CENTRE -- The weather-worn slab of asphalt at the Cherokee Plaza doesn't look like much. Cracks, skid marks, oil circles, and filled potholes show its age like the rings of a tree. The lot, near where Highways 9 and 68 meet in Centre, is sparsely used anymore.

Yet this lonely piece of pavement helped define a generation of Cherokee County teenagers a quarter-century ago. Like bees to honey, packed cars flocked to the lot every weekend night to “cruise.” Teenagers circled in opposite directions, played loud music and generally did their best to be seen.

Cherokee Plaza was built in 1972. Despite housing traffic headed for teen favorites such as Pasquale's Pizza, Pizza, Etc., a video arcade and a movie theater, the parking lot was always known, first and foremost, by the name of grocery store that long served as its primary draw—the Big E.

Alan Amos is the administrator of the Facebook page titled “Yes, I Cruised the Big E Parking Lot.” He remembers his time there very well.

“It was big in the late 1970s and early '80s,” Amos said. “It was hopping back then. It was people from Georgia, people from DeKalb County, people from Etowah County and Calhoun County. There were a lot of folks there.”

A lot of memories, too.

“We were backed into a parking space in front of Howard's Jewelry,” said Jeff Adock, now a county employee. “Then, here came a streaker around the corner, wearing a mask . He took a left at the movie theater to a waiting car. We never did know who he was.”

Former Big E manager Eric Ellis described a different source of entertainment.

“There for a while, one of the popular things to do was to get a buggy,” Ellis explained. “You rolled down your driver's-side window, had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the front part of the buggy. You'd see how fast you could drive your car and run the buggy into a light pole.”

Amos recalled another destructive parking lot pastime.

“Where the tobacco outlet is now, we sat on the hill,” Amos said. “Someone sat across from us in the lot, and we'd shoot bottle rockets back and forth at each other.”

Amos said one of the most undeniable lures of Big E cruising involved more than just driving around.

“The fun part of cruising the parking lot was doing some things that momma and daddy didn't know about,” he said.

Policeman Jimmy DeBerry used to patrol the Big E parking lot and remembered some of the trouble he'd have to put up with on the weekends.

“We'd break up fights,” he said. “Some of them would get to racing, but drinking was the main concern. We tried to hold it down the best we could. We used to make them pour out a lot of beer.”

Amos can verify that claim.

“I looked up at the cop while pouring and said, 'Can I just have a swallow out of one of them?' The officer replied, 'Go right ahead. You know where you're going to go if you do.'”

Lisa Clark, who graduated from Cherokee County High School and now teaches at Cave Spring (Ga.) Elementary, also recalled an awkward cruising experience.

“I remember in the youth choir, gathering up on a makeshift stage in the middle of the parking lot and singing,” she said. “I don't think my choir director knew all of us kids in the choir spent our weekends cruising around the parking lot.”

Next week: Cruising the Big E parking lot, Part Two.