by pup55 » Fri 30 Jul 2010, 09:46:42
Well, since you did not want to continue the thread, I will continue. Pops will appreciate this, because he was an old cruiser too, I believe....
There were actually 3 fast food joints on our circuit. The McDonalds, which was right next door to the high school, the Broncos, which was on the other end of town and a good place to turn around, and the Red Barn. Of the three, the McDonalds was the only one that had no indoor seating, and things being what they were, namely cold most of the time, you would stand in line at the window and shiver while you were waiting for your food. There was also no such thing as a drive thru. A few of the McDonalds still stand that have the giant golden arches over the whole building, well this was one of those.
Two hamburgers and a small drink would cost you 88 cents. You'd get the stuff in a bag, and then go back to your car and eat your food. When you were done with your food, you'd throw your bag into the 55-gallon trash barrel, but it would get full by the end of the evening so you'd just throw it into the pile.
If you got there early, you could park in such a way as to face the windows, and you could see the little cashiers while they worked. In that era, the cashiers wore short white skirt-type uniforms, and depending on who it was we could check them out as they were waiting on the customers. Most of them were cuties, in those days before political correctness, one particular one was probably responsible for a measurable increase in sales, because she did look good in one of those uniforms.
Everyone you knew passed by at some point during the evening, especially if there was a home game of some type that people went to, and you would honk if they went by. Depending on who it was, or if there was a party, you'd fire the car up and go after them. When you caught them you would have a moving conversation, usually through an open window, and see if there were any other non-car-related activities going on that you might show up for. No, there were no cellphones, and the windows were all manual-type so this was difficult during the winter unless you had someone riding shotgun to roll down the passenger side window, which you usually did.
Occasionally, a carload of young ladies would go by, and if they looked friendly, maybe you would drive after them for awhile, and pull up next to them at the light. Sometimes they would flirt back, an actual real-time conversation was rare.....
But mainly, the main activity was sorting out who was who on the testosterone scale. We had a viaduct running over the railroad tracks in the middle of the town, and that was a favorite place to run them off if you got the chance, it was about a half mile long and not very steep. If you had a car that would run, you'd pull up next to the guy a couple of lights beforehand, and there would be some posturing, some engine revving, maybe some rubber burning, and when you got to the viaduct, the race was frequently on. Once you got to the top you shut 'em down because the cops would frequently lurk on the other side.....but that quarter mile was long enough to sort out who had what.
Naturally a lot of the people put a lot of time and energy into their cars for the sole purpose of running them off on Friday night. Nowadays there is a cable TV show to this effect, and a lot of the senior citizens that are on there are the same guys that tinkered in their garage all week so that they could get up the strip in their home towns a little faster on Friday. These were all of the old muscle cars, of course, Camaros, Chevelles, dangerous Novas that were little cars into which you could put a big motor. Mustangs, Dodge Challengers or Plymouth Barracudas...... These guys saved their pennies from their dead end jobs to get Holley carburetors, and Hurst shifters, and Mickey Thompson fat tires, and headers and custom exhaust..... My little car was not runnable but occasionally I would floor it at the light and see what it would do just because it was fun.
I think the closest thing right now to people who do this are the "ricers" who build all of those Honda Civics, and Corollas, and other little japanese cars to make them loud and annoying.
It was a thing to do. There were no video games, there was no cable TV and we were quite lucky to get 3 stations on our air-TV, and so people spent a lot of time just driving around. It taught you deferred consumption, and some life lessons, and let you cheat death once in awhile. You had to have some mechanical ability, which will last a lifetime. People did this stuff for fun, can you imagine? The Mickey D's and the Burger King facilitated this culture.
I'm going to miss gasoline. I already told you that. The whole thing was fueled by 29 cent gas.