Nostalgia

Cruising Main Street on a Saturday Night

Generation X was the last to experience this tradition

This is the type of car you’d see cruising Main Street. Photo by on

I miss cruising.

Today I came home early from work because I felt like shit. I vegged on the couch to watch Dazed and Confused. Parts of the movie made me long for my youth, especially cruising around all night with no place to go.

I wasn’t a teen in the 1970s, but I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of muscle cars and cruising on a Saturday night in the early 1980s.

A trial run doesn’t go so well.

In 1982, I wasn’t old enough to drive but that didn’t stop my best friend Tori and I from cruising Main Street. After her uncle took us to see a scary movie downtown, we begged him to take us cruising. He reluctantly agreed and we were ecstatic. We had never been cruising on the circuit before; we were about to hit the big time and hang out with the cool kids… except we were in an Oldsmobile, not a Camaro.

It was a perfect summer night. Everyone had their windows rolled down with their car stereos cranked. The groovy bass line for Another One Bites the Dust played on her uncle’s car stereo and we cranked it. We were just beginning to soak in the scene when Tori and I noticed some girls laughing at…