posted 07-26-2005 11:31 PM         

.... 1969 till 1971 cruisin' locally was at it's all time zenith...we cruised from the Top Hat Drive Inn on the east side to Howards Drive Inn on the west side, the two drive inns separated by about 3 miles of asphalt....on a Friday or Saturday night it was bumper to bumper muscle cars both directions and would take nearly 45 minutes for a round trip...

....the summer nights were always a perfect 75 degrees, the girls were always young and beautiful and the guys were all wearing CPO jackets soaked in Brute or English Leather cologne...the AM car radios were blasting the top 40 hits all night long and animated disc jockeys were screaming "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday" in their advertisements for the local drag strip...8 Track tapes were the new thing and we cruised to such music as the Bee Gees(chix loved them), the Turtles, the Doors and Crosby Stills and Nash....

...on a typical evening I would cruise the strip in my '69 Chevelle SS 396, lookin' to either pick up a cute girl or drag race...central Indiana was heavily populated with automotive plants and every young guy that could walk had a good paying job, so there were plenty of new cars on the street to race any evening of the week...I remember racing an AAR Cuda one evening, pulling back into my parking spot to see a pair of 69 Hurst Olds pass by in front of me.....there were Dodge Daytonas, Plymouth Superbirds, Challengers, Cudas, HEMI cars and SIX PAK cars of every variety, scores of GTOs and Chevelles and Mach 1 Mustangs on the strip every weekend....many cars ran open headers and air shocks were the rage, raising the cars a foot higher than stock with huge M50 Mickey Thompson rear tires on Cragar SS mags, that was the hot combo of the day...

....there was a Nickey Nova in town, several GTO Judges, a Yenko Chevelle showed up from a neighboring city looking to kick serious azz, he ran slicks and open headers on the street....a red '69 BOSS 429 also ran the strip with open headers and slicks several nights in a row....the car sounded like a freight train coming thru town with the sounds reverberating off the buildings for blocks and blocks....I had almost bought the BOSS 429 a few weeks earlier but decided I didn't want a Ford, boy was I sorry when I heard it thunder by my Chevelle that first time...

...as the night progressed, the sound of tires screaming and engines winding became somewhat common and many of us could identify the type car from the exhaust sounds....occasionally someone would line up on the cruise strip side by side and traffic would separate so the racers could "get it on' before the cops showed up....it was a cruisers paradise on those weekend nights back in 1969...

...after a few races, a few 10 cent cherry Cokes, maybe getting lucky and picking up a good looking girl to cruise with for the evening, the night would come to an end.... usually, after dropping off the girl I would venture off the cruise strip for some serious street action or a little car tag, a popular game played by several of my best friends chasing each other all over town thru the night as long as the 30 cent gasoline would last....

...the next morning at 7:30 AM I would be standing at the local supermarket waiting on customers, earning big money ($1.35 per hour), reliving the previous nights valiant efforts and planning activities for the next night on the strip...

...Woodward Ave, Detroit.... as close as you can get to 1969 without a time machine....

posted 07-26-2005 11:59 PM         

and the advertisement that sold me a new GTO in 1968....I still have the Motor Trend magazine with the cover shot of the new 68 GTO I carried in high school while waiting for my new GTO to be delivered.....the longest 7 weeks ever....

posted 07-27-2005 11:00 AM         

quote:

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...Woodward Ave, Detroit.... as close as you can get to 1969 without a time machine....

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