Where were you in ’62? Cruisin’, just like last night. Days of Summer,
Marcel Moreau recalls the summer night, back in 1975 or ’76, when the Ottawa Fire Department closed a stretch of Carling Avenue and allowed dragsters and other auto enthusiasts to race their vehicles.
Moreau was in his early 20s then and cruising around in a 1971 Dodge Dart Demon 340. He remembers racing it up and down the street for about five hours that night.
Immediately afterwards, though, and every night that followed, city trucks hosed down the street, effectively preventing any more high-speed tomfoolery for the remainder of the summer.
Both the Demon and Moreau’s street-racing days are long gone, but the retired auto mechanic can sometimes still be found on Carling Avenue, sitting on lawn chairs in the Lincoln Fields shopping centre parking lot with his friend Roger Vachon, alongside their cars — Moreau now has a 1955 Pontiac, while Vachon drives a ‘ 58 Chevy Yeoman station wagon — and surrounded by other enthusiasts and their vehicles.
“It’s a stress reliever,” says Vachon of his love of “anything with wheels” and nights showing them off.
Moreau agrees. “I can go in the garage at night and work for four or five hours on this thing, and forget about the real world,” he says. “And it’s the friendships, the associations with everybody.”
The most avid can do this every night in the area: Mondays at the casino in Hull, Tuesdays at the Hazeldean Mall in Kanata, Wednesdays at the Rideau-Carleton Raceway or in Gatineau, Thursdays at Lincoln Fields, Fridays in Aylmer or at Carling and Woodroffe, or on Sparks Street, Saturdays at Monkey Joe’s.
“Three years ago I didn’t eat at home for three weeks,” says Jim Calombaris, who with a dozen or so fellow enthusiasts formed the Summer Knight Cruisers Car Club.
The Hazeldean and Lincoln Fields nights also raise money for CHEO. As well, there are big shows to attend; in Merrickville, in Syracuse, all over. And they sit and talk about cars, and sometimes other things, too.
Jim Hall, meanwhile, sits beside his 1964 Caliente, weathered only by its 28,000 original miles. He’s had it about a year, after selling the four he used to own when he moved into a condo two years ago.
“I just love old cars and old trucks,” he says.
“I used to enjoy working on them and restoring them. I can’t do that at my age, but I enjoy the friendship and camaraderie.”
He never takes his car out in the rain, but tries to attend nights like these three or four times a week during the summer.
“You sit around and shoot the breeze, and people come around and ask questions.
“Me and my car-nut friends all love it.”