West Bend, Wi – Time is running out to get your tickets for the Classics for a Cause raffle benefitting Senior Citizens Activities Inc. which will draw one name September 19 for a chance to win a new vehicle. The topic of a classic car sparked memories of when kids used to cruise in West Bend, WI. The popular evening activity of driving up and down Main Street eventually led to an ordinance banning cruising; citations were issued if a motorist passed a checkpoint more than twice in an hour on Main Street. Do you remember cruising?
Youngsters today wouldn’t believe how popular cruising was. Radio DJ Bob Bonenfant recalled cruising in the early 1970s in his 340 Duster. “That’s all we did was cruise up and down Main Street. I mean, there was nothing else to do, you know? You went cruising, especially if you had a nice car, you’d show it off.
“We’d wave at people. We’d stopped at Monkey Island and talk with people. You know, we’d go cruising, looking for your next score, and all that other stuff.”
Bonenfant said sometimes cruising would turn into racing. “We’d go down to the stoplights where Badger Middle School is and we’d drag race people when the light turned green,” he said.
“I’d have my 340 Duster and some guy in a stinking GM, or a Camaro or a Buick Skylark would pull up and you know, you had to look. As soon as that thing turned green man you floored it, and you’d be squealing out of there, and you were just hoping there were no cops around.”
Bonenfant said they would race south down Main Street from Decorah Road to just past the Coachman House or maybe Randy’s Restaurant. “I know we went past Kohl’s food store,” he said. “It was basically you’re beating the guy off the line because you were kind of still in town.”
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Former District 2 alderman Thomas O’Meara III graduated in the Class of 1961. “We would drive from the A&W all the way to the other end of town to Barton Hill, and
then turn around and come on back,” he said. “It was just a hellishly good waste of time.”
O’Meara said most people would drive their dad’s car, but he had his mother’s 57 Chevy. “It was a beautiful sort of rust color over cream.
“We would drive slowly through downtown, which made everybody mad because you held up traffic. The police didn’t like it at all.”
O’Meara, 82, said some of the stores he remembered on Main Street included The Exclusive Company, JC Penny, West Bend Theatre, The Parkette, and “a pharmacy that had a really great soda fountain.”
Another old-school cruiser was Barton gal Sally Cotter Fellenz. “I don’t even know that we called it cruising, but we drove from one side of West Bend to the other, back and forth constantly, and then we always would meet in the back of what was West Bend High School parking lot,” she said.
Cotter Fellenz was driving with her boyfriend Chucky; he later became her husband. “He had a 1950 Ford, and I started going with him in 1958.
“He always wanted to customize his car, so he took the handles off of it, and filled them in with that putty stuff that you put on cars. But he never finished it. So, every time you wanted to get in the car, he had to roll the window down and reach in there and open it from the inside out.
“Then they’d put on these glass packs, so the car made a lot of noise, and they loved that. All those guys they’d rev those engines, and you know how that sounds.”
Cotter Fellenz said they would cruise to the “end of town.”
“There was a farm on that corner, where Kwik Trip is now on Decorah Road. Then we would turn around and go all the way up to Barton, probably to Salisbury Road, and turn around. That was the whole route.”
If Cotter Fellenz and her beau had any money, they would hang at the Beacon Restaurant downtown, which is currently the Centrum building.
“His car was navy blue, and I never drove because I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 23 years old.
“Most of the time we’d go back and forth. Sometimes we passed the same people 15 times. Sometimes you’d see somebody sitting out, and you’d stop and talk to them, but most of the time you went to the high school parking lot.
“I do remember on Friday nights it was so crazy. Because, you know, Highway 45 was the thoroughfare from Milwaukee to up north at that time and we right by the West Bend Theater we had so much traffic on Friday nights that a cop would stand there and stop the traffic so people could cross there. So, you’d stop, and say hi to the cop and everything, and then they’d make a joke with you about how many times did you come through here already. They knew it was the same car.”
Questioned if she and Chucky ever went drag racing…. “Not there,” she said about Decorah and Main.
“We went out to Highway Z and there’s a stretch of street road by the swamp, right after you turn off of 33 on to Z. Before you would get to Hacker Drive, there’s a real straightaway and I would sit in the car with a timer in my hand. God, if my dad would ever know that he’d have killed me. I know a lot of other girls did that too.”
Larry Fechter, senior advisor of the Iola Car Show, was cruising in West Bend, in the 1970s. “My favorite car was a ’69 Firebird,” he said. “If David “Grubby” Miller was here…. he was the embodiment of the cruising era in West Bend.”
Miller died this past June. His obituary read, “He was nothing short of a local legend. Whether it was in his hometown of West Bend or later around Weyauwega, he was well-known and hard to forget. His loud cars, big personality, sarcastic wit, and disregard for most authority made him a sort of hometown celebrity.”
It was 1991 when the city of West Bend passed an anti-cruising ordinance which prohibited passing a checkpoint on Main Street more than twice within an hour.
Steve Riffel worked as a patrolman for the West Bend PD starting in 1987. He vividly remembers the cruising ordinance from 1991. “We had a computer, and you punch in the license plate, and the ordinance was, how many times in a period of time that a plate passed by and we would stop them, and they’d get this cruising ticket.
“I was assigned downtown because of Monkey Island and a lot of kids would hang there. I would walk back and forth with my dog, and those guys would be cruising up and down the street. We used the computer and tracked license plates for a number of summers. The kids hated it,” he said.
James Skidmore was police chief at the time and in July 1991 there was an organized protest against the cruising ordinance and police cited 38 people. The person who organized the event was a young Kevin Scheunemann.
Scott Schmidt from Schmidt Funeral Home remembered his buddy was delivering pizzas and was stopped for cruising. “I think he was delivering for Dick’s Pizza and wound up getting pulled over because he was, you know, going past the same point more than twice within a 30 or 60-minute time frame, and he’s like, I’m just delivering pizzas. I’m not cruising.”
Do you have a memory about cruising? Chime in with your story, and don’t forget to detail the make and model of your vehicle. We’ll collect stories and add them to this article.
One sidebar story:
Sally Cotter Fellenz said years ago the thing for teenage boys to do was hang out at the Texaco station. It was actually called Kannenbergs, located on Silverbrook and Main. The fellas would spend time fixing cars. I spent so many of my dates sitting in the car as it was up on the hoist. I never liked the smell of all that gasoline and oil, so I’d stay in the car. I’d be up on that hoist sometimes for an hour while they’re changing the oil or whatever.”
Questioned what she did while sitting 6 feet off the ground, “Well, I didn’t read. I probably had the radio on for my boyfriend. I was so in love I couldn’t go somewhere else and wait for him to get done. I just wanted to be with him.”
Some photos courtesy the West Bend High School yearbook.
