Classic cars prove popular at Blaine County Cruise

The classic cars in the Blaine County Cruise’s annual trip around the area are always popular with passers-by.

The cars and their owners gathered in Chinook Saturday morning, drove to Fort Benton, then to Havre before heading home to Chinook.

At each stop, people came by to look at the cars and talk to the owners.

But Allen Pula of Chinook says people who look at them and talk about the cars are missing most of the fun.

“The real fun is driving them,” he said when the cars stopped for a break at Holiday Village Mall Saturday afternoon.

Pula drives a 1964 Galaxie and takes part in a few car runs every year. He also drives it around Chinook as much as possible on the weekend.

Just having the car to look at isn’t worth the effort, he said. The fun is in the driving.

He said that people's interest in cars from a bygone era is innate.

“I really can’t explain it,” he said. “Some people are car people, some are animal people, some are both,” he said.

Jim Rowlatt of Havre is equally proud of his 1937 car. On the exterior, it’s a Ford, but the inner workings are all Chevy, he said.

He’s driven it for 40,000 miles, and it’s never been on a trailer, he said.

He’s taken it across Alberta, British Columbia and down to California, where he drove it through 122-degree heat.

His classic went through the sweltering hot weather with no problem.

“We drove by all the new cars stopped on the side of the road with their hoods up,” he said, laughing.

Rob and Gloria Bohmann of Zurich brought their 1972 Chrysler on the Cruise.

There are still a few flaws in the construction because, Rob said, the United Auto Workers was having labor relation difficulties with the company, and workers were not as committed as they sometimes were.

Gloria’s father bought it at a Kalispell estate sale and later gave it to her and her husband.

The lure of classic cars is that they bring back memories of an interesting time in American history, Gloria said.

That was a time when the entire family could be packed into a car — there was no concern about seat belts.

Families drove across country and stopped along side of the road for a picnic. Or they would pack the kids in the car and go to a drive-in movie.

A lot of people’s lives were lived in the car, she said.

When they rode down the road, they would play “the next car is yours” with family members.

“We’d yell out ‘the next car is yours,’” she recalled. “And it would be some tiny, little old car and that would be yours.”