Final Parkville Car Cruise of 2010 was nice, but sad at the same time

Since I'm a Parkville resident, it saddens me to report that the last downtown cruise night of the year was Saturday night. I have to admit, I enjoyed having one event that was five minutes from home, and I was starting to feel sort of a renewed connection with our historic downtown.

This weekend's cruise was up against some extraordinarily stiff competition. Of course, the Goodguys show was just letting out at the Kansas Speedway. The Greaserama show was packing them in at the Boulevard Drive-In. And there were one of a million different places where people could go to enjoy what turned out to be a gorgeous late-summer evening.

All of these other things even had my attention. By the time I was able to roll into Parkville, the cruise was just about to wrap up. That means a lot of the cars had already left, but it still looked like they had a pretty decent turnout under the circumstances.

That's not a huge surprise, though. Parkville's cruise has grown quite a bit since last year, even. I went to all of them this summer, and I can't think of one night that they didn't have a packed house. People really seem to be discovering the relaxed, Mayberry-like atmosphere that Historic Downtown Parkville has to offer.

I drove my '63 Chevy C-10 to this cruise. In fact, I had been driving it to all the events all day. And even though I took nearly 1,000 pictures at all the car shows over the weekend, I never once remembered to snap a picture of my own truck. Does that make me a bad owner?

It'll be a long winter before there's another cruise night in Parkville. I'm going to be a cranky person to live with. Heck, I'm cranky right now. What am I supposed to go downtown for--the Farmer's Market? Yeah, right. Bring on the cars!