Where the street machine craze went real- Palo Alto High School, the back parking lot where between1978-1980 we practiced the loosening of our youthful daring, restrained by a world of academics and motor vehicle law. It was in this part of the parking lot where many a street machine came screaming at high R’s and high G’s around the end of the lot with tires laying down prodigious amounts of rear and sometimes front tire rubber across the barren asphalt.

Just look at the money they pumped into this high school football field. I guess, considering it is within a mile of Stanford Stadium where the Cardinal (once the “Indians”) play, they needed to spruce things up. Believe it or not, my two kids are hiding with their heads out of view in my car.

In the back parking lot of Palo Alto High School, the boys’ gym in the background. Same building as in 1980 and many years before, but we didn’t have the cool looking Viking Ship paint job back then.

Palo Alto High School and the current day entry gate to the football field. Man, they sure beautified this area. It looked like a dump with a cheap cyclone fence in 1980. Sure makes for a nice photo-op with my Challenger now.

Palo Alto HIgh School auto shop, where Mr. O.D. Mitchell awarded me twice as many units for taking Auto in my senior year because I did the work. I also won the Industrial Arts Award. Mr. Mitchell was one of most important mentors I had in my youth. He told me once, “Yee, most teenagers have one of three vices: sex, drugs or speed… yours is speed.” Apparently the beautification budget hasn’t got to this area of the school yet. It looks almost exactly the same as it did when I graduated in 1980.

The Dodge Kid in his youth about 1976.