Just Cruis’n Car Show Celebrates America’s Love Of Automobiles

By Linda Kor
   Nothing combines nostalgia and class like a cool classic automobile. Cars with giant swept back fins, aerodynamic lines and protruding taillights designed to look like the afterburners of some space age air-craft, or muscle cars with sleek lines and powerful V8 engines…whatever your preference, the cars of the early American road not only symbolized freedom, they defined the individuals driving them.
   If classic cars have captured your imagination, Winslow is the place to be this weekend.
   Beginning Friday evening, Oct. 2, and continuing through Saturday, Winslow will be hosting the 15th annual Just Cruis’n Car Show at La Posada Hotel.
   From 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday, drivers will be taking part in a Poker Run where they will travel throughout the city on a scavenger hunt for cards, looking for the best poker hand.
   From 6 to 9 p.m., a free Sock Hop dance featuring the Just Cruiz’n DJ’s reminiscent of the 1950s is planned to celebrate the early days of rock and roll.
   From 7 to 9 p.m. a Burn-Out Contest will take place, where drivers line up for a wheel spinning, tire smoking race in front of La Posada.
   On Saturday the vehicles will be on display to the public from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. and trophies will be awarded.
   There will be 32 classes of cars plus six-foot trophies for Best of Show, People’s Choice, Best Chevro-let, Best Ford and Best Mopar. Other awards include Best Interior, Best Paint, Best Engine, Best Engi-neered, Best Represented Club and Long Distance Award.
   Registration will be accepted right up until the events start on Friday, but pre-registration will cost $30 and get you a T-shirt, while registering the day of the event will cost $35.
   The car show will no doubt take many spectators back in time. When the automobile became the pre-ferred mode of transportation for most Americans, life was a little different than it is today. It was a time when service station attendants not only pumped your gas, but also checked the oil and water, and put air in your tires. Those were also the days when gas was 25 cents a gallon and a family could afford to travel coast to coast on vacation, with the vacation often being the drive itself.
   As families traveled they needed places to eat and sleep, and answering that demand were fast food restaurants and motor inns that doted the landscape. It was a car culture, and that’s what made Route 66 come to life.