My View from 1958

My last Blog entry was about cruising in the 1970’s.  Of course, you had to have a license to cruise or friends with a license who wanted you to cruise with them. Once a classmate reached the golden age of16, he or she became very popular. You have a license and you have a car (or access to your parent’s car); you were gold!!!! For me and a few of my friends, we could not wait to get behind the wheel, so we didn’t wait for the magical 16^th birthday. You might say we decided to joy ride.

There are probably more than two instances of joy riding, and  thanks to my friend Scott, I have a couple of good stories. The first one started off with a sleepover. Now there is no such thing as a sleepover, as there was never any sleep. Once we were sure the adults were either in bed or out on the town, we usually hit the streets.

This sleepover was at my friend Steve Emge’s house. I don’t remember who all was there but I suspect my partner in most crime Randy was. I have no idea how we got this idea, but of all things we decided to take his dad’s 1972 Ford Fairlane 500 Ranch Wagon for a spin. I suspect we were around 14 years old. Picture this car (see below) as shit-colored brown, and that is it.   I had to do a lot of internet searches before the synapse connected, but this is it as far a make and model.

Steve had the courage to grab the keys from his kitchen cabinet. He was not one for much mischief, so I am not sure how we enticed him to do this.  While he grabbed the keys, of course, the rest of us were waiting outside, just in case Steve got caught at that point. Bingo, he got the keys. We crept around to the front of his house and jumped in. I think Steve was driving. He started the car….crap very noisy. He gently pushed on the gas pedal and off we went. So far so good. As we were cruising around Shenandoah about 1:00 am, we ran into (not literally) Tom Shough. He was cruising around by himself and asked us if we wanted to go to his farm. His farm was in rural Essex about 8 miles away.  I am not sure why we decided to take off for Essex, but we did (see next story). Of course we wanted to go to his farm and hang out, so off we went. Now have you ever driven on a gravel road? You have dust, bumps, rocks flying, all which leave the car a filthy mess. Not to mention the danger of some morons flying down a gravel road about 1:00 am….no license, I am sure totally distracted, probably going 80 mph down an unfamiliar path.  But man, our adrenaline was flowing.  I don’t really remember what we did at Tom’s farm. I do remember his parents were not home so we maybe watched some TV. I remember it was not exciting

 I remember the panic hit when the sun started to rise. You know if you have stayed up all night how your ass is dragging about 5 or 6 in the morning?  As the rooster crowed, our adrenaline pumped up again.  Oh shit. We got to get this car back to Steve’s house. His parents were very strong Catholics. Very religious and strict. Nothing wrong with that, but you can get a sense that we may have been on the opposite side of the fence in terms of right and wrong, fun and a felony.  We jumped up and headed back to town again screaming down gravel roads. We quietly pulled in front of Steve’s house. No sign of life. His dad was not on the front lawn with a ball bat. The car was covered with dust. If Steve’s parents examined it closely, they would know something was up…..but they didn’t, or at least they never said a word. Of course we talked about this for weeks….heck years. Still talking about it. Man, his parents had to know. Gas tank empty, dusty, car probably not parked in the same spot, it really makes you wonder. You also have to think, “where were the cops?”.  Early morning, station wagon full of kids, can’t see over the steering wheel. We were ripe for jail!

For this week’s blog I have a guest writer, Scott Gingery. He contributed a couple of great stories about joy riding in the 70’s. So here we go!

This story is about the time we had our midnight escapade to Essex seemed like it was in the early fall during our sophomore year. I was maybe a couple of months from getting my license in November. You had your Mustang (see last Blog post) with the big ass tires and I was driving my mom’s pea green 69 Chevelle Malibu. It was a four door, but had a peppy little 307 V8. I believe we rendezvoused and caravanned out of town to avoid anyone seeing us. Thinking back, that caravan plan was pretty stupid but maybe we banked on people thinking your brother Mark was still driving that car and nobody would even know my mom’s car. I believe there was a little high-speed action on highway 48 over to Essex. You know, just to stretch our legs a little and blow out some carbon. It just hit me that you may have had Hunt and/or Cooper with you and Laughlin might have been with me. We slowly cruised around Essex without incident. No stops. Did nothing to draw attention to ourselves. It was late enough that I don’t recall even seeing any other cars, but there must’ve been at least a few. We drove the side streets and avoided main street. My best memory of the night was when we stopped on that gravel road to turn left on 48. You hit the gas and threw all that fresh gravel up on my car! I think I was too stressed about getting the car home without getting caught to worry about retaliation. I think we sort of ‘raced’ back to Shen. The gravel sitting on the hood and wiper well of my mom’s car the next day was the ‘oh, shit’ moment for me. Luckily, she didn’t drive it much and the car slowly morphed into ‘my car’ during the next year or so before I bought the Spitfire. As a side note, my parents let me drive that car to the homecoming dance a month or two later, which was about three weeks before I got my license. They took pity on me because I actually had a date for the dance. Pretty cool of them. They probably knew all along that I was stealing the car at night but just didn’t want to go through the hassle of punishing me for it. Hahaha!

And one more great one from Scott:

When I was 15 and a freshman in HS, I ran track with a guy named Tony who was three grades ahead of me. We got to know each other at track practice and we were on several relays together. Tony sort of took me under his wing and we started hanging out a little. The summer after my freshman year Tony shows up at my house with a brand new, dark blue early 70s Plymouth Road Runner (it might have been a Dodge Super Bee, so I’m not sure of the exact make of the car). Beautiful car and it seemed almost new. A real muscle car. I have no idea how he got it or was able to afford it because he was a farm kid and as far as I knew, wasn’t loaded with money. Anyway, early that summer we were cruising around one night and somehow, we decided it would be a good idea to let me drive. Of course, the first inclination of a 15-year-old boy was to see how fast the car could go. I probably had less than 30 hours of driving on a learner’s permit by that time and hadn’t even been though driver’s ed yet. I drove out to new highway two and put the hammer down. I got it up to over 135 mph on the speedometer before Tony advised me to shut it down and let him get back behind the wheel. Luckily, I didn’t lose control and kill us both! I don’t recall any seat belts being worn either. Amazing how teenagers have guardian angels watching over them. That was the fastest I ever drove a car. Apparently, my brain started to slowly develop after that. 

I agree, we were so lucky in so many instances not to be busted or cause an accident. Again, I have to wonder, what our parents really knew about all this. I mean there are no secrets in a small town!!.