Remember that movie American Graffiti? Growing up in the San Joaquin valley, I spent almost every weekend as a teenager cruising the drag in Modesto. It was the 80’s and I was lucky enough to experience “The Cruise”. Back then, we didn’t need to go to car shows – every Friday and Saturday night was a car show!

Muscle cars, sports cars, hot rods and tricked out motorcycles flooded in from every direction and the streets came alive with the sounds of revving engines, tires squealing and the electrified feeling of youth.

Ah, the good old days. I had almost forgotten what they were like until this last weekend when we went to our local annual car show and was taken back to those carefree years. Lucky for me it was overcast with a nice breeze so I was able to get out for a few hours and enjoy myself.

There were hotrods…

And muscle cars…

And tricked out motorcycles…

And a few jalopies and dragsters. It was a lot of fun seeing all of them and chatting with the owners. We ran into a few friends, watched the drag races and had some great conversations and good food and overall really enjoyed the day.

While there were a couple of exotics and European sports cars, it was mostly American classics so not really the right car show for our Gunther. We did join in the cruise later in the evening and we were invited to enter him in an upcoming show for exotics and sports cars by the coordinator who saw us pull up early that day. So that was nice.

It’s in August so depending on the weather we might just do that!

It was a bit bittersweet for me though, because so many of my friends from that “American Graffiti” time of my youth drag racing down the avenue are long gone. Sadly many of them died young, but that’s a different post for a different day.