Dragging Main

It always amazes me what THE NEW YORK TIMES puts into its Style Section. Mostly crap from Hollywood. But recently they had an article on "Dragging Main" in Asheville, N.C. For those who don't know what Dragging Main involves, it's an old Southern custom (which I am personally surprised is still alive) in small towns all over the South. On Saturday nights, boys gas up their cars and go to town...the girls go to town, but they walk down Main Street. Strool actually. The boys slowly drive by checking out the parade of young women....making appropriate and inappropriate remarks to them trying to lure them into their cars. It's sort of a pre-marital mating game. I'm surprised that guys can still drag Main with the price of gas hovering around $3 a gallon. I'm sure there are some Southern towns where Main Street is on a hill so they can coast down without having to turn on the motor. I used to go with my cousin Howard to drag main when I was a teenager. Howard drove because (a) I was too young to drive and (b) I didn't have a car. My job was to sit in the seat by the driver, roll down the window, hang out the window and say cute things to the passing parade of young women. Some of them wouldn't even look our way. (I didn't take this personally because I figured it was the CAR they were rejecting, not me.) But most of them would look my way, smile and giggle. Our objective of course was to lure them over to the car for some serious conversation. The girls always walked in twos...and the boys drove in twos. Howard would feed me "lines" that I was to say. His lines were corny, but they usually worked because he was an old hand at dragging Main. He wasn't looking to net two young women...he was going for a special type who wasn't just going along for the ride, so to speak. When we captured a couple, we would usually take them to a hamburger joint on the outside of town...and then to the Drive-In Movie. He always carried two folding chairs in the car and he would make me and the ugliest girl sit outside to watch the movie. I'm not sure what he and the other one did, but they never knew anything about the movie we had seen. I don't think anybody drags Main Street in the town where I used to live. All the stores are closed now...Main Street is dead. But I may go over next Saturday night and just double check.