How wonderful life can be!
You may not believe this, but the nearest movie theater to my house was a drive-in!
Two towns over, around 15 minutes away, this gigantic screen erupted in an area covered with grazing cows and wind-tossed crops. Kinda hard to miss.
You put that little noise box on the driver’s side window, and you were set. Of course, you had to feed my 7 year old starving body. Hot dogs (on on one of those new machines–a roller, yum!), Hershey bars, Sugar Babies, and a nice cold coke.
I know I saw a Yogi Bear feature-length film there, along with Babes in Toyland, Goldfinger, Thunderball, Gay Purr-EE, Man Called Flintstone, and those wonderful Ray Harryhausen films.
Seeing a movie was problematic with the old man. He was either bored out of his skull or unable to keep up (the Bond films). This meant chain smoking. So the front seat was out for me; he knew I was capable of covering him with fresh delectable vomit. And real men didn’t sit with their cigarette out of the window. So Back seat for our hero. I may not have been able to see, but I kept dinner down and followed the plot pretty well. I didn’t dare doze off–he’d scream at me to wake up and it took ten minutes for my nuts to drop back down.
I remember asking mom why all those cars were parked and no one was in them. I think she said the people were all at the snack bar. She told me later that we had to move one night ’cause the couple beside us were exploring the finer points of suburban PA Kama Sutra. Now I get why the back rows of the place were always jammed.
No, I never saw feet with polished toenails hanging out of the back seat. But I’ll say this, some of those sweltering nights could not have been very alluring once the sweat flowed.
The wife and went once to that same drive-in before they tore it down for a strip mall. No, we didn’t make babies.
The drive in everybody wanted to see was far northeast of town. newspaper ads for their features had titles like “Dream Creamy Vixens” and “Black Leather Cycle Sluts”. Everybody in high school seemed to know someone who supposedly snuck in, but no one ever talked about it first-hand. (ugh, bad pun, sorry). OK David, get me out of this mess………