Rockets have little red glare

Saturday, July 1, 2006 | 8:09 a.m.

Oh, for the things that go boom in the night. Also, zip, whiz, crackle and hiss.

Fireworks: If they weren't all-American, they wouldn't be right there in the national anthem. Never mind that "rockets' red glare" refers to artillery missiles being fired at Americans. This is not a time for semantics. This is a time for patriotism, rapid oxidation of combustibles and scaring eight lives out of the neighbor's cat.

The corner stands - and there are hundreds of them - are happy to help you freak out Felix with a six-pack of Whistling Phantoms or Killer Bees or Piccolo Petes, all screamers that'll probably bug the dog, too.

Or maybe Fido is phototonic, in which case how about a box of Lazer Flashes? If you're just not sure, try a fountain or a finale - boxes that'll spit sparks and screech for up to four minutes and can cost up to $40. The Cityfest is particularly nice, what with its six stages of whistles, crackles, chrysanthemums and pearls, says Tracy Livingston, who runs a Phantom stand on the corner of Cheyenne Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard in North Las Vegas.

Yes, yes, you say, that's all well and good, but it's not going to get much more than a whimper and scamper. What you want to provoke is a full-on, hiding-under-the-bed, whingeing, cringing, hyperventilating slobber-fest.

Well, good luck with that. In Clark County, it's illegal.

Here, every firework has to be "Safe n Sane," which translates to magnesium-free sparklers that won't ignite after 15 seconds of Zippo heat and must instead be lit with a butane torch; the kind of sparklers that go out halfway down the stick - mother-may-I pyrotechnics.

"We can't sell projectiles. We can't have M-80s. But people ask for 'em," Livingston says. "We have had people ask for dynamite."

But what about that 4-foot-tall stick with a 20-ounce-soda-sized gold shell on it and the label that says, "Warhead Rocket"? Oh, wait, that's "Warhead Rocket Fountain."

"People think they're real rockets," Livingston says, "but they just spray."

No Black Cats and no Roman candles? Where are the eardrum poppers and hair-scorchers?

Well, there's Pahrump, where you can buy cherry bombs, M-80s and bottle rockets. You just can't use them in Nye County, a legal oddity that bothers the vendors not at all. Oh, and it's illegal to bring them back into Clark County. And it's really illegal - police checkpoint illegal - to take any fireworks into a national park. So you can just virtuously douse them in water and dispose of them because you are, we assume, virtuous.

(But if you're so virtuous, why aren't you buying legal fireworks in Clark County, where each and every booth is operated by nonprofit groups? Don't you want to help the children?)

You can also travel 30 miles up I-15 to the Moapa Paiute Travel Plaza, fully half of which is devoted to fireworks, booze and cigarettes - a veritable bad-idea shopping pavilion. The reservation, which is not bound by federal rules regarding hazardous substances, has a designated launching pad where customers can legally launch or detonate their fireworks.

On Thursday afternoon, the shopping center was crowded with boys and much older boys loading carts full of bricks of Red Devil firecrackers, shotgun-shell sized M-800s and Bunker Killer rockets .

And the females of the species? Having seen none, we can't say.

One aisle over, a boy's voice calls out: "What about this one? Is it waterproof?" Then, "What about if we put it in a fish?"