...our town had a Chrysler plant and a big cruise strip...in short, we had a thousand young guys making lots of money and they spent it on HOT cars...any week night the line of cars would stretch from one food joint several miles across town to the other and back...on weekends it was bumper to bumper...cruising meant seeing lots of hot cars in action and hopefully lots of hotter girls...

...I drove a new triple black 69 Chevelle SS 396/375 conv from 69 to 71 until I went to work for Uncle Sam, he needed a few good men, but he even took me...any night on the strip meant seeing one of several local Superbirds and possibly one of the 2 Daytonas in town...there was a sprinkling of AAR CUDAS, several T/A Challengers, quite a few 6 PACK cars including a couple of "Lift Off Hood" cars...I remember a few HEMI cars lumbering around town, but they seldom joined in the antics of the cruisers...HEMI cars were automatically feared and didn't have to prove their stuff to anyone

...there was an abundance of 396/375 Novas in town and a few more Chevelles other than mine...lots of GTOs, everyone had a GOAT it seemed...there was a 69 GTO Judge in town which I finally purchased a few months ago...there was a 68 HURST Olds and 3 1969 HURST Olds in town(one was driven by a blond with a big hairdoo)...on occasion, there was a NICKEY Nova that appeared out of nowhere looking for victims

...after giving the nod on the strip, we would head out to the "dump road" for a race or one of several other places, there were plenty of spots to wind em out...sometimes a couple of cars would hook up at the drive in on the highway near the edge of town and instead of turning right and going back to the strip, they would go left, meaning "the race was on...4 lanes of open road with no cross roads for a long ways...two hot cars in a row with their left turn signals on meant a race was about to go down...saw lots of action at that spot, but one of the best was seeing the silver NICKEY Deuce take a 67 435 Vette and beat him like a red headed step child...the NICKEY sounded like a top fuel dragster as it ripped down the highway...I tried to follow them in my Chevelle but couldn't stay close to the NICKEY Deuce, he was long gone

...GTOs and Chevelles ruled the streets in numbers, but the MOPARS ruled the streets in performance...open headers were the rule on weekend nights, slicks were not uncommon to see, these guys were dead serious about their street racing...sometimes a car from "out of town" would show up cruising the strip looking for a race with money taped in the windshield

...I was also hooked on the sport and can't type long enough to recount the stories on line...I owned a very hot 55 Chevy, a 68 GTO cv and finally the Chevelle so I raced everything in my town and surrounding towns...we played "car tag" chasing each other all over town late at night with no lights on...lots of top end runs and tire spinning...I had the 68 GTO ten months(18K miles) and was on my 5th set of tires...I spent many many hard earned $$$ on repairs, trannys, rear ends, tires and even an engine for the Chevelle...it was brutal on the equipment...a matching numbers car tells me it wasn't driven on cruise nights in my town

...it was a different time, less traffic etc...but it was still stupid, the cars weren't very safe by todays standards and NO ONE used seat belts...I talk to my buddies sometimes and the first thing we realize is we are lucky to still be here, shoulda been killed way back then...there was hardly a day I didn't run well over 100mph just for kix, raced anything that moved, anywhere, anytime...out ran the cops on several occasions...before I was out of highschool I had been stopped 23 times and had 5 tickets...

...one story comes to mind in particular...driving my 68 GTO cv home from a late nite date with my favorite girl of the week and a big white Bonneville cv in front of me motions me to pass him on a local city street...I passed him chirping the tires and he starts chasing me...we went thru several stop signs at about 90mph...they were yelling and blinking their lights etc etc...I didn't recognize the big Poncho so I just kept going...a few clever moves and they were long gone...so, I decided to do a 180, stopped in the middle of the street and waited for them to catch up...I was standing in the seat of my GTO(top was down)giving the finger to the big Poncho...they slid to a stop and jumped out, both were armed off duty cops...pretty soon, there were 5 police cars surrounding me and a major ticket was in my hand...later, one of the cops was suspended over the incident and my ticket was done away with...I still have the ticket in my archives, speeding, reckless driving, disregardind stop signs, improper lane usage no turn signals and resisting arrest...they pretty filled out the whole side of the ticket...lesson here, I didn't pass any more white Bonnevilles EVER AGAIN...