The summer Cruisin’ season now in full swing, I’ve noticed the resurgence of a neat activity that has sprung up over the past few years in conjunction with the times: as far back as late April, people have begun congregating in groups, sitting in lawn or camping chairs all along Woodward on Friday and Saturday nights just to watch the cars that are cruising the boulevard.
I mean… it’s become a regular event unto itself, and a very cool way to participate in the festivities that have now become a permanent part of summer in the cities that are bisected by Woodward Avenue. It brings back memories of the early ‘60s and of a teenaged boy who did that same activity night after night, at the corner of Adams and Woodward.
The building on that corner, now a flower shop, was, at that time, Birmingham Cleaners. If you look at the wall of the building that faces Woodward, there is a slight pie-shaped indentation in the wall, an architectural nicety from the late ‘50s. And at the bottom of the niche is a place for planting flowers, enclosed by a little wall two cinderblocks high.
No one ever planted flowers there, but it was always full of potato chip and candy wrappers and the like. And it was the perfect spot to sit and watch the cars as they cruised by. The boy, a product of a highly dysfunctional mother and a befuddled and emotionally absent father, would use any excuse to get out of the house. He could be found there, many nights each week, from April through October, just watching and dreaming.
Sometimes, a couple cars would go off that light there where Adams cuts into Woodward, but mostly they just cruised by. Cool ’62 - 327 Impalas and later, the awesome sixty-three-and-a-half Ford Galaxy fastbacks. There was an especially cool midnight blue 427 4-speed Galaxy with whitewalls and a set of ’57 Plymouth Fury ‘cone’ hubcaps…man, under the street lights, that car fairly glowed like a big blue sapphire! It had the right stance and the right rumble as it went by.
Later came the ’64 Mopars, jacked way up with their torsion bars twisted out to the max, and the backs of their hoods popped open a couple of inches (allegedly to let hot air out), executed by taking out the back bolts of the hood brackets and replacing them with a longer bolt and a spacer that created the gap. Looked way cool, and tons of the 383 and 426 street wedge satellites ran like that.
Those were fantastic times back then and, believe it or not, that boy had a blast just sitting and soaking up the ambience that was the sights of the cool cars, the sounds of the glass-packed mufflers, and the smells of fresh Turtle Wax mixed with burning rubber that lingered in the warm summer air every Friday and Saturday night.
Now, to see hundreds of people doing essentially the same thing every weekend, conjures up some great feelings. Feeling that I know that boy would instantly relate to….because the adult that that boy became, sure does!
