My left leg was always the first thing to ache. The clutch on my 1970 Ford Torino was notoriously stiff,...
We Used to Burn Gas Just to See Who Else Was Out |
Before cell phones and social media dictated our lives, we found community by driving in endless circles and sitting on the hoods of rusty cars. |
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News for the America we remember |
My left leg was always the first thing to ache. The clutch on my 1970 Ford Torino was notoriously stiff, and keeping it partially engaged while inching forward at five miles per hour required a very specific kind of endurance. It was a Friday night in the fall of 1978, and we were trapped in a slow-moving parade of Detroit steel, loud music, and cheap cologne. We were cruising, engaged in the defining social ritual of my teenage years, a practice built entirely on burning cheap gasoline to go absolutely nowhere. |
Every town had its strip. Ours was a straight two-mile shot down Main Street, bounded by a Dairy Queen on the north end and a sprawling, usually deserted grocery store parking lot on the south. The rules of engagement were unwritten but universally understood. You drove down the avenue, hung a wide U-turn at the grocery store, headed back up to the Dairy Queen, and repeated the loop until someone flagged you down, your radiator boiled over, or you ran out of gas. |
The act of cruising was a masterpiece of deliberate inefficiency. The goal was never to reach a destination. The goal was to be seen, to see who else was out, and to figure out where the actual parties might be happening later. You rode with your windows rolled all the way down, regardless of the temperature, because the windows were your only interface with the outside world. An elbow casually resting on the door frame was mandatory. If you had a good stereo system, you made sure everyone in a three-block radius knew it. |
My Torino was nothing special, mostly primer gray on the rear quarter panels where I had poorly applied Bondo over rust holes. But it had a V8 engine and a bench seat that could comfortably hold three skinny teenagers up front. My best friend, Dave, sat in the passenger seat, working the radio dial and shouting out the names of classmates he spotted in the oncoming lane |
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From 1974 to 1987, silver more than doubled gold's returns. After 2008, it beat gold five-fold in three years. Since March 2020, silver is up 402% against gold's 186%. Our research team's free playbook explains why, and how the team would position. |
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