A Miami Vandal Remembers Bombing Broad Street

This interview was conducted and transcribed by Joyce McBride as part of the Centennial celebration planned for Globe High School in September. Here she talks with Randy Chapman who went to Miami high school from ’64 -’67 about cruising – a hugely popular past time all across America in the ’50s and ’60s when gas was cheap and automobiles were a form of entertainment. Although the practice is generally known as ‘cruising’, here it was referred to as “bombing Broad.”

Randy Chapman, Miami Vandal 6-6-2014     500,000 miles on Broad Street

RC:  I don’t know how long Broad Street is, four blocks, six blocks?  Somewhere in there, from where the old teepee is, down to just before the bridge.  That’s one turnaround and the other was up in that empty lot in front of Upton’s by the old train depot. Friday night you were busy with football games, basketball games or whatever, but on Saturdays,  in Miami, we didn’t have a large cruising, Sullivan Street wasn’t meant for cruising.  You didn’t have a good turnaround, you really didn’t.  There weren’t the places to park.  There was the (Hwy) 60 and . . .

JM:  So it’s more than cruising, it’s having people watch you cruise.

RC:  That’s right.  It’s see and be seen.  There was also two theatres in Globe, the Alden and the Globe, so you had those two venues to draw people, and it was just the place to be. My experience was ’64 – ’67.  That’s when you either knew someone old enough to drive a car, or you knew someone who had a car but wasn’t old enough but their parents didn’t know what was going on, because you have to remember there was a lot of shift work, shift workers, so.  Or you had a friend that had a car, was old enough to drive and if you pitched in for gas, which was at the time 29.9, you could cruise for, you know, on $5 you could cruise for a long time. You would take off oh, you’d start about 8 or 9, and you’d just drive around.  Sometimes you were lucky enough to have money for both a show and gas to cruise around after the show, or just going and cruising.  Just going to the show was no fun, you just . . .

JM:  Was this like a “guy thing,” or did you have dates?

RC:  Oh, good Lord!  DATES?  Oh!  Good Gosh! NO!  Some people, people that dated a lot, I guess THEY would go on a Saturday night.  They’re the ones that were stuck with one person that didn’t have the many opportunities that when you cruise, you had!  You could pull off, wait at the turnaround, wait at a parking place.  Oftentimes you could find a parking place, park, and just hang out, stand in the back of your car and wait, see who was cruising and who wasn’t.  And if somebody stopped to talk to you, often you just hopped in their car and went cruising with them for a while.

JM:  Because you ran out of gas.

RC:  You’d better believe it!  And many a time you used your “Oklahoma credit card,” which was a siphon hose and a 5-gallon gas can.  You’d wait until; the best time was about between 6:30 and 8:00, because people were eating then.  They were watching television and they were off the streets.  This was wintertime, school time, it got dark earlier.  You’d park at one end, walk down the street carrying a gas can, some hose, and taking advantage of the situation. Or you would sell pop bottles.  Sometimes some people were known to go to the Warrior Co-op on Friday night, climb the fence in back of the Warrior Co-op where they kept the empty soda bottles, stand on a car top, jump over the fence, hand pop bottles to a friend who would put them in the car, quietly.  And then the next day, Saturday, you would sell those Coke bottles, the bottles to Warrior Co-op and you’d have gas money.  That’s a rumor that some people did this. When you cruised, there were exciting things. You threw water balloons. You had Chinese fire drills.  Once in a while, whoever was driving the car would let a girl drive the car, and sometimes you wouldn’t see them for a couple hours.  The girls, they’d just take off, having fun driving and driving and driving.  People would often just hop in your car because you hit the stop light.  They’d run in, open the back door, hop in, and have you know, zittt!, goof around, just go around.  It was a real social thing.  This is one way that if you didn’t play sports, this was a way to meet Globe students, fellow students, and it was just a lot of fun.  And it was innocent fun.

JM:  You couldn’t really go to our dances, could you?

RC:  I went.  One time I tried to go to a Globe High School dance, and because I wasn’t wearing a belt they wouldn’t let me in.  So that was okay, I saved the dollar and bought a malt or something, or six or eight Cokes, I don’t know, for a dollar, so. Yeah, they were pretty strict then. Yeah, if it was out of town, you often went to Globe, but if it was in town, in Miami, after the football game you always had a dance at the gym, a home football game.  A home basketball game, they always had a dance at the gym.  So that Friday night was taken up with a game and a dance. And then Saturday was spent on going to the Globe or the Alden Theatre and cruising.  The Grand Theatre did attract the crowds that Globe did.  It had two theatres . . .

JM:  Do you think it was because Mom and Dad might be there, or that it was easier to go to Globe where nobody knew you?

RC:  Everybody knew!  It didn’t take long before everybody knew who the heck you were.  So Broad Street was broader than Sullivan Street and there was just more going on.  Plus you had the two theatres, you had Upton’s drive-in, just more going on, so.  Miami was a little sleepier after 8 o’clock.  Well, no, maybe a better way to put it was Miami was more geared toward “adult recreation” after dark.  Miami had many more bars than Globe did at that time. Most people couldn’t go drink under age in Miami, and you wouldn’t want to do that because you’d see way too many parents.  There was a bigger pool of people.  The pompon girls, the cheerleaders, football players, basketball players – that crowd always had their group of people that were usually dating and gathering with one another.  So that was another kind of social strata, not higher or lower, just another social strata.  And the rest of the folks just cruised town and made connections, made a fool of yourself, mooned people, like I said before, Chinese fire drills, water balloons, or in some cases, condoms filled with water.

JM:  Did you guys drink?  Were you guys drinking?

RC:  Oh, ABSOLUTELY!  Oh my gosh, yes!   JM:  Well, that helps with the mooning.   RC:  Yes, well for most boys at that age it didn’t take any kind of alcohol to encourage mooning somebody.  It was just something to do!

JM:  So, off hand, how many times did you do that?

RC:  Me? I don’t, I don’t think I mooned anybody.  I don’t think I did.

JM:  Were you the driver or the passenger?

RC:  I was mostly the passenger.  I didn’t have a big enough ham to stick against the window.  It would’ve looked like somebody’s elbow pressed against the window, it wasn’t.  I broke a hundred pounds when I became a senior, so my butt was almost non-existent. You’d meet people while you were cruising, and that’s where you would get your beer busts, your gatherings.  They’d say, “Let’s go to the lime caves!  We’ve got a party going on at the lime caves, in Wheatfields.  Or, we’d go to the CC Camp or we’d go to Round Table, or “Hey! There’s a party at Cherry Flats!” That’s also how you made those connections.  Cruising was a way to find somebody that was willing to go buy you beer, somebody who had graduated two or three years ahead of you and they could go buy beer.  They would go to Connie’s and buy beer, because not a lot of places would sell you liquor, you know, small town.  But you would go to these beer busts and you would do really treacherous dangerous things like you would build a bonfire and you would throw empty cans into it.  That’s how wild wacky you got.

JM:  Did you throw aerosol cans in it?

RC:  That was always saved for hiking, for camping, when it was just the guys.  Well, you didn’t do that with girls because you were always trying to impress girls.  Yeah, the high school boys would never throw an aerosol can into a fire to impress a girl, they would WALK through the fire to impress a girl, you know, JUMP through it or dance as close to the edge as they could to the edge of it.  THAT they would do, but they wouldn’t do anything so simple as throwing an aerosol can in that would just make a big pop after a while.

JM:  Did you smoke?

RC:  No.  There was a very small group that smoked, but they were elsewhere, usually.  You saved your money for beer.  You couldn’t afford both beer and cigarettes.  Oh, my gosh!  They were like 25 cents a pack. But we would often go to the Whiting Brothers Station, which is now a vacant station up by Copper Bistro.  And there they had in the men’s room two condom stations plus a machine that you put in a quarter and you got a goofy little coin that had heads or tails.  Heads would be a woman’s facial profile and tails would be a naked butt shot. We would take paper towels from where you would wash your windshield; go into the bathroom and stuff paper towels up into the condom machines on Friday afternoon.  So Saturday, we would go by and stop by the men’s room, pull the paper towels out and oftentimes you would score maybe four or five, maybe even six condoms.  It was a real safe way to get water balloons, because who was going to tell the attendant, “I lost a quarter in the condom machine.” I forget whose idea that was but it was pretty lucrative.  Once we discovered that we did it in two or three service stations. So then we would fill them with water.  They were much more dramatic!  Think about it!  They were much more dramatic. But you would drive from one end of Broad Street to the other end of Broad Street to the turnaround there, and make your turn.

JM:  And there was a line of you.

RC:  Oh!  A constant line! Yes! Yes!  And the police were very good.  They just kind of turned their heads; they had other things to do.  They knew where you were.  It was, you know, American Graffiti.  There are some scenes in there that were very similar to what we did.  You just took your car there to show it off.  You took your car to Broad Street to cruise and run small block-to-block drag races if you could, you know.  Or if you were really serious you would go out by Cutter or the Apache Trail and get it there. Mostly, it was a lot of socialization.  That’s where you met a lot of different girls.  You met Globe girls instead of Miami girls and Miami girls met Globe boys. So, it was just a bigger socialization pool.

JM:  It was like a dance, but with a machine.

RC:  Yes!  Yes, you would waltz your automobile down the street to the turnaround, turn around, come back up, head the other way, and perhaps you would run alongside another automobile that looked like they wanted to challenge you.  You would rev your engines and then you would tango!  Or jitterbug for a block!  And then you would again, relax and waltz. When the movies let out, you often tried to pull off so you could see who was getting out.

JM:  Who was who on a date.

RC:  Well, more important, who wasn’t with anybody and then you window-shopped.  So you’d kind of watched folks and if somebody you were interested in you’d watch what car they got into, and then you’d start cruising and follow, trying to catch up with them and establish, yeah!  Stalk! Yeah, stalking them. But the street, the street was alive with the smell of burning oil because not everybody had a brand new car. Rock and roll music, 8-tracks, and you always had your windows down and your music loud, shouting from one car to another. Everybody that owned a car in high school, you washed it once a week anyway, whether it had paint to wash off or whether you just simply rinsed off the primer and rearranged the rust in some places, you always did that before you cruised.  Everybody’s car was always clean on the inside too.   JM:  Do you remember Thanksgiving week, when you were not supposed to be over there?  The week of the year that Miami was not supposed to come to Globe and Globe to Miami?   RC:  Yeah, what a crazy thing to ask!  What was the administration thinking when they gave that clouded decree?  You know, where they said, “Oh! Don’t go there.”  I mean, why didn’t they just say, “Go on!  Go on! Do it! Do it! Do it as good as you can!  Make it a masterful experience!”  That was just encouragement.  Absolutely, positively 98% of the people that heard that message paid no attention to it.  Now you have the danger of invading enemy territory, plus you’re a rogue on your own.

JM:  If you get caught, you can’t go to the game.

RC:  Yeah, it’s like Mission Impossible, like oh please! We live in a mining camp!  There’s no way possible you couldn’t climb a hill and watch the game!   JM:  FREE!   RC:  Free!  Absolutely!  What you did miss by sitting on the hill was you missed the camaraderie in the stands.  The snack bar, but you could always stop at Knoffles on the way and buy a candy bar and some Cokes.  Yeah, that was an idle threat telling someone they couldn’t go to the game if they were caught. It was obvious when you drove up Globe Hill.  I mean, where in the heck do people think you’re going?  You know, at that time of night, other than going so.  High school kids are high school kids.  If you’re not wearing green and white sweaters, letterman sweaters, they don’t know who you are, most of those folks, so.  Often you would have a designated driver that stayed in the car, kept the car running.  One of the best ways to do it was to just get a couple tires and a gallon of gas and spread those in the tires.  And you could throw those down, light them and run!  Or you could lay them down, light them and run, so.  It makes a real mess.  It’s a real guerrilla operation.  You hit quick and get out.   JM:  Everybody can see you up there doing it.   RC:  And there’s only two ways out.

JM:  And they’re coming at you from both ends.  So you graduated in ’67?

RC:  ’67.  That’s when the old Vandal field was down where the Rod Plant is now.  Well football was serious business!  One of the occupations that must have a high suicide rate would be a small town football coach.  Be it Hereford, TX or Shebachee, Maine, if you’re in a small town and you’re the football coach and they have a bad season.  It’s a small town.  Where do you go to buy your groceries?  Every place you turn you’ve got advice.  If you won the Turkey Day game, you had a winning season.

JM:  You had a winning season.