Thirty-Eight Years and One Breakfast Burrito Later

How a fried egg, a strip of bacon, and a little Pace salsa can take me back to being nineteen.

April 1988. Biloxi, Mississippi.

I was nineteen years old, stationed at Keesler Air Force Base, and learning that some of life’s greatest pleasures come wrapped in a flour tortilla.

There was a little grill in the Triangle. If you were there, you probably remember it.

They made a breakfast burrito that was about as simple as food gets.

One flour tortilla. One fried egg, yolk broken. A strip of thin, crispy, salty bacon. A splash of Pace salsa.

That’s it.

I’d usually order two, along with a plastic cup of orange juice. With pulp, thank you very much.

And that orange juice was GOOD.

I’d been visiting Florida since the mid-1970s, and I’d tasted the fresh stuff from A. Vachon Groves in Fort Pierce. I knew what good orange juice tasted like.

Stopping at Vachon’s wasn’t so much routine as ritual. An old advertisement I’ve since come across lists A. Vachon Groves, Inc. at 2220 S. US 1 in Fort Pierce, selling Temple oranges and Ruby Red grapefruit, with a gift shop offering souvenirs, collectibles, and antiques. The advertisement brought back the place, but what I remember most is the orange juice.

Whatever they were serving at Keesler passed my test.

The whole breakfast ran about $2.25, as I recall. Doesn’t sound like much today, but to a nineteen-year-old airman in 1988, it was a splurge.

A payday treat.

I didn’t buy it every morning. I couldn’t justify that. But every couple of weeks, when the paycheck arrived, I’d indulge.

Funny what sticks with you.

I’ve eaten plenty of elaborate meals since then. Expensive meals. Meals prepared by people who knew considerably more about cooking than the fellow working that little grill.

But here I am, nearly forty years later, still thinking about that damned breakfast burrito.

And occasionally making one.

The Breakfast Burrito

Makes: 1 burrito

Ingredients

• 1 flour tortilla, preferably a regular one for the original experience
• 1 large egg
• 1 strip of thin-cut bacon, cooked crispy
• 1 spoonful of Pace salsa
• A little butter or cooking fat for the egg

Optional for my present-day version: a lower-carb protein wrap and a little shredded Mexican cheese.

Directions

1. Cook the bacon until crispy.
2. Fry the egg, breaking the yolk as it cooks.
3. Warm the tortilla until it’s flexible.
4. Place the egg and bacon in the tortilla and add a little Pace salsa.
5. Roll it up tightly and give it a quick turn on the hot griddle or skillet, seam-side down first, to hold everything together.

That’s all there is to it.

No potatoes. No mountain of sausage. No twelve-ingredient sauce that takes longer to prepare than the entire breakfast.

Just a good, simple burrito.

These days, I often use a lower-carb protein wrap, and sometimes I add a little shredded Mexican cheese. That’s what you’re seeing in the pictures.

It’s good. Really good.

But if I want the full experience, the one that takes me back to that little grill at Keesler, I use a regular flour tortilla, one fried egg with the yolk broken, a single strip of crispy bacon, and Pace salsa.

Then I chase it with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, pulp included.

And for a few minutes, I’m nineteen again, about to march off to Wolfe Hall for another day’s training in what was locally known as a Pop-Tart AFSC: Communication Systems Computer Operator. A six-week course that kept me in Biloxi for about seven weeks.

TL;DR — Ramble (tap to expand the ramble)

You see, some guys in electronic warfare stayed at Keesler for twenty-two months before they ever saw their first duty station. Those guys were the military’s version of Val Kilmer in Real Genius.

One guy down the hall from my dorm room had a stereo system that could rattle the windows of cars on the street three hundred yards away. At least that’s how I remember it. He had a Walkman playing cassettes, a couple of tiny boxes he’d built in the electronic warfare lab, and these monstrous six-foot speakers. And the sound coming out of those things was just insane.

Sure, an amplifier driving big speakers doesn’t sound like much now. But this was 1988. Walkmans were what we had. To this small-town kid, seeing those little boxes make those giant speakers come alive wasn’t cutting-edge technology. NAY! It was bleeding edge.

He’d explain what he’d built and how it worked, and I’d listen to the shit he was describing like he’d just come back from the future. I didn’t understand half of it then, and I doubt I’d understand it today. Maybe there were engineers somewhere doing the same thing. Didn’t matter. I’d never seen anything like it, and I bet that guy went on to do some crazy stuff.

Yeah, you could still smell the hay seed on me, I guess.

He used to brag that he’d already drawn up schematics for something he planned to build when he got home: a device that would read a cop’s radar gun and send back whatever speed he wanted it to show.

He was one of those guys.

I wonder what ever happened to him. I bet he’s wearing a white hat somewhere right now, hasn’t seen daylight in thirty years, and nobody knows where he is.

Or he works at McDonald’s. Who the hell knows?

Sorry, old man tangent rambling. What was I saying?

Those were the good days. Marching with a little bit of breakfast burrito in my belly, hammer-and-heel beat cadence with a couple hundred other airmen, working in unison as one cohesive, flowing team. Much like a school of swallows flying through the air, several hundred birds moving as one unit.

A good portion of what I miss about the military was the sense of belonging to something bigger than me. You don’t find that much in the civilian world, not where it counts.

Something Old, Something New

I’m still enjoying that same old Pace salsa flavor I discovered back in 1988, just wrapped up in something a little more compatible with how I eat today.

These days I’m using Olé Xtreme Wellness high-fiber wraps. According to the package, each wrap has 60 calories, 16 grams of total carbohydrates, 12 grams of fiber, and 4 grams of protein. That’s 4 grams of net carbs, calculated by subtracting fiber.

Throw in an egg, a strip of crispy bacon, and occasionally a little shredded Mexican cheese, and I’ve got a breakfast that still scratches that nearly forty-year-old itch.

A little slice of this hillbilly’s life.

My editor wants this to have a closing with some sort of meaning. Not everything I write has to have a meaning.

There has to be some lesson in that.

Ingredients on Amazon: Pace Picante Sauce and Ole Xtreme Wellness high-fiber tortillas. These links open Amazon search results; stock and sellers vary.

Affiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you buy through these links, I may receive a commission at no additional cost to you.

Peace,

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