Monster Trucks, families go together

Mike Amos sweetly rests a hand on his 10-year-old son's shoulder while someone sprays a fake tattoo of a lion on the boy's right arm. I tell Mike when people see pictures of this Monster Truck fair they're at, some will groan, "Rednecks." Mike laughs.

"If you haven't been to Monster Truck, you got issues," he says. "You just don't know what bein' an American is like."

Being an American at Monster Jam -- the Super Bowl of Monster Trucks -- puts you in the company of 37,000 fans, 20,000 of them from out of state. There are more people here Saturday night than in Vegas' fanciest nightclubs, combined.

For the whole afternoon, Mike and his family walk around a dusty dirt lot -- it smells like horse manure -- outside Sam Boyd Stadium, and they marvel at Monster Trucks and get autographs from drivers.

Mike passes some guys who look a little like him. They've got long, pointy beards, too. But only Mike seems to have his hand wrapped in a brace. He hurt it on the punching bag in his backyard. He's thinking about seeing a doctor.

Other guys Mike walks by seem relaxed. There's a guy with a mullet in a "Ron Paul for president" T-shirt, a boy wearing a mohawk, a man with a mohawk, a child in a wheelchair, a woman in a wheelchair, and women in halter tops stretched into painted-on jeans.

Mike and his family also pass families that seem like theirs, whose kids mind their parents, and who don't give the cops any trouble, unlike some other big events in Vegas. Everyone looks like they belong to Vegas' looked-down-upon working classers, the ones who are really, really into classic rock and country music and don't get to the Strip much.

When he's at work, Mike's job is scrubbing and sanitizing 7,000-gallon silver tankers you see on the roads, the ones that carry chocolate one day, milk products the next, or acid, bleach or polymer. Mike calls polymer "elephant snot" because it's gross stuff that separates poop at the waste plant.

"There are only two people in the state who do it. That's me and my dad," Mike says.

I think that sounds kinda cool, and I say so, and Mike's daughter, Elizabeth, 11, lights up and beams, "It is!"

Elizabeth is redheaded and freckled and plays softball and second-chair clarinet in band. She's on the student council. Next on the council's agenda is choosing colors for Field Day. The sixth-graders want to wear forest green. The seventh-graders like gray.

"I want to be a crime-scene investigator," she says, "cause I really like that."

"You just like the show, 'CSI,'" her brother, Gary, gripes.

"Yeah," she says, as if to say, "And what's your problem?"

Gary is on a soccer team "because she made me," he says at his mom, Mary.

"I want him to play lacrosse" eventually, to keep Gary out of trouble, Mary says, but also to apply for a sports scholarship.

"I'm thinking of college, dude," Mary says and talks about college funds she and Mike are saving up.

I ask Mary's husband whether she's the whip-cracker in the family. He tilts his head back and opens his eyes widelike.

"Oh, yeah," he says. "She's the one who keeps everything in control. Without her, it'd be chaos!"

Mary is an office manager at a collection agency. Most of her clients are heart doctors and other medical people who haven't been paid by bill-skippers.

Mary bought the tickets for Monster Jam for $180 or so, counting handling fees. Mary says Monster Trucks are fun. Plus, Monster Jam is one of the few things families can take their kids to in Vegas.

"It gets the younger kids involved, anything to keep them off the street," she says.

Because Vegas is wrapped up in glitzy Vegas culture, "They're losing track with the family area," Mary complains. "It's harder to keep kids out of trouble."

Little Leagues have lost steam, she says. "Parents are losing interest in their kids." Schools are scaling back on sports and music. So Mary and Mike take Gary and Elizabeth to Adventuredome Theme Park, but there's not much else.

So they go to motor events and country music festivals that come to town. Supercross. NASCAR Craftsman Truck. The Nextel Cup Series. And the Double Down Throwdown country music festival: That's where they once met singer Toby Keith, whom they like, even though he was trashed.

"He was drunk off his butt," Mary disapproves.

Gary mocks Keith by saying kids took pictures with him, "but he was too drunk to notice."

Mike and Mary met at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 1993. They used to go out there every weekend and pay $20 to drive all night. Anyone could bring any car they wanted to race. Mary powered up a "throw-up-lime-green" 1976 Ford Grand Torino Fastback, the "Starsky & Hutch" model. Mike drove a Trans Am.

"He thought he was a bad ass," she says. "I beat him."

"We didn't race for pink slips. We raced for hearts," he says, and laughs at how corny that comes out.

When Mary hears this, she says "Aww." But then she busts his chops about his Trans Am, which got stripped by crooks on a street a long time ago, and now it's still sitting in their garage, all stripped-down.

It's getting closer to Monster Jam time, so the Amoses go to their car for supper.

After 7 p.m., Monster Jam kicks in. Mike and Mary and the kids sit near the pyrotechnics, where flames shoot up from the ground and go all the way up past the top of the stadium. They can feel the heat on their whole bodies.

The trucks roar in, so loud. They're half-million-dollar trucks, up to 12 feet high, zipping up to 70 mph, burning 21/2 gallons of methanol every 250 feet.

Ramps are made out of school buses and dozens of cars. They're all painted over in red, white and blue. In the middle there's a castle moat with a fountain waterfall. Trucks race around it. Then the drivers roll over everything and destroy their trucks, too.

The granddaddy of Monster Trucks, Grave Digger, has to hop out of his seat after flames spurt through the truck. But Mike and Mary's kids' favorite part might be when the turtle-looking truck smashes so much stuff, it destroys itself.

They get home around midnight. Sunday morning, Mary lets Gary and Elizabeth sleep in past 11 a.m.

"They are wore out," she says, and she doesn't sound too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, herself.

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.