Dick McLaughlin sat in his 1950 Oldsmobile Business Coupe at James and North Queen streets. Next to him sat a guy in a 1958 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday.

The light turned green and both cars rocketed forward. A hard right at Liberty, then onto Duke; down Duke to Orange, back onto Queen. "I beat him around four or five times," said McLaughlin of the early-'60s street race, one of thousands that took place on and around the old "Loop" in Lancaster. "He said, 'What have you got in that thing?' "

McLaughlin feigned innocence; it was a stock engine. Of course, it did have a 410 rear-end gear — a borderline drag-racing modification that gave the car quicker acceleration.

McLaughlin told the guy two weeks later. "We got to be real good friends," laughed McLaughlin, now 70. It was simply another night on The Loop; friends and a type of fun that now seems something out of "American Graffiti," right here in Lancaster.

McLaughlin's street racing sometimes took him off The Loop proper — which for nearly half a century included North Queen and North Prince, bookended by Clay Street at the north and West King at the south. But hot rods were a persistent feature of The Loop. So was merely cruising; around and around with maybe a sojourn out to the McDonalds on Columbia Avenue, or McLaughlin's hangout, the long-gone Little Pig Diner at Ross Street and New Holland Avenue. On weekends in particular the streets were packed; Loopers went to see and be seen. The cops were always lurking, and city officials always threatening to do something about the noise and the nuisance.

In 1991, they did: Lancaster City Council passed a "loop law"; signs went up informing motorists that there was to be "No cruising 3 times past this point within 2 hrs. 7:00 PM - 3:30 AM." Penalties could include fines of $50 to $600, or up to 90 days in jail — or both.

The law, in effect, killed The Loop.

And now those signs of the times are coming down.

Tuesday, Sept. 4, the Lancaster Traffic Commission will consider a request by Mayor Rick Gray's office to remove 11 "no cruising" signs throughout the city. The idea is to reduce the visual clutter along city streets. Most signs can't come down. But the no cruising signs can, because there is no cruising any longer.

Those who remember when there was look back almost with a sense of giddiness. The Loop now becomes just another one of those things that exists only in memory, like the Little Pig Diner, like Dick McLaughlin's Olds Business Coupe. Like their youth.

"I haven't cruised The Loop in years," admitted McLaughlin. But the times he did remain some of the best times of his life.

Perfect for racing
It began, according to the yellowed newspaper clippings, in the 1950s. In an attempt to cut down on rush-hour gridlock in the city, officials turned several two-lane roads into one-way streets. That meant cars could ride parallel to one another; perfect for street racing between the lights.

Engines would rev as drivers waited for lights to turn green; kids loitering on the corners would cheer as the tires squealed and the cars took off.

The police weren't far behind. In fact, McLaughlin said, the police used to spy on him and his buddies in the Vagabonds' car club: "We'd heard they had the Little Pig staked out; someone said, 'The cops were up on [a nearby] railroad track watching you guys with field glasses.' "

Taking a back way around, McLaughlin and a few friends snuck up behind the officers and gave them a start.

"In those days, hot-rodders were like criminals," McLaughlin said.

But by the early 1960s The Loop drew more than just gearheads looking to show off their vehicles. Teens like Florence Fry of Willow Street came to cruise, to hang out with friends, to look for members of the opposite sex. "My brother, all my friends cruised The Loop," Fry said. "We'd drive around The Loop a couple of times, then go out to the McDonald's on Columbia Pike and hang out. Then we drove back into town and around The Loop. Then back out to McDonald's."

Repeat ad infinitum, especially on weekends.

"It was a social thing," Fry said. "It wasn't expensive. And there really wasn't much of anything else for kids to do."

Fry's brother had a sleek Corvette with a 427-cubic-inch engine; once, when he'd gone to the beach for a few days, she hit The Loop in his car. "He accused me of racing it," she said. She had.

"Nobody could beat that 427," Fry said.

By the late 1960s the culture had changed, but the loop remained constant. "WLAN used to play 'In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida' for us about 9 to 10 [p.m.] on Friday and Saturday nights," recalled Bill Mentzer of Lancaster, who'd just gotten out of the service and spent a lot of time on The Loop —!\qjust like his father had, before him. He kept on cruising until the mid-1970s, he said, and it always seemed relatively innocent to him: "There was maybe some street racing at 1 or 2 in the morning, but there really weren't a lot of issues."

Loop detail
Police, and many who lived along The Loop, begged to differ. Sgt. Gary Metzger began working for the Lancaster Bureau of Police in 1971, and frequently worked "Loop detail." His job was to find, and bust, troublemakers: "There'd be a lot of obstructed windows, illegal equipment on vehicles, illegal lane changes," Metzger said.

Many kids felt as if the cops were harassing them. The cops were merely trying to keep some semblance of order.

"On weekends you could barely move, there was so much traffic," Metzger said. "Lancaster General ambulances couldn't get through. We were addressing quality-of-life issues," and the traffic and the noise were "definitely a quality-of-life issue for people who lived along The Loop."

Some city officials thought so, too. The Loop was deemed such a nuisance by the 1980s that some thought the city needed a specific anti-cruising law. Then-Councilman Jon Lyons was one of its biggest proponents.

"It wasn't just cars, it was loitering," said Lyons, who added complaints about The Loop came up time and again when he was campaigning door-to-door. "People would talk about kids urinating in the alleyways between row houses. The police didn't really have a good way to address it, they had to be there" to see it and stop it.

In 1987 Lyons proposed an anti-cruising ordinance. It died the following year after police and then-Mayor Art Morris said it wasn't necessary; some citizens thought it ridiculous to waste police man-hours by having them stand around and count the number of times a car passed by.

But by 1991 the mood had changed. Janice Stork was mayor, and then-police Chief Walter Goeke had changed his mind: An ordinance was needed. It was passed in early 1991, and the "no cruising" signs went up in May of that year.

An amazing thing happened: They actually killed The Loop.

"The problem went away within a couple of years," Lyons said. "It's odd; I go up the street in the city and see those 'No cruising' signs, and they really are an anachronism."

And it's nice to see the Gray administration "go through the attic and take out the unneeded stuff," Lyons said.

Sign clutter
That came about because the James Street Improvement District had been examining northwest Lancaster, taking "a comprehensive look at the streetscape," said JSID Executive Director Lisa Riggs. "We want to make it more attractive, and signs add a lot of visual clutter."

But of the 210 signs in the four-block area the JSID was scrutinizing, only 10 were deemed unnecessary. Three of them were "no cruising" signs. Shelby Naumann of the JSID called police, asking, "Hey, do you guys really use these?" Riggs said. The answer was no. And so the city itself decided to take down all of the signs.

"It's not a problem anymore," Mayor Gray said, "so why have the signs up?"

Their removal, in a sense, erases the last vestiges of The Loop itself. The hot rods and ducktails are gone, as is the Little Pig, as is "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida." But the urge to loop remains, even in those who left it behind long ago.

Dick McLaughlin and his wife were out for dinner a few months ago, and she doesn't like to travel Route 30; too fast, too dangerous. McLaughlin suggested they drive through the city instead, and found himself on the old Loop route when, across from the Fulton Opera House, he spied a pretty girl.

It just so happens he still has a "wolf whistle," a horn approximating the sound, installed in his car. So he hit it. The girl jumped. His wife laughed.

You can take The Loop out of Lancaster. But you'll never take it out of some Lancastrians.

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Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817.