Cadillac Cruisin ,

WAITSBURG - We'd almost forgotten about the Classic Car Show Cruise when we heard the car horns down on Main Street.

We were having a barbeque on the patio behind the house. My friend Michael Bryant Brown, visiting from Bainbridge Island along with my father in law and his girl friend - all here for the grand opening of the coffee shop - noticed it first. He thought it was a freight train coming down the track by the Touchet River. We knew better.

We peered between our home and our neighbor's, School Superintendent Dr. Carol Clark, and saw the shiny vintage rigs float by our front lawns.

We'd just finished dinner with a couple of glasses of wine. The Big startup of Coppei Coffee was behind us. We deserved to spend at least a few minutes watching the cars go by.

I recognized a number of the drivers: Lupe Torres, Ken Lenhardt, Jack Otterson. Then Gary Lowe from Dayton drifted by in his 1959 Cadillac and pulled over into Tom and Anita Baker's drive across the street, got out of the driver's seat and waved us down.

"You want a ride?" he shouted.

My son Niko, Michael (who had walked away from the picnic table barefoot) and I looked at each other. Sure. It's 7 pm on a Friday night. Nothing else to do. What could be better than a little cruise to Prescott and back in a dream boat of automotive luxury?

We ran over, careful to avoid the path of the other cruisers going by on this leafy summer night under the friendly eye of the Bruce Mansion.

We squeezed behind the folding front seats onto the back seat that absorbed us like a reclining vinyl diner booth. We made introductions as Gary backed out of the Bakers' drive to return to the parade of almost 30 sleighs heading south on Main.

We followed them out of town, a breeze flowing in from the car's expansive open windows, big enough to fit a tall man horizontally. The convoy went out on Coppei, then turned right on the long slow climb up Middle Waitsburg Road.

I was sitting in the far right corner of the back seat and couldn't see the road bed on our left.

Watching the vista through the side and front windows, the panorama unfolded like the view from an airplane that just left the runway. It seemed like we were way above the rolling wheat fields on the opposite hillside with the car humming deeply in a lumbering takeoff before reaching "cruising" altitude.

Meanwhile, Gary and his wife Donna told us all about their red and white baby, showed us a picture album of what the Cadillac looked like before he restored it. We guessed a V8 engine and we were right. Three hundred and eighty horsepower, built in an age when the price of gas was a quarter.

I quietly remarked at the irony of the vehicle's iconic and aerodynamic tail fins, immortalized by cartoonists, photographers, film makers and painters alike, but hardly helpful in reducing its gas consumption. That obviously wasn't on the designer's mind. I'm sure the inspiration came from the rocket age.

The sharing continued with the photo albums. Donna showed us photos of other car projects and I couldn't help compare the love, labor and liquid assets that go into these Phoenix Rising From The Ashes to what we poured into the two buildings that now form the coffee shop on Main Street.

In the golden sun and the golden hills around us, it was merely a fleeting thought. We were all in the moment, marveling at the cutting patterns on the hills, the cloudborn combines filling a truck against the evening glow and the string of rolling oldies in front of us.

A song kept coming into my head, my favorite Eagles hit.

"I've been standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, and it's such a fine sight to see .

"It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me.

"Come on, baby, don't say maybe, I gotta know if your sweet love's gonna save me.

"We may lose and we may win, but we will never be here again.

"So, open up, I'm climbing in, so take it easy."

I started humming, then singing it and the others soon joined in. No one had any trouble remembering the lyrics. We could have written them ourselves on the spot and simply changed "Winslow" to "Waitsburg."

Finally, we descended down the Lower Waitsburg Road and turned onto Highway 124 into Prescott, where we tied up the street in front of the Tuxedo bar and grill until two wheat trucks pulled up behind the impromptu outdoor display and wanted to get through.

So, the leisurely return to Waitsburg began along the rambling railroad tracks on the right and the fragrant alfalfa fields on the left. And all that while ice cream awaited us upon our return to Preston Park

I couldn't think of anything I'd rather be doing or any other place I'd rather be.

"Take it easy, take it easy. Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy."