A Fear of Adolescent Cruising: Adult Reactions to a Tradition That Won't Go Away
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Abstract
Growing up in Snyder, Texas, my friends and I spent our Friday and Satur-day nights cruising—what we referred to as "making the drag." We drove down College Avenue-Snyder's main strip, turning around in the Bar-H-Bar parking lot on one end of our circuit and at the Sonic Drive-In on the other end. Were I able to go back and interview myself as I was then, I think I would describe those hours I spent on the drag as being "really cool." Whatever the phrase lacks in articulateness, its connotation is unmistakable. Cruising was important to me. It was important for lots of reasons but especially because of how it changed me: it made me feel tougher while I was out there commanding a few thousand pounds of metal to drive me around; it made me feel older than my years sneaking smokes and sipping beer from a can; it made me feel like I had sexual potential as me and my car full of male friends imagined—incorrectly as it turned out that the young women out cruising found us desirable and sexy; and it made me feel connected to something larger than myself since I knew from hearing them recount their own experiences on College Avenue that my older sisters, cousins, and parents had made the drag when they were in high school. "Really cool," indeed.
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