SUMMER IN THE REARVIEW
City’s last Classic Cruise Night marks the unofficial changing of the seasons
WOONSOCKET — For the kids walking the pavement in the city’s Market Square parking lot with their families Monday evening, the only reason to be there was the shiny and unusual classic cars, and if they were lucky enough, the low rumble of a big block V-8 when one would pull into the lot.
Only their parents would say that it was nice to be out in the night’s near-perfect weather and hint that it was also a celebration that summer was ending and school, yes, school for their kids, would begin later in the week.
“He likes the Plymouth Superbird,” Jessica Pestana, of Woonsocket, said of her 6-year-old son, Mark Jr.’s interest in a big and powerful orange Plymouth parked near the entrance of the lot. Mark Jr.’s father, Mark Nelson, also liked that car but had a few other favorites in mind that he planned to look for at the city’s Classic Cruise Night at Market Square.
“I can remember the old Cameros, the Z-28s. “I haven’t seen one yet, but we just got here,” he added.
Pestana said there appeared to be a lot more cars in the lot on Monday than there had been several Mondays ago and before the local event was delayed a couple of times for rainy evenings.
“I like coming down here and checking them all out,” Pestana said while offering it wasn’t going to be easy getting her son to leave the Superbird.
Tiarra Wynkoop-Hill of Woonsocket was going through a similar experience with her son, Shai Wynkoop-Hill, but instead with a couple of classic Ford Mustangs that with the exception of their paint schemes, were nearly identical polished and restored classics.
“It’s beautiful out and this is something nice to do before school starts,” Wynkoop-Hill explained.
Shai starts the new school year at the Citizens Memorial Elementary School as a fifth-grader on Thursday, and on Monday wasn’t all that happy with that fact.
“I’m ready for school to start but he’s not,” Wynkoop-Hill said while explaining her son would soon be missing all the fun he had during the summer.
“It goes by too fast and you never get to do all the things you wanted to do,” Shai’s mom noted.
“But we had fun, we did a lot of things. The highlight of the summer was going to Block Island on my birthday in July,” she said.
Becky Toupin of Woonsocket was found enjoying all the classic cars with her son Kevin, her daughter-in-law Tia, and her grandchildren, Avery 7, and Aria, 4, and also arranging a donation to Jennifer Jolicoeur’s effort to get the city in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Jolicoeur is trying to collect a total of 200,000 donated bras to break the previous record to fight breast cancer, and is nearing the end of a 10-year effort to do just that. Jolicoeur and her mom, Audrey Lambert, had a table set up next to Jolicoeur’s classic 1958 Cadillac at the car night to fill another bin toward her goal.
“I have a bag of bras to donate and I told them I would drop them off at her business tomorrow,” Toupin said. Her son Kevin has an auto body business, Cousins Collision in Woonsocket, and has worked on a few old cars himself, Toupin noted.
“He’s painted a few of them,” she explained.
Kevin said he does have a couple of classics, a Corvette and a 1956 Ford truck, that he would like to put in shows someday, but isn’t ready for that quite yet.
“They are works in progress,” he explained of his own classics.
Jolicoeur said she had collected a number of bras during the show and suspected that her grandfather Norbert Lambert’s gift of a restored 1958 Cadillac that she had on display at the show was helping.
“I really appreciate all the support that we have been getting from the community,” Jolicoeur said of the local interest her company, Athena’s Cup, has received to raise money for the fight against breast cancer.
The money has come in when people give a donation of just $5 to have a bra included in the tally, and Jolicoeur said she has even had some men bring by their wives’ or girlfriends’ bras to help the car night collection effort.
“People in Woonsocket appreciate the fact that their city is going into the Guinness Book of World Records for a good cause,” Jolicoeur said.
As for the classic cars on the display, Monday night had also drawn a number of cherished classics such as the Superbird owned by Ed Mongeon, one of the event’s volunteer organizers, or the meticulously caredfor 1955 Mercury Montclair convertible brought by Roger and Pauline Paul of Woonsocket.
“I bought this car from someone in Cumberland that I knew,” Roger Paul, a longtime classic car owner, explained.
“I’ve had it about 10 years and I’ve done a lot of stuff to it, the paint job, the interior, everything,” he said.
And while he doesn’t have as many classic cars as a he used to, now just three, Paul said he still has fun taking them to the shows like the one at Market Square.
“Woonsocket, that’s my favorite because I married a Woonsocket Rocket (Pauline),” Paul, a native of Manville, noted.
As classic cruises go, Monday night’s event at Market Square was a pretty good one, according to Gordon Robinson, the long time owner of Ye Olde English Fish & Chips.
Robinson was out in front of his business near a perfect lime green 1971 Dodge Duster that his son, Steven Robinson of North Smithfield, had brought to the show.
“I used to run car shows in the 1960s and we used to put on a big one at Barry Field,” Robinson recalled. In those days he worked with the likes of Bobby Quinn, Joe Felicio, a past owner of the Arnold Hill Service Station, Ronny Dubois, and Norm Decelles of the Coachman Restaurant in Bellingham, to put them on.
The Monday night shows at Market Square have been drawing more participants as the summer continued, weather permitting, according to Gordon. His son agreed.
“I kind of like it here in the lot and not lined up on Main Street,” Steven Robinson said. “I think the parking lot serves its purpose better.”
Del and Ron Griffin of Manville also liked the new location and had brought their tropical turquoise and ivory 1957 BelAir to display with the other Chevys in the show.
It’s even fun to just drive their car on the road to get there, according to Griffins.
“People stop and toot their horns and give you a thumbs up,” Del Griffin said.