Wagons in vintage Street scenes

Fast Food places were popular with young adults in the 1950s, then? Sounds nice, I'm imagining fast food at the time had more quality than it does now and the idea sounds much better than some of the other activities I've been hearing young adults partake in lately!

Also, Where's the Wagon in that photo? Is it behind one of the cars on the right?

Another thing: My Dad was telling me that back then, people would ride their cars around the fast food stores for something to do. Is it just me not seeing it or does that not happen now?

 

On close inspection, I think the 61 Buick Special is a wagon. Yes, fast food places have been popular with teens and young adults for at least 60 years.
Other than organized cruise ins at local fast food restaurants, teens and young adults don't generally cruise around the burger joints, or even the streets that were once popular for cruising. Many cities outlawed cruising years ago. Now there are special events for cruising such as the Woodward Dream Cruise in Detroit, and for a while the Van Nuys Blvd Cruise in L.A., and the Ocean City Cruise in Maryland. Some small towns still have locals cruising the Main Street, but now the younger generation prefers to text. I remember even as recently in the 1990's watching the locals cruise the Main Street of Luray, VA, a small town just down the mountain from Skyline Drive. They would cruise from the McDonalds at one end of town to the Tastee Freeze at the other end of town and back. It would take 14 minutes for the round trip, if they got the lights green and the train didn't come by crossing Main Street. When they hooked up with their friends they would park and hang out in a shopping center parking lot across from the McDonalds. Oldsters would sit on their front porches on Main Street and watch. American Graffiti came out in the mid 70's as a nostalgic return to the cruising that was so much more popular in the 50's. That led to other movies, like Hollywood Knights which also featured a nostalgic look back at cruising the streets and fast food joints.
The closest I ever got to experiencing the cruising depicted in the movie, American Graffiti, or the movie, Hollywood Knights, was visiting friends in Junction City, Kansas in about 1977 when I was seventeen. I remember it being just like the movie, with people hanging out of car windows talking to the girls driving in the car in the next lane. Going out on the long straight country roads to race, and of course everyone was in muscle cars or street rods.

 

White Buick w/ the Greaser on the hood. Also looks like perhaps two of them in the background at the left of the photo.

 

Everytime I click on this thread old memories come back. In the little town in Illinois where I was raised the very first fast food place was SANDYS on Court Street, the main E-W highway in town. I remember when an old farm house and fruit trees were still there as a grade school kid.
Today Arbys is on that corner and the hospital takes up several blocks across the highway which is now 4-lane. Sadly the old Shell station on the opposite corner was torn down for hospital expansion.
And yes I remember cruising the A &W, Steak-N-Shake, and others till the cops ran us off. There are still many towns with weekend cruise ins. But now they are planned and everyone sits in a lawn chair talking about the good ole days.
Funny, instead of old people yelling about those danged kids cruising, now it's kids making fun of us old guys sitting by our cars.
Also I remember stopping on Main Street Luray, VA.

 

Thanks. That's a lengthy reply. How is it on subject of cruising being outlawed? I can't imagine it being outlawed completely. That's another thing about cars of older years, today; Back in the 1960s people would just go for a cruise to see the birds or trees or whatever; That and the cars were a lot cozier to ride in than many cars today, According to what I hear! Though the same can be said for the 1991-1996 Whale Wagons too, so it's not so long ago. It's still technology which can be used but somehow it... Isn't being done en masse?

Ah, Thanks from a blind young one.

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And for a photo, Here's one I found by Google Image Searching "Delaware 1962" though it said this is from New Jersey (After a hurricane or tornado, from the looks of it?)

 

Back in the 1960s people would just go for a cruise to see the birds or trees or whatever;

This is not the type cruising we've been talking about. People have always cruised thru the country looking at the birds n bees and trees. It's happened from the first highwheeler motorbuggy and on.

The cruising that police and fast food places stopped was the slow driving thru the restaurant lots trying to look kool, look at other hot rods, and try to pick up babes. Many young kids would make repeated rounds thru the lots, sometimes trying to find a place to park. Often just showing off. Maybe we forgot to mention those fast food places were in the center of the parking lots and cruisers drove in one side around the building and out the other.
That's what got annoying and sometimes dangerous for people and the curbies waiting on parked cars. It also created traffic jams along main streets of towns when those cruisers stopped and slowed down to turn into the restaurants.

I am only guessing here. I would never cruise the Dog-N-Suds.

 

Here are some cool pictures of cruising Van Nuys Blvd back in the day.
http://www.rense.com/general96/backk.html
I recall reading that the police pretty much shut down the cruising on Van Nuys Blvd back in the 70's.

 

We have a number of organized cruises here in town every summer. They usually coincide with a local car show. I usually participate. It's not exactly like the old days, because There are a ton of spectators, but it follows the same "drive from one end of town to the other and back" scenario. It's awesome. The later in the evening it goes, the better it gets. Nothing but rumbling American V8s with nary a Handa or Tayoda in sight.