Riding up and down Main Street on Friday nights honking horns and flashing lights was almost mandatory for teenagers in Springhill in the 1950s and 1960s. We called it Dragging Main.
Now some of those kids who have been grown for a long time are thinking about doing it again. Invitations have gone out for a reenactment and photo shoot of those Main Street cruises.
Folks who can find the kinds of cars and trucks that were dragging Main back in those days are being encouraged to drive them for the picture-taking event.
It would be great to see some of those classic cars from the fifties and sixties again like the Chevy Bel Airs with the tail fins and the Ford Fairlanes and Mercury Montclairs.
The car I drove most of those Friday nights was not cool then and wouldn’t be considered voguish now even if I could find one. It was a 1946 Army green Ford.
It was nearly 10 years old and worn out when I bought it for $250. Not many pretty girls were eager to ride in it when we were dragging Main.
But for that matter, they were not all that excited about the green Plymouth I borrowed from my parents a few times or the stodgy family station wagons and sedans other guys used. We had to disconnect the odometers to hold down the mileage we put on them.
Classmates with the Bel Airs and Thunderbird convertible like my best friend drove attracted plenty of passengers. They will probably be at the reenactment with flashy classic cars.
One of my concerns about going back for the photo shoot is that I would have to drive the boring white SUV that I use to haul our four granddaughters to dance lessons and softball games.
The invitation to the event indicated there will be drones buzzing overhead and videoing all these aging people dragging Main Street. I hate to be filmed in a lackluster SUV.
Drones scare me too. We bought one for work. The first time we tested it, the thing soared off and didn’t come back. It had landed far away at our office where we took it out of the box, which had a homing device in it.
And those of us who grew up in that little town were not accustomed to seeing things flying. There was one single engine plane at our airport, and spotting it was like seeing a spaceship.
Reenacting those Friday nights for a photo shoot is a good idea, but we have to remember that a lot of things that made dragging Main so enjoyable have changed.
The Dothl House, where we had juicy cheeseburgers and thick milkshakes before and after the drives, has long been closed. We will miss that good food and the jukebox music.
I’m not sure the little radio station in Springhill that blared from most of our AM radios is still on the air. The sock hops most of us went to before dragging Main are a thing of the past.
We might not be able to climb the water tower and paint the school letters on it like we did then or drag race later in the night on the flat, straight road to Taylor, Ark.
Parking at the oil fields and gravel pits after cruising Main was an exciting part of those Friday nights. Regina has told me that we will not be parking this time if we make it to the photo shoot.
Most of the landmarks and places we loved along Main Street as teenagers are gone now. Tennyson’s Drugs, where we had cherry Cokes and root beer floats at the soda fountain, has faded away.
So have the pool hall, the mercantile store, the old Webster movie theater that had Saturday morning double feature westerns and the barber shop where Mr. Corley trimmed my hair, doused me with lotion and dusted me with talcum powder for a quarter.
Even with those things in the distant past, though, a reenactment of dragging Main will still be fun. It will rekindle some of the fondest memories in the lives of those kids who experienced them so long ago and then grew older faster than any of us ever imagined.
I am polishing my SUV, getting the booster seats and empty Gatorade bottles out of it and trying to talk Regina into parking with me in the oilfields when we finish dragging Main.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES