Firecrackers can get you into trouble. I know from experience. Maybe others can learn a lesson from my experience and not repeat my mistakes.
When I became twelve years old, I moved into the Aaronic Priesthood and Scouts. One of the activities we did as scouts was to raise money for a “Super Activity” each summer. Before I got there the scouts had taken trips to Yellowstone Park and Disney Land during the summer. When I got there, the activity that was planned was a trip to Mexico to go deep sea fishing. I don’t remember all the things we did to raise money but one of them was to collect scrap iron and sell it.
Uncle Donnie Porter offered to provide a lumber truck to haul the scrap iron to Phoenix if we would collect it and load it. The different scout patrols competed to see who could collect the most scrap iron. My patrol went all over town and identified scrap iron of various forms. Some of it was old plows or old car parts. For several weeks we collected scrap iron around Heber using our tractor and wagon and hauled it down to the sawmill and piled it in a stack. When the big day came, all of the scouts met and started throwing the scrap iron on the trailer. We ended up with almost a full trailer load. I think we made was over $600 when it was sold. That was the money to pay for our trip to Mexico.
Our final destination was Guaymas, Mexico on the west coast. We traveled down through Nogales and Hermosillo, to Guaymas. We had reservations at a nice hotel and each day for two or three days I think, we went out fishing. The fishing turned out to be rather boring and we didn’t catch much, but besides having fish, Mexico also had FIRECRACKERS!!!!
Firecrackers were illegal in Arizona but not in Mexico at that time so we spent a good deal of our spending money on firecrackers. Some of the favorites were cherry bombs and bottle rockets but we also bought the packs that had 50-100 small firecrackers all wound together. If you wanted to, you could light the whole pack and it would pop and pop or you could unwind the firecrackers and pop them individually. That’s what most of us did.
After the two or three days in Mexico, we headed home. When we got to Nogales, Mexico, we stopped for some last minute shopping. A good deal of that shopping was to replenish our firecracker supply and to buy other “tourist trash.” As we approached the border crossing we noticed a sign that said, “Deposit all fireworks in this can!” We didn’t want to do that!
I don’t remember just who (but it could have been me) came up with the bright idea of throwing the firecrackers over the border fence, walking through the checkpoint and then recovering the firecrackers when we got on the other side. That is what we decided to do. We all tossed our firecrackers over the fence and walked back to the checkpoint. We walked through and headed up the fence to recover our fireworks but they weren’t there. About that time one of the men from U.S. Customs pulled up and asked us what we were looking for. He suggested that we accompany him back to the checkpoint. When we got there, the officers took each one of us into small rooms for interrogation. The officer who questioned me asked me who I was and where I was from. Then he asked me what I had been doing in Mexico. He asked me if I had tried to smuggle fireworks into the United States. He asked me if I knew it was illegal to have firecrackers in Arizona. Then he asked me the questions that stopped me in my tracks. He asked “Aren’t you a Mormon?” When I admitted that I was, he asked “Do you know the 12th Article of Faith?” When he asked that I knew he was probably a member of the church and I felt pretty ashamed of myself and our whole group because I did know the 12th Article of Faith. I had memorized it and I also knew what it meant. He gave me a little talk on obeying, honoring and sustaining the law and let me go.
We went home to Heber empty handed as far as firecrackers were concerned, but better off for the lesson we had learned. Smuggling firecrackers is not consistent with obeying, honoring and sustaining the law. I have never forgotten that experience and I hope I have done a better job of living up to what we say we believe in the 12th Article of Faith.