Every once in awhile you read a news item about an anniversary of an event or hear a radio announcer tell you it was so many years ago this song was released and you hear yourself saying: “That can’t be right.”
Even when investigation reveals the information is correct, we tend to scroll back through our memory banks and try to place the dates in perspective, wondering where the years went and how they could have passed so quickly.
This recent news item told me that, in a few weeks, it will be the 40th anniversary of the release of the movie American Graffiti. The movie came out in August 1973, and launched the career of Harrison Ford, Susanne Somers, Richard Dreyfuss and others.
But more importantly, it took the baby boomer generation back to a night in 1962 and let us all relive one of those magic summer nights when the most important things in life were gas in your tank or whether the right person would smile at you and say “hi.”
I have the movie in both VHS and DVD formats, and I will watch parts of it or all of it when it’s on as a movie of the week or filling in a late night program slot. Every time I watch it I am pleased to see or hear some little nuance that I have missed before.
Maybe something hanging from a car mirror, or the design of a car club plate or jacket, will bring a smile. Maybe it’s a shot of a guy with his arm around his girl turning the corner with his other hand on the “necker knob” attached to his steering wheel, or the car hops on roller skates. The movie floods you with images from your past.
In two hours, the movie condenses one weekend evening and jams in all the teenage trials and tribulations which we all went through. It brings back those nights when we fell in love at 9 p.m. and broke up just after midnight. It reminds us of the varied late night conversations that changed our life’s plans two or three times during the evening.
A Fraser Valley car buff has recreated the yellow Ford coupe hot rod and the black 1955 Chevy that played out the final drag race on Paradise Road. His plan is to take the cars to California to the road where the race was filmed, and recreate that early morning epic battle.
The scene had everything. It was evil against good, Ford against Chev, the bad guy stealing the good girl and the hero coming to the rescue. It was a Shakespeare play with hamburgers and rock and roll music.
Even though the movie is set in small town USA, it was small town everywhere. In Langley, our Paradise Road was a stretch of Latimer Road (192 Street) between 36 and 40 Avenues. Summer Sunday afternoons the cars would stage in the open field, and the races went on until the RCMP showed up.
It didn’t matter what the name was on the hamburger joint in the movie. Every town had one or two. There were some serious discussions there, but they didn’t involve mortgage rates, child care, health issues or deadlines. That’s why we like to climb into that movie and escape back to those times.
The movies and the songs may be old but the memories are good ones. At least that’s what McGregor says.
