Drive-in speakers–earbuds for the car. In fact, is not my iPhone simply a pocket sized motor movie?
One stormy Illinois night the whole family piled into a repurposed military Ford. Probably around 1948. We were provisioned with Kool-Aid, potato chips and extra blankets. Since air conditioning had not been invented we had all the windows cranked down. The blankets protected us from mosquitoes. As the sun went down the sky got still and a bit greenish. This lent extra character to the feature. “Look out, Dorothy! It’s a tornado!”
In California, our destination resort was the Pleasant Hill Motor Movie. More than once we employed the sneak-in-via-the-trunk ritual. This was in Carolyn Kelloway’s ’39 Buick. The trunk lock was jammed so we had to yank the back seat open and slither in that way. No idea how two of us fit in there. It was great preparation for being tunnel rats in Vietnam. An experience I thankfully avoided.
My personal vehicle was Barry Bertani’s 40 Ford coupe. Nicely hot-rodded up, it provided that “American Graffiti” feel to dates at the Motor Movie. By some twist of fate I also acquired Barry’s girl friend, Debbie Dean, in the bargain.
Debbie was a sweet girl, always ready go by herself to fetch set-ups from the snack bar, while I fished the plastic gin flask from under the seat. She was also as tall as I, making me a gender equality pioneer in so many ways. Or maybe she just triggered a life-long obsession with leggy super models. [“Hello. I know you are taller than I, but let me buy you a drink. I’ll just stand on this chair.”]
During my Army days, my female companion took me to the drive-in for the new Beatles’ film “Help!” We went in her Nash Metropolitan, a car far more dangerous than any Corvair. Then it rained like an SOB, fog developed inside the tiny stupid car and we had to hang our wet heads out the windows to see the screen. I am not kidding. By the time Ringo got his ring back, the Metropolitan was one of the few cars still there.
During the Hippy-Dippy days I remember taking a Flower Child I met at a Davis, Calif. smoke-in to a movie. When we reached the theater, she was pleasantly freaked out. “You mean you’re taking me to a Walk-In?” OK! I was a hero that night. She had a neat car, but it was not Drive-In material: a Triumph Spitfire Coupe.
There was a Drive-In connection in Davis, however. When I opened my motorcycle shop in 1968, I ran an ad every night for a year at the local Drive-In. The last picture showed my mustachioed physiognomy, 30 feet high on the outdoor screen. This raised my local hero quotient even higher.
Now all the Drive-Ins are gone. Or are they?
Next month I’ll be visiting my wife’s people near Niagara Falls. The Transit Drive-In in Lockport New York has operated more-or-less continually since 1952.
In 2011, an AARP story said there were 371 drive-ins in the United States, though it is unclear how many of these are traditional versus ad hoc “sheet-in-a-field” venues. ["Catch a Sunset Screening", AARP The Magazine (Washington, D.C.): 10, ISSN 1541-9894]
PS. My wife is as tall as I am.