Shades of Blackstone Blvd.

Dada and Sam take the '49 Merc out for a shake-down cruise.

We're cruisin' baby! Screw Little Bush and Big Dick--it's birthday time and Sam and Dada are testing out the '49 Merc for a night on the town of cruisin' and drive-ins with Mrs. Dada. Thanks to Enigma over at Watergate Summer who loaned me the keys to her '49 Merc' for the night, it's gonna be a special birthday.

One of my favorite movies (listed as number six of the 15 on the queue of 37 movies on my all time Top Ten list) is "American Graffiti".

Back in Junior College in the Sixties, I had a friend named Dan. Dan drove this big old "quirky" '49 Packard. It was so uncool, it was probably one of the super coolest cars on campus--if the girls he went out with were any indication. I know how legends grow over time, but in my memory, the backseat of Dan's Packard had enough room for a pool table and small bar. Truthfully, I was never a huge Packard fan. But me and the rest of Dan's buddies were huge fans of "Carmen" who rode with Dan in that Packard dinosaur.

But over the years, I've become infatuated with the late 40's, early 50's Mercs. I suspect part of that is out of nostalgia, because as a little kid, my folks owned a '51 Mercury. While I liked that car, I thought it was kinda different looking.

But it was "American Graffiti" the movie, so chuck-full of great old street cruisers that I really came to appreciate the potential hotrod that never manifested under my parents tutelage. With all it's luscious "oldies," my very, very favorite "American Graffiti" car was a '49 Merc' owned by a member of the car club, The Pharoahs.

I love that movie because it's one aliens--if they get their hands on it--will analyze in their university classrooms on some distant planet elsewhere in the galaxy long after Earth is gone. Study it as a glimpse of Americana in the days of cheap oil, before U.S. oil production reached its peak and America fell into decline trying desperately to cling to its past based on those days of inexpensive energy, days that harbored a way of life every American came to expect as "normal."

And I love pondering how many baby boomers walking around today were conceived in the back seats of American Graffitiesque hotrods (or Dan's '49 Packard) at the drive-in movies with dates first enticed to ride in those hotrods at the local drive-in restaurants?

And so, thanks to the loan of tonight's hotrod from Enigma, we're off to recapture some of the *Magic* of those days. Sadly, the only drive-in movie left in El Paso is one on the far, far east side of town. It only shows XXX movies (until suburban sprawl surrounds it and parents suddenly become suspicious why the kids are going to bed at dusk since they moved to the suburbs).

But that's okay, we'll just hit the boulevards and do a little cruisin'. On second thought, that's not gonna work either. City ordinances have been passed prohibiting such activity on the best streets to cruise in El Paso. (Sigh.)

So okay, maybe we'll just drive circles around the "Clock" or "Red Rooster" or "OA" (Oasis), except, sadly, they're all gone too. That leaves one of the neighborhood "Diamond Shamrocks" or "Seven Elevens" where we can park while getting gas. But who needs gas? There's no where to drive.