ALL IT TOOK was one look, and I was 16 again, cruising along in front of the big white buildings, keenly watching for any signs of interest.

Because the girls at St. Margaret's School in Tappahannock had a grain of sense, they were smart enough not to respond to me or any of the other dozens of "townies" who regularly cruised the school's grounds.

"I'm not sure what I expected, maybe that some girl would see me, run down and hand me her phone number through the window," I joked to the school's administrator the other day while on the school's beautiful campus for a column.

She smiled and said I wasn't the only one interested enough to cruise by a time or two.

Probably because driving is such a rite of passage, such a new level of freedom and choice, high school boys have been cruising to be seen by high school girls as long as they've had access to anything with four wheels.

Growing up in the Northern Neck, the cruising tended to take us all from one little town to the next, venturing from the burger shack in Warsaw to similar hangouts in Montross, Callao, Irvington and, yes, Tappahannock.

The routine was always the same: Show up at our town's own little drive-in, talk to the other kids parked out back for a while, then cruise to see who was hanging out at the teen hangouts in every other little town.

Some nights, we'd make the loop several times, putting more than a hundred miles on the old clunkers and cast-off vehicles we struggled to keep together.

Some kids, the ones who spent more time working than at high school, had nicer, fancier cars, souped-up Camaros and Chevelles that could make brasher, bolder displays as they "breezed the Freeze" at the drive-ins all over.

I had an old Corvair that was never quite clean, stunk of exhaust and cut the meekest profile of anyone in the bunch.

But when I hit the pushbutton ignition to set that thing moving, it didn't matter that I had a wimpy car on the outside.

I was moving, man, cruising, in the loop with all the rest.