Hundreds buy fireworks at tribal interstate plaza

It really is hot here Friday at the Moapa Paiute Travel Plaza just off Interstate 15 at the Valley of Fire exit. There really is a dust storm. There really is jerky for sale.

But if you believe the rest of it, you might also believe the claim of every person we chatted with — that none of the illegal fireworks purchased here will be used in an illegal manner.

Any type of fireworks that explode, twirl on the ground or fly into the air are illegal in Clark County — all of the county except the sovereign land of the Indian reservation. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of a lake with a fire extinguisher strapped to your hip like a safety gunslinger. Doesn’t matter if you’re a hundred miles from the nearest structure or dried up bush. Doesn’t matter if you’re only driving through the most isolated rural spot and you’ve got your explode-a-rama show boxed up, secured inside a locked metal box full of ice chips and stored in the trunk of your car. If they explode, fly or spin, they’re illegal to use or possess.

And so, what are the dozens, scores, hundreds of people who are walking back to their cars with boxes of stuff that will explode into fiery balls of color a couple hundred feet in the air going to do with these creations? Take them apart to see how they work?

Let’s ask that guy, who’s loading two armfuls of fireworks into the trunk of his Monte Carlo. So, you bought some fireworks for the big holiday, huh?

“No,” he says. He closes the trunk hard and stares. “I’m just eating, man.”

He glares through aviator sunglasses and does not crack a smile. It’s as if he has just declared that it is snowing in July and dares you to point to the thermometer, which reads 106.

OK then.

“I’m buying these for somebody else,” says Dan Purdy, a local electrician. He loads up his booty into a mega pickup truck. He says he’s going to a buddy’s family reunion in Utah. No way is he going to use all this contraband in Clark County. Not gonna happen.

There’s a dad and a group of teenage boys over there, tearing apart the hot pink package of the Night Grizzly they just walked out of the store with. They’re throwing the 4-foot-tall packaging into the Dumpster, then loading up the contents into the back of a Chevy Suburban as if they’ve got something to hide.

So fellas, planning on a little July 4th fun?

“No. I’m working,” says the dad. He says he’s a mechanic. He has no plans to use the fireworks. None at all.

He has done it in the past, sure, for 13 years in a row in fact, was always very careful, never had a problem. But this year? These particular fireworks? These monstrous fireworks that he and the kids have just loaded into the car in such a way that, were a state trooper to pull them over, they’d be invisible in a casual inspection?

Not using them. Go away now.

A grandma from Henderson comes out with a small shopping bag and a 7-year-old boy attached to her hip. His name is Cameron Cameron (really), and he is Sue Cameron’s grandson.

“I only buy safe and sane,” Sue says. They’re fun for the boy, but not so dangerous they’ll burn down the neighbor’s house.

So why drive all the way out here rather than go to one of the fire department-approved booths in town? These are better, she says. The fireworks from the booths smoke too much.

A family from nearby Glendale loads up enough explosives into the back of a Dodge Nitro (really) to charge admission.

The guy doing most of the loading — he says his name is Adam Smith, same as the philosopher who’s considered the father of capitalism — says they’re going to camp in the Valley of Fire overnight, then come back down the road to the Paiute land and blow up their stuff.

If that’s true, it would be a perfectly legal exploitation of a loophole, capitalist-style.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.