https://tylerpaper.com/news/local/azalea-flower-trail-kicks-off-spring-in-tyler-event-set-to-draw-visitors-make-economic/article_25535e8a-a637-11ec-a6f8-d36fc55d6586.html

 

 

 

https://www.tjc.edu/

http://www.alumniclass.com/robertelee/ 

http://www.tjc.edu/alumni/

http://tylerpaper.com/

http://www.tylertexas.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler,_Texas

http://www.isjl.org/history/archive/tx/tyler.html

http://tylerpaper.com/pdf/1961.pdf

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Past-Glimpses-of-Tyler-Texas/308185141585

https://www.facebook.com/RememberInTylerWhen

http://whathappenedinmybirthyear.com

http://us.mg4.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uuuneGkmwo

 

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Looking back at dragging Broadway strip

BY KENNETH DEAN  (kdean@tylerpaper.com)             

Broadway Avenue always has bustled with business by day, but for decades as the sunlight gave way to the night, Tyler’s jugular vein transformed into what the local teens and young adults knew as “the drag.” With each extension of Broadway Avenue and new development of businesses, the youth had a longer road to cruise, and more places to hang out.                           

Cruising was not special to Tyler or East Texas. It started in the 1940s, and it grew in popularity as the Big 3 car manufacturers went head-to-head in trying to build the best muscle cars. 

Cindy Connally Grimes, who graduated from John Tyler in 1970, fondly remembers the times on Broadway Avenue with the beau, who would become her husband and her girlfriends. 

The 1960s were the best.“(We) dragged down to Hardee’s in my ’65 mustang on Sunday, but Friday and Saturday nights were reserved for dates,” she said. “My husband had a car called ‘The Black Widow.’ It was painted black with spider webs painted all over it. We listened to Johnny Rivers on his 4-track, then we’d make the square and back down through Hardee’s.” 

“Gas was 27 cents a gallon, Motown had just hit big, so Sunday afternoons were the same route, but in my Mustang with a car full of girls.” 

Don Martin, Tyler police spokesman, laughed about recalling his time spent working Broadway Avenue back in the early 1980s, when the music from hair-metal bands and stars such as Michael Jackson, emitting from the cassette players would compete in the night air.

“It was something watching them, and many of the businesses hired off-duty officers to work security because the kids congregated in their parking lots,” he said.

Martin said he spent many a night in the parking lot of what is now Lonestar Donuts, watching the action and looking for lawbreakers.

“For the most part everyone was good, but there were a few that cause trouble,” he said. “(The teens) would drive south on Broadway and turn around about the Loop and head back north then go around the square and do it again.”

Martin said it was all part of the culture of the time. 

There were favorite places to hang out along the drag for each decade and each group, such as the Weber’s Root Beer shop, the flower shop, Bergfeld Shopping Center, the park and the square.

“All the different schools had their different cliques, and all of the cliques would meet at different places up and down Broadway. It was a place for the kids to hang out on the weekend,” Martin said. 

There was some racing up and down Broadway Avenue, but most serious racers would meet out by the old Levi Straus off Loop 323 and drag the quarter mile.  

One reader on Facebook, responding to a post about cruising Broadway wrote, “In the middle ’80s, we would drag from Elm down to Amherst, turn around and do it again. 

Then the real hot rod guys would line them up over by the Levi building while TPD was at shift change and run them, many were not even street legal at Levi. Now it is a  major crime to street race.” 

Martin said the police did have run-ins with those racing, but the majority of teens just went up and down Broadway Avenue.  

Many have fond memories of the nights spent cruising the drag, and for some it was even the place where love struck.  

Another reader on Facebook responded to the post, “That’s how I met my husband back in 1986, and we’re still happily married today.” 

Though kids today still can be seen driving up and down South Broadway Avenue, it is not like those nights of a steady stream of cars filled with teens going back and forth. 

Martin said businesses began putting up signs in the 1990s, and then noise ordinances were introduced. But Martin wasn’t sure when it all changed. 

But in Tyler, as across the nation, the fad of “cruising” seemed to die off almost instantaneously.