Fireworks and Fruit Cakes

poadeleted21

poadeleted21

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Aug 18, 2011
Messages
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Anyone know what's the deal with the fireworks business? I drive through a small town everyday on my way home. Has a Burger King but no McDonalds for a size reference. But, what it does have is 4 enormous fireworks stores plus a couple of smaller ones. What I don't see is a single customer at any of them.

For some odd reason they all oddly display large signs announcing that they also sell fruit cakes.

Is the fireworks and fruit cake profit margin that good?
 
Dunno. My guess is for firework stores to be profitable they need to border states where fireworks are illegal.
Related note was eating in an old restaurant in Cambridge the other day one of the posters on the wall was of a hardware store circa 1920's with a huge fireworks for sale banner out front. We've fallen a long way from freedom.
 
Bill Jennings said:
Said small town next to the interstate?
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Yep and on the Georgia/SC border. Exit 5.

45papajoes.jpg
 
Here's two other ones.

33exit5.jpg


Don't see a picture of the 4th one. It's on the other side of the interstate. these 3 are within 1/4 mile of each other.
 
bartmc said:
Yep and on the Georgia/SC border. Exit 5.

45papajoes.jpg
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There you go! My FIL lives in PA and always stocks up on fireworks and (believe it or not) fruitcakes[1] when he comes down south to visit. Those are hard to come by up north.

[1] I'm not a fan of them at all, but according to my FIL, Claxton Fruit Cakes (baked in, you guessed it, Claxton, GA) are the ones to buy. Claxton is not very far from your small GA/SC border town.
 
Rockport, MO has one or two truck stops, but a good portion of their income is derived from selling fireworks to NE and IA residents.
 
Bill Jennings said:
There you go! My FIL lives in PA and always stocks up on fireworks and (believe it or not) fruitcakes[1] when he comes down south to visit. Those are hard to come by up north.

[1] I'm not a fan of them at all, but according to my FIL, Claxton Fruit Cakes (baked in, you guessed it, Claxton, GA) are the ones to buy. Claxton is not very far from your small GA/SC border town.
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Yeah, I'm aware of the fruit cakes being made in Claxton, my coworker is the owner's golf buddy.

Who knew these places were the place to go for your one stop shopping needs :rofl: I guess all man really needs is a couple of fruit cakes and some M-80s. One of them also sells used golf balls. :rofl: It's the exit before the Hilton Head exit so I guess that explains the golf balls.

I drive by these places 10 times a week. I have never noticed anyone there. The OPEN signs are on and there's usually one car parked in the parkign lot. I'm sure everyone in Georgia comes over for 7/4 but other than that, never anyone. I don't know how they stay open.
 
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bartmc said:
I guess all man really needs is a couple of fruit cakes and some M-80s. One of them also sells used golf balls. :rofl:
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FIL is also a 3-4 handicap golfer, and he and his buddies make several trips to Hilton Head each year. The dots are connecting...:yikes:
 
Bill Jennings said:
FIL is also a 3-4 handicap golfer, and he and his buddies make several trips to Hilton Head each year. The dots are connecting...:yikes:
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This is exit 5, Hilton Head is exit 8.

Our local economy thanks your FIL, he's the only person I've ever heard of visiting one. :D
 
A friend came out from California and drove down to Florida on an East Coast vacation. He hit one of these stores and brought back a whole box load of this stuff. Then he realizes that he's not going to be able to take this back on the plane with him so he leaves them with us. We played with some but most stayed in the basement....

Until I came home from work one day and find a police report on my counter. Apparently my son had found the box and was lighting them off in the driveway in the middle of the afternoon. The cops confiscated the rest from him. I figure they must have a real great time on the 4th with all the stuff they confiscate over the year.
 
flyingron said:
Until I came home from work one day and find a police report on my counter. Apparently my son had found the box and was lighting them off in the driveway in the middle of the afternoon. The cops confiscated the rest from him. I figure they must have a real great time on the 4th with all the stuff they confiscate over the year.
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The entrepreneurial ones re-sell it. The cops in South Brooklyn were the most reliable source when I was a kid.
 
It goes something like this:

Husband: "honey, would you like to go shopping for fruit cakes?"

I think we all know the rest of the story. ;-)
 
bartmc said:
Yep and on the Georgia/SC border. Exit 5.
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Georgia restricts the types of fireworks you can buy. You can find fireworks stands on virtually every highway coming into the state. I've seen them on I-20 (AL), I-24 (TN), I-85 (SC) and even in places like McKaysville, GA\Copperhill,TN (GA 60).
 
Somehow, having large amounts of fireworks in the hands of fruitcakes just seems like a bad idea to me.
 
Also quite often these buildings are not as "big" as they appear. They often have HUGE fronts that are totally fake and behind that huge front resides a small building.
 
My first real enterprise was making a big purchases of fireworks in SC (we had family down south) and reselling them to my friends in VA. I could sell the stuff for 1000% profit and still undercut the small country stores that were doing the same thing.

I don't think my parents really what I was up to but then again who's going to question why a 13yo wanted fireworks. Times were different then. Nobody got hurt, and the volunteer Fire Department got a great training opportunity.
 
Is this anything like the stand on an indian reservation in eastern Washington called the Ill Eagle fireworks stand? :D
 
When I lived in Colorado, we used to drive up to the Wyoming border around July 4 and New Years, where there was a decent sized fireworks store. I think it was in Cheyenne.

You could buy just about anything there. We'd buy smaller things for shooting off in Colorado on the holidays, but also some big stuff and take it out to open fields in Wyoming before we drove back, and shoot them off.

Fun times...I wonder if that place is still there? Wyoming always seemed pretty relaxed about fireworks, at least out in the country.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Somehow, having large amounts of fireworks in the hands of fruitcakes just seems like a bad idea to me.
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If you thought you were joking, you aren't!

We were driving thru Copperhill, TN, last July 4th and passed one of the fireworks tents.

There was a woman sitting on a folding chair inside the tent, smoking a cigarette.

I could just hope that Darwinism didn't strike just as I drove by.
 
jesse said:
Also quite often these buildings are not as "big" as they appear. They often have HUGE fronts that are totally fake and behind that huge front resides a small building.
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yeah, most of them are about the size of large convenience store.

Obviously, the business is quite seasonal. I used to stock up once a year for the 4th, but I've stopped. One of my neighbors is a borderline pyromaniac and I don't want to encourage him.
 
EdLarkin said:
If you thought you were joking, you aren't!

We were driving thru Copperhill, TN, last July 4th and passed one of the fireworks tents.

There was a woman sitting on a folding chair inside the tent, smoking a cigarette.

I could just hope that Darwinism didn't strike just as I drove by.
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Back in the day, we used to occasionally burn small pieces of C4 in order to heat our meals up in the field, if we had some left over.

Stuff actually burns nicely. Just don't try to stamp out the fire, as one stupid Lieutenant discovered. Blew the sole of his boot off and put him in a foot cast for a few weeks.
 
jesse said:
Also quite often these buildings are not as "big" as they appear. They often have HUGE fronts that are totally fake and behind that huge front resides a small building.
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Got a better look today, they're not very deep. Maybe 20' deep.
 
bartmc said:
Yeah, I'm aware of the fruit cakes being made in Claxton, my coworker is the owner's golf buddy.

Who knew these places were the place to go for your one stop shopping needs :rofl: I guess all man really needs is a couple of fruit cakes and some M-80s. One of them also sells used golf balls. :rofl: It's the exit before the Hilton Head exit so I guess that explains the golf balls.

I drive by these places 10 times a week. I have never noticed anyone there. The OPEN signs are on and there's usually one car parked in the parkign lot. I'm sure everyone in Georgia comes over for 7/4 but other than that, never anyone. I don't know how they stay open.
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Several years ago a friend brought some fireworks out for the 4th... The M-80's were equal to Black Cat firecrackers from 30 years ago.. Barely any explosion to them.. And apparently there is no Ashcans left either..:mad2::mad:The world has gotten too safe..:(
 
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N801BH said:
Several years ago a friend brought some fireworks out for the 4th... The M-80's were equal to Black Cat firecrackers form 30 years ago.. Barely any explosion to them.. And apparently there is no Ashcans left either..:mad2::mad:The world has gooten too safe..:(
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We'll be down to nuthin' but sparklers and snakes within a decade. :sad:
 
Norman said:
Can you even buy them in California? :D
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They just started selling "safe and sane" in our town last year. Mixes well with the multitude of bars in town, to be sure.

The big concern with fireworks in California isn't someone blowing their fingers off, its brush/forest fires.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Somehow, having large amounts of fireworks in the hands of fruitcakes just seems like a bad idea to me.
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Well, most of the government is in the hands of a bunch of fuitcakes. How much more damage could they do?
 
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