Ridin' along in my automobile

My baby beside me at the wheel

I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile

My curiosity runnin' wild

Cruisin' and playin' the radio

With no particular place to go

- Chuck Berry

As a child of the '70s I grew up with a baseball, hot dogs and apple pie existence in central Montana. I watched "Happy Days," and was reminded by my parents how great things were back in the late '50s and early '60s as conveyed in the show.

My parents were typical teenagers at the time, and back then if you were a guy, you had to have the cool car and some gas money to go cruising. If you were a gal, you'd try to hook up (which at the time meant spend time with) with the guy aforementioned.

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Fast forward 20 years, and I was one of those guys with the shiny wheels and gas in the tank. The proud owner of a 1973 Monte Carlo with bucket seats and dual exhaust (loud enough to get noticed, but subtle enough to allow for conversation within), I'd cruise our small town, which didn't amount to much, maybe 8 or 9 blocks of the main drag, then make a U-turn and do it all over again.

With the aftermarket stereo blasting out Foreigner, Styx, Queen, Van Halen or Fleetwood Mac, I spent many a night idling slowly down a boulevard, more often than not with female companionship riding shotgun.

Ours was a typical small town, with a spray-painted line on the highway just outside town and a similar line materializing roughly a quarter mile away. My buddies and I would do a little grudge racing off and on, but never anything steady, as to throw the town marshall off the scent.

•••

What was steady was a few nights of cruising per week. The gang would pull into a gas station, closed down for the night, chew the fat and watch who cruised by, wondering if they would double back or exactly where they were headed.

It was our hangout. A place to convene and strike up the topics of the day. Who exactly was the new kid in school, and where did he come from? You going out for football this fall? Did you hear (insert name of female peer here) is going out with some sleazeball from (insert name of neighboring town here)?

•••

I've heard from a handful of locals my parents' age that cruising Sherman Avenue was big back in the day. I can imagine. I am sure the nightlife here was buzzing, the sound of hot rods echoing off the street similar to a Friday night at Car d'Alene, ball games at Memorial Field and a movie to catch at the Showboat Drive Inn, not to mention City Park and the beach for socializing.

Chewing the fat nowadays (As if teens these days would ever call it that) is all done via cellphone text messages and social media. Gone are the extra greenbacks that allowed young adults to cruise through the majority of a tank of gas a night.

•••

But fear not. There are still places to cruise, if greenbacks are no object.

Reno hosts "Hot August Nights" every summer, a huge festival of all things hot and rodded. Participants cruise to their sweaty hearts content for a few evenings and gamble, play golf or just spend the days looking at all the assembled chrome eye candy.

Farther south in San Bernardino, Calif., the Route 66 Rendezvous enters its 22nd year, beginning on Sept. 15. The event hosts thousands of cars and has a winding cruise route that allows a cruiser to view all the static 4-wheeled items on display. Famous rock bands from back in the day keep the stages humming all four days. Stars of the film "American Graffiti," such as Bo Hopkins, Paul Le Mat and Candy Clark, have been signing autographs at the event for years.

But the big daddy of cruises is a little farther away. The Woodward Dream Cruise happens on the third Friday and Saturday in August on the northern edge of Detroit, Mich. The event runs on Woodward through the cities of Berkley, Bloomfield Township, Ferndale, Pontiac and Royal Oak, and of course, back again.

Thousands pack the cruise route, undoubtedly chewing the fat and, through the course of an evening, ruining a tank of gas.

Jerry Hitchcock is an ex-cruiser and a copy editor for The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2017, or via email at jhitchcock@cdapress.com.