A Car Club That Celebrates the Fintailed Fifties
For anyone growing up in the ‘50s, this club meeting was pure nostalgia. Shiny cars with tailfins and lots of chrome, women dressed in bobby sox and red club jackets, people having malts and fries at the drive-in and listening to the band play “Rock Around the Clock.” There even were carhops on roller skates.
It could have been a pleasant dream. Instead, it was the monthly meeting of the Cruisin’ Fifties Car Club of South Bay, and it brought out about 150 club members--60 cars--plus a host of gawkers, many of whom weren’t even born in the ‘50s.
Before the evening at the Moon Light drive-in in Torrance ended, the cops showed up too, not to arrest anyone, just to look at the vintage cars.
“We’re just doing what we couldn’t afford to do when we were in high school,” said Cruisin’ Fifties’ vice president Henry Figueroa, who stood proudly next to his ’50 Mercury, a black two-door sedan. Figueroa, 46, extends his hobby into a profession, restoring antique cars for others as well as himself. He recently sold his body and auto-painting shop but plans to do auto work for others at his shop at home in Torrance.
“We’re old teen-agers,” said club member Sue Stearman, showing off her 1958 metallic blue Chevy Impala convertible to visitors. Stearman’s husband, Glenn, who prefers to call himself “a die-hard teen-ager,” has a matching hardtop Impala. “We ran away and got married in a ’58 Impala, so that’s why we wanted these,” she said. “Now we have a daughter who’s 19.”
The Cruisin’ Fifties group got started in October of 1982 when five or six guys, all car buffs, answered an ad in a local newspaper asking if anyone was interested in putting together a car club in the South Bay area.
“Louie Pinia put in this ad and I answered it right away,” said Dick Midkiff, 41. “He’s the founder, and now I’m the president. We’re not very big yet, only a couple hundred people or so. But we’re growing. It’s a family club, more than anything. Wives and kids come along for the events and it’s a lot of fun for the family. It’s a club of 40-year-old teen-agers out having a ball.”
Members of the Cruisin’ Fifties meet the first weekend of every month at the Moon Light, and have several other events during the year, including two ‘50s dances, where everyone has to wear clothes from that era. Last weekend, the group went on a cruise and campout at Lake Cachuma near Santa Barbara.
Club dues are $20 a year, which includes a monthly newsletter, written by Midkiff’s wife, Sonnie, 37. The Midkiffs, who live in Harbor City, own seven vintage cars, most built in the 1950s. Their 11-year-old son, Mike, has a 1916 mini-Model T.
Proceeds to Local Charity
At each month’s gathering Cruisin’ Fifties has a raffle (prizes are usually donated by local businesses, and sometimes Midkiff and Figueroa pay for them) from which proceeds go to a local charity.
“We didn’t even have old cars before we got in the club,” said Lynne Hardman, 34, standing beside her 1956 brown Chevy truck. “We got in the club because we liked old cars. Then we got them.”
Hardman’s husband, Darcy, now the club’s cruise chairman, has a 1955 turquoise Chevrolet Nomad station wagon that he calls the Smurfwagon. The car is filled with their family collection of Smurf dolls, large and small and sports a license plate that reads: SMRFWGN.
Other members’ cars sport such license plates as: KONG’S 30, HALLS29, 34 MIKE, IAMA 25T, THUR T6, DUKES40.
“Most things for cars, clubs and such, are family oriented,” said Darcy Hardman, 42, a supervisor at the Torrance post office. “Just when we have dances, we get baby sitters.” The Hardmans have two children, Charlie, 12, and Bree, 8.
Belong to Both Clubs
Cruisin’ Fifties, which dedicates itself to restoring and preserving pre-1960 automobiles and trucks, is still small enough to meet at drive-ins like the Moon Light, but the Orange County Cruisin’ Assn., the oldest of multi-type car clubs in the Los Angeles area, has outgrown many of the spots where members used to meet.
Figueroa, the Midkiffs and the Hardmans, as do many of the other car enthusiasts, belong to both clubs.
Joe Widmark, 44, who grew up in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles 20 years ago, belongs to neither club, though he often goes to their cruises. Widmark and a group of his friends who live in nearby Hawthorne, also have an informal car group of 22 members called the Hawthorne Cruisers. “Ours isn’t a club, just a group of guys,” said Widmark, a wholesale plumbing supplier. “We don’t have meetings or dues. We’re guys with old cars who just get together to help one another and for the fun of it.”
Widmark has a 1935 Chevy and a 1929 Ford.
Begun in 1981, the Orange County group has a current membership of about 1,100 people. Cruisin’ Fifties members number about 250.
Centered on Family
“All of our things are centered around the family, too,” said Orange County Cruisin’ president Jim Gentry, on hand for the gathering at the Moon Light. “The second Friday of every month is cruise night. We want people to bring the kids and enjoy the evening together.”
The majority of members in both clubs are 35 and older, and most are married and have children, said Midkiff and Gentry.
The Orange County car group, of which Gentry was one of the original 25 members, started out meeting at Angelo’s drive-in in Anaheim but now meets mostly at different pizza places, high schools and colleges. “We just got too big for Angelo’s,” Gentry said.
“We don’t advertise our meeting places, so only club members know where we’re going to be,” he said. “We always notify the local police where we’re going to be. We don’t want rowdy young kids, and that’s what we were getting. The kids that cruise Elysian Park. We don’t want that kind of trouble.”
Cruisin’ Fifties president Midkiff, service manager for Torrance Lincoln-Mercury, said that members of his club “police ourselves. If there’s somebody here we don’t want, we get them out. We don’t want a bad reputation. We have a good one.”
Biggest Crowd Ever
Last Friday, the Orange County cruisers met at Savannah High School in Anaheim to assist the school’s booster club in raising money for its athletic fund. “We had 406 cars,” Gentry said. “It was the biggest crowd we ever got on a Friday night. And the boosters’ club raised $640 after expenses. It was so successful that they want us to come back in August.” Each year, the group has about four or five fund-raising events for different charities.
Both clubs have a toy run at Christmastime, donating toys to needy children’s groups.
Gentry, a 45-year-old real estate broker in Buena Park who owns a black 1951 Ford with customized gold flames on front and sides, grew up in Long Beach and as a teen-ager used to cruise the many drive-ins of the area.
“I had a car like this when I was in high school,” he said. “We cruised all the drive-ins then. The Clock and Grissinger’s in Long Beach. The Clock is gone now. Grissinger’s is still there, but they don’t have carhops anymore. Then there was Harvey’s in Downey. Most of us from this area go back once a year to what was Harvey’s. It’s called Johnny’s Broiler now. We go back for a night. We call it ‘Return to Harvey’s Night’ and put up a big sign that says Harvey’s instead of Johnny’s.”
The Orange County club’s biggest event is a campout and car show at the Orange County Fairgrounds on Labor Day weekend. “The admission is $8 a person for the whole weekend, with kids free,” Gentry said. “Last year we had 850 cars and 6,000 to 8,000 spectators.”
Orange County Cruisin’ members pay $10 a year for membership/subscription to the newsletter.
Own Liability Insurance
The club also has its own liability insurance, which covers 12 events a year, and it bought its own sound system to play old rock ‘n’ roll records on cruise night. The club also boasts charter groups in several other United States cities, Canada, England and New Zealand.
“I don’t even own a car and I’m a Cruisin’ Fifties member,” Pat Reeves said after she finished dancing to a song played by the Windchant band in the Moon Light parking lot. “I am a single mother raising three kids and I just don’t have the money right now for one of the old ones. I’ve got an ’84 Toyota pickup, but they let me come along on cruises anyhow.”
As she spoke, more and more cars rolled into the Moon Light parking lot, a few of them eventually spilling over into the alley behind the building, which used to be a McDonald’s restaurant.
A native Angeleno, Patrice Nikopoulos and her husband, Socrates, who own the Moon Light drive-in, don’t collect vintage autos, either, but they enjoy having the Cruisin’ Fifties at their restaurant. They have roller-skating carhops and a jukebox with lots of ‘40s and ‘50s music.
Socrates Nikopoulos remembers seeing film versions of 1950s drive-in scenes when he was growing up in Greece.
Biggest Problem
“Our biggest problem here is getting skaters to work as carhops,” said Patrice Nikopoulos, who sometimes fills in as a carhop. “It’s really hard to find good skaters.”
Windchant singer Rita Breen has plenty 1950s clothing, poodle skirt included, but no vintage car. “We’re musicians,” she said with a grin. “Our cars are old, but not vintage. We can’t afford those.”
The vintage autos are worth a lot and getting more valuable every day, according to Midkiff. “But I’ll bet I don’t have $8,000 in the whole lot of ours,” he said. “I do all the work myself, so all it costs me is for materials.”
On a corner of the drive-in lot, Ralph Simper, 31, polished his 1958 red and white Plymouth Belvedere--a huge model with fin tails that he calls Christine--until it positively glowed in the drive-in’s fluorescent lights.
“All Ralph does is wax, from the time he gets here until he leaves,” Midkiff said, kidding Simper.
‘Really Special’
“This was my car in high school,” said Simper, who lives in Inglewood and works at the Prince Chrysler-Plymouth dealership. “So it’s really special to me. But I have another one (the same model) that’s green and white.
“I’ve always been into cars. My dad, too. When I was a kid I used to build cars out of wood. Now I’ve got cars from the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Nine of them. The oldest one I have is a ’41 Chrysler Royal. The newest is a ’79 Chrysler 300.”
Unlike Simper, Brian Williams, 41, who owns and operates an 18-wheeler, became interested in old cars a few years ago. Williams just joined Cruisin’ Fifties five months ago.
“I got out of my other hobbies, collecting old model kits was one,” said Williams, who lives in Torrance. A few minutes before, he had moved his 1955 turquoise and white Chrysler Windsor, a model with the gun-sight tail lights, off the street when a spot in the drive-in lot became available.
“I hate having it on the street,” Williams said. “I like to use the car, not just hide it away. Although I’m scared to death when I drive it out on the street. I keep it covered and in a heated garage. It cost $6,400 to $6,600 in 1955 and they only made 50 or so (of this model). Now its worth about $12,000. It’s 18 1/2 feet long, a real land yacht. I often wonder why I didn’t get involved in Volkswagens. It would have been a hell of a lot simpler.”
