitzy, brassy, over-the-top places too.
How do you find them? Bring the love…and your loved ones…there with you.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
