Our Independence Day adventure started after picking Caroline up from work at 4:00 p.m., bags packed, cooler fully loaded, and gas in the tank. While we made our way northwest towards Wickenburg, we watched looming dark monsoon clouds building up and could not help wondering whether we’d miss a good rain in the valley while out on the road; this is usually how it works.
At Wickenburg, we turned north on Highway 93, which brought us to Nothing, Arizona, which is actually a little something. What exactly Nothing is remains unknown as we didn’t need gas and there was nothing we needed from the All Mart store. North of here, the road becomes known as the Joshua Tree Parkway of Arizona. We did get rained on a little near Wickieup, and a few times, lightning flashes were visible to the east, but no monsoons like the clouds earlier portended.
We crossed the Colorado River into Nevada at Bullhead City but didn’t bother to stop in Laughlin, NV instead opting to enjoy the beautiful sunset we were driving into. As darkness fell, we turned off the road at Searchlight and started zigzagging back and forth over the Nevada/California state lines a bit until we finally reached Primm, Nevada.
Why would we go out of our way to visit this tiny speck on the map? Because we found out that Whiskey Pete’s Casino here has on display the bullet hole-ridden “death car” of Bonnie and Clyde! As it turned out, the car was relocated into the shopping mall connected to the Primm Valley Resort and Casino across the freeway. It used to be called the “Primadonna Resort” – “Primm-adonna”, get it? They did come to their senses at the end of the nineties, apparently, and renamed the place. On our way into the mall, we watched a bat circling just a few feet over our heads. spooky!!!
The old car is sitting in a glass box featuring a couple of showroom dummies dressed in period clothes sporting nasty-looking weaponry. Caroline rather liked “Bonnie’s” dress; it was red and black and very tasteful, while the “men” were wearing suits. It was kind of creepy to look at this vehicle where two people were practically executed.
In another display was the shirt that Clyde Barrow wore the day he was killed. An amazing fact is that he was a very small man; Caroline might barely fit into that shirt! There were a lot of additional items on display referring to Bonnie and Clyde here.
Not pictured is the armored car that belonged to Dutch Schultz, although his car looked a lot more snazzy than theirs. It seems their notoriety far surpasses his “more modest” claim to fame – he was “only” known as the “Bronx Beer Baron,” controlling the booze trade and numbers racket in the Bronx and surrounding areas in the 1920s. I can’t quite tell why the sign said “Dutch Schultz/Al Capone gangster car” – maybe Al snapped up the custom-built armored limousine after Dutch’s untimely demise? The car does sport some bulletholes but is otherwise flawlessly restored. Dutch, by the way, was shot in a bar in 1935 and kicked the bucket in a hospital soon after without ever revealing the perpetrators, thus inspiring William S. Burrough’s book “The Last Words of Dutch Schultz” (among others).
Primm Valley Resort also hosts “fun” events such as concerts by Eddie Money, Loverboy, and Survivor on the 4th of October. I guess the name “Survivor” says it all! Primm’s third casino, in addition to Whiskey Pete’s and Primm Valley, is Buffalo Bill’s, home of the “Desperado,” one of the world’s tallest and fastest roller coasters (at least at some point), which was not running when we arrived, lucky Caroline! Instead, we enjoyed Buffalo Bill’s neon marquee, surely one of the prettiest casino signs seen so far! But it was now 9:45 p.m. time to hit the road toward our hotel about 80 miles away in Pahrump, Nevada. Thirty minutes later, we passed a gun range offering submachine guns for passing tourists to come to shoot stuff up with. Still feeling gangster feverish, we would have stopped to give it a try, but business hours are only 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Where is a 24-hour machine gun range when you need it?
We arrived in Pahrump at about quarter to midnight and were happy to fall into bed.
