Main Street cruise night is a trip down memory lane
WOONSOCKET – Jim McDonald of North Smithfield couldn’t afford a brand new Mustang when he was younger but today he is the proud owner of a baby blue 1967 version of the popular Ford all the same.
The Korean-era veteran of the Seabees was among the car owners pulling onto Main Street Wednesday for the city’s classic car show and was more than willing to talk about the special possession he eventually bought 15 years ago.
“I bought it from a little old lady in Connecticut so it really is one of those little old lady cars,” McDonald said of his past acquisi- tion. Although gently used, the car did need some work to get to where it is today and McDonald said he made that his annual project.
“I do a little something for it every year,” he said. “I put in a tranny one year and I did the overhead upholstery and the sun visors another,” he said.
McDonald’s current project is bringing the horn back to original condition since he currently uses a button mounted on the dash to activate it as opposed to the center plate of the steering wheel.
The old Mustang has a 289-horse-power
small block and is not as quick as some of the more sporty later models, but McDonald loves it just the same.
“I’ve had it for 15 years so I guess I like it,” he said.
McDonald has a rare luggage rack on the trunk of his model and likes to put a suitcase on it at shows to give people something to talk about when they walk by. “Some of the young people don’t even know what it is,” he said of the rack.
Wednesday evening’s show was the final summer event on Main Street and McDonald said he had just wanted to catch the final one before going on to other shows. There were plenty of classic cars and motorcycles to check out and Ed Mongeon, a local classic car aficionado, brought along five of his muscle cars including a classic Corvette, an orange and black Plymouth Road Runner and a stock racing “Sox & Martin” red, white and blue Plymouth Barracuda named “The Boss.”
There were also plenty of antique Ford roadsters and modified cars like the 1957 Chevy 3100 candy cobalt pickup Rick Ledouc of Woonsocket brought to the show. “I get a lot of feedback on it that is for sure,” Ledouc said of the low riding hot rod parked near Timeless Antiques.
Linda Plays, the city’s director of Human Services, said the Main Street car shows are always “very popular” events in the city and always draw a good crowd of car lovers.
“People get to park their classic cars in the road and it brings them back to a time when they were young and Main Street was the place to be,” she said. “The show makes people reminisce about their youth,” she added.
For the final summer show, Wayne Lima’s Kings Row band had the stage and drew a crowd people who set up their lawn chairs in the city’s Mullen Parking Lot early so they would be in just the right spot to listen. There was also a food truck dispensing chowder and clam cakes and another doling out ice cream.
While ending the summer schedule on Main Street, Plays said there was a chance there could be another car show in the fall. “Mayor is receptive to having more of these types of events because they are family friendly and they are what people want,” she said.
People will come and look for cars of a certain color, model or make and enjoy what they find, she explained. “This is a hobby for the people who own the cars and they love to come out here and show off their cars,” she said.
Plays said her favorite model is a Mustang since that was her first car. “I was 16 years old and it was my first car,” she said. “It was a standard and I couldn’t even drive it off the lot,” she added while explaining she had to learn how to drive a manual transmission before she could use it.
Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt took a walk down Main Street with Chief Thomas F. Oates III, who recently celebrated his first year on the job, and said she was pleased to see so many cars on the road Wednesday evening.
“The weather is helping and Kings Row is here and there is definitely a lot of energy here on Main Street that we can build on,” she said.
The people on Main Street could support her argument that the city really does need an events director, the mayor offered, — a position she lost to City Council budget action.
The coordinator could have helped the city maxi- mize interest in the car night outside the city and generate more traffic to Main Street than currently occurs, she offered.
“If we had someone to focus just on community events in the city, I think we could expand on the interest in them just like other communities do,” she said.
The evening was just one example of how the city can do more for its residents, she added. “People enjoy these events and it is way that the city can give back to its residents,” Baldelli-Hunt said.