Fort Street could have been renamed “Memory Lane” on Saturday when thousands of cruisers and thousands more spectators gathered to watch and be a part of the 11th annual “Cruisin’ Downriver.”

I watched from the corner of Longsdorf and Fort, just a few blocks from the house I grew up in on Hinton, standing in front of what used to be Mike’s Barber Shop. It is across Longsdorf from the bank parking lot where I learned to ride a two-wheeler nearly 50 years ago.

Hundreds of classic cars, bumper to bumper at times, cruised along Fort Street. We had a different term for those cars back in late ’50s and early ’60s … they were called “traffic.” Today, when they gather, it’s more than just a celebration of “Detroit Iron,” it’s a celebration of a past era and the people we all were back then.

I watched intently for a 1955 Chevy Bel Air. Any color, but cream-over-turquoise would have been ideal. That’s what my dad, Joe Saad, drove for a good part of my early childhood.

It was the car that we all went to St. Cyprian Church in every Sunday. It was the car that dad and mom drove every week to the National Supermarket. It was the car we sat in at the old Fort George Drive-In, and it was the car we’d take to Bob Jo’s Frozen Custard for a cool treat on hot summer nights.

It was on that car that dad taught me how to do an oil change and set a gap on a spark plug. And it was the first car I ever drove — on a gravel back road, long before I was actually old enough to drive. That little foray into the country was preceded by words of caution from dad: “Now, your mother doesn’t need to know about this …”

As I stood there at the curb on Fort Street last Saturday, I saw ’57 Chevys,’59 Plymouths, Mustangs from almost every year — same with Corvettes — and I even saw a ’56 Chevy, cream-over-red, but not a single ’55 Chevy.

That’s OK, though, because for a few hours that afternoon, I was back there where it all happened for me and for so many others, nearly 50 years ago.

I realized that Cruisin’ Downriver is as much about what the cars meant to us, as it is about the cars themselves.

It’s also as much — maybe even more — about the people we rode in those cars with and the milestones in our lives that we passed sitting in those old bench seats.

Riverview native Dan Saad pens the News-Herald’s editorial cartoons each Wednesday and Sunday. He also publishes two blogs at www.thenewsherald.com — “Pen Points” and “Downriver Diary."