Baby let's cruise...

From around 1969, and into the early seventies, we drove from Geyserville to Healdsburg for fun and entertainment in a 60s-era black Ford Galaxy. There wasn’t much for older teens to do around the area, so cruising the Plaza was a way of seeing and being seen—gas was CHEAP, motors were huge, mileage was low, fossil fuel concerns weren’t on our radar. Cruising Fourth Street in Santa Rosa was big-time cruising, but we liked Healdsburg better.

We’d wave and honk (or not) at the young men who cruised by in cars, such as the completely restored and raked fabulous canary yellow ’57 Chevy driven by a craggily handsome young Latino. Our Plaza “courtship” rituals mimicked, albeit with wheels, the ones Hannah Clayborn writes about on her website. “This whimsical Victorian bandstand soon became a favorite gathering place, especially for young single men and women who would assemble on warm evenings after chores were done.” While we didn’t gather around a bandstand, the streets surrounding the Plaza were the place we assembled on warm evenings.

(Click on the photo under “The Plaza in 1872” on the right side of the screen to link to Clayborn’s site.)

Later on, cruising became problematic because of gang activity, and it was banned; but before that our early cruises would take us through the old Lonnie’s Restaurant and Witke’s Truck Stop parking lot (where McDonald’s is today) around the Plaza, and through town. On the north, our turn around point was Martinez’s Mexican Restaurant and the carwash (now Silveira’s). Oftentimes there’d be a long line of cars all cruising the same direction, until someone made a pit stop and then broke the rhythm and began to circle the other way.

Martinez’s had wonderful authentic Mexican food and their tacos beat anything else around. Arctic Circle located at the corner of North Street and Healdsburg Avenue and A & W out near Memorial Beach were our busy fast food outlets. Ned’s Café and Lonnie’s Patio (same Lonnie as the café) were longtime Healdsburg hamburger eateries.

In the evenings and on Sundays, the Plaza was a hub of youthful activity. If we were on foot, we’d hang out, talking and laughing and check out the “guys” who were hanging out, talking, laughing, and checking out the girls.

While some of us tried to cling to the vestiges of innocence, the tendrils of societal change—Vietnam War protests, the drug culture, environmental awareness and action, and domestic terrorism—were inexorably twining into our consciousness tearing the remnants away.