Memories

My Sister, who shall remain nameless to protect her insolence, but her initials are Kristen Gayle .....oh and be careful not to overlook her, cause she's very vertically challenged as well as being blond. Anyhoo, thinking of her comments on my efforts of the blog before last has taken me back to

Those exciting days of yesteryear.

For me those would be the mid 1960's....for a boy in his teens in the great central valley of California....

Friday night, that's the night for "boys night out" unless your girlfriend said no......you and your buddies would get together and just cruise. Only AM radio back then so the local station would be playing either the Beach Boys or one of the girl groups from Mo-town.....Jan & Dean, Roy Orbison, the Righteous Brothers, Ray Stevens and many others.... the cool thing was..that was the only station available, so that's what every car was blasting, summertime and the windows down.....

You'd pick up the cruise going eastbound on Colusa Highway, 4 lanes with a center divider. Down to Plumas Street, hang a right and a slow cruise down the main business drag..past the theater....going slow cause the cops were usually up at the end of Plumas (not your nice and polite cops of today either), down to the street past my dads store, hang a left then a short block to another right....ahh there "it" is ... the A&W drive in....set back from the street, THE local hangout... you'd try to look cool while checking out the cars already there. In the right drive way, that was the "uncool" side..... idle to the back of the lot and around the building (it was set against the city cemetery, so some neat teenage pranks and legends came out of that. Then idle your ride down "Bad Boys Row" if the entrance side was uncool, then the other side had two levels of cool, if you pulled into the head in slots on the left it was not as cool as backing into the ones on the right....but be very very careful...you had to have a really fast and neat car to park there..if your car wasn't that neat, then you had to be very tough to hang onto your spot.

Alright, you've backed into the slot....it's 8PM and just gotten dark, it's the right time of the evening, so the place is packed....you were lucky to get your spot on the first pass.... One of the harassed twenty something waitress' comes's out to your car and you get your order .... usually a Large iced mug of A&W Root Beer, and an order of fries. maybe 50 cars are in the stalls, kids out of them and mingling indiscriminately...another 20 or so vehicles are bumper to bumper going through the drive ways.....every radio is blasting "Surfin USA" by the Beach Boys.... Now you are there for two reasons....the first is to see and be seen, the other is to try and get a race against a car that you think you can beat.....Jimmie Johnson is there, in his 65 Chevy Impala with a 396....fast, one of the fastest in town, Jack Glover with his 66 GTO that he just got....sweet ride, there's the guy with the new Stingray that's fuel injected.... a neat 55 Chevy pulls through, looks rough, just primer for paint, but you know better than to choose that one to race, it's jacked up all around, cheater slicks in the back, American mag wheels, and a cam so radical that the car can barely idle as it goes through the line.....

Leaning against the front of your car, you light another Camel cigarette and decide it's time for a loop or two....into the car, start her up and you're off....back to Plumas Street, up to Colusa Highway, now down a little further....to the Chico Hiway, turn right and then into the bowling alley parking lot, around that building, maybe stopping for a second if a friend or cute chick is in the parking lot.....then run the loop again, maybe 5 or 6 times before a change is made.....

More on that later