Cruise Down to The Steel Yard

Hamburgers and hot dogs and fireworks. It doesn’t get more American than that, and during the week of the 4th, you probably had more than your fill of all three. But just as all the patriotic buzz starts to wear off, the next American event will come up on your summer fun calendar.

On July 13, from 5 – 9pm, the 7^th Annual Cruise Night will take place at The Steel Yard. The classic car show will include hot-rods, custom vehicles, monster bikes and rat rods. It’s a family-friendly event with tunes, cars and local artists.

Even before John Travolta built Greased Lightning and then sang and danced around it, the human/car relationship has been more than just a platonic man and machine situation. Dudes and dudettes love their rides, they rub the chrome and lube the valves and give them names. If any of this sounds like it resembles you, the Cruise Night is your time to shine.

There is a subculture of car connoisseurs and this event springs them from their garages like a siren song, and you can hear the engines hum as the men and women converge on The Steel Yard like a line of characters out of a Bruce Springsteen song.

There are prizes and raffles and other fun activities, but the real attraction is the grease and steel and exhaust. Cars were once works of art, before the safety check and infotainment systems. Most rarely had seatbelts, let alone airbags and impact systems. You were lucky if three stations came on the radio, and if the car had air conditioning, you were definitely living the high life. But they were stylish and when you arrived somewhere, your car announced you to those in attendance and everyone had a pretty good idea of who you were based on what you drove.

So if you find yourself with an Americana nostalgia hangover after the 4^th, we’d like to prescribe a full dose of American steel and rubber that was put together by the greatest generation in the greatest country in the history of humanity. Pass the hamburgers and apple pie, please!