I grew up in a neighborhood that was within two miles of a drive-in theater. It was called the Fox Drive-In. Backintheday a drive-in was just a big, semi-paved parking lot with a giant screen at one end, a concession stand in the middle, and countless steel poles with tethered speakers hanging on either side (they were mono but if you were at a place that had them spaced close enough and then hung one in both the driver’s side and passenger windows, it sufficed). A good number of my earliest film memories were made there. These are a few treasured reminiscences from that time:
>I saw my first naked ass on-screen and it was none too shabby, being the one that graced the backside of Elizabeth Taylor in ‘Cleopatra‘. I must have been about four. I remember being very impressed and exclaiming “I see her butt!” My folks thought that I was being cute. I was being serious.
>at my brother’s urging, we went to a horror movie double feature. I forget what the first film was, but I definitely remember the second one: ‘Night of the Living Dead‘. My folks and youngest brother had climbed onto the pallet they’d arranged in the back seat after the first flick and promptly fell asleep. This left me in the driver’s seat and my brother Todd in the passenger’s.
The beginning of the movie was hella creepy but when it eased into the grue, I got really frightened. Too proud to close my eyes or burst out crying in front of my little bro, I slid down as far as I could in the seat and watched the film through the condensation that had collected at the corner of the windshield from my panicked exhalations. As the speaker was on my brother’s side, he made sure it was cranked. I think the experience was even more terrifying with these indistinct but threatening zombies making very brutal and distinct sounds.
When we got home, I stayed awake for hours considering the logistics of zombie shuffling speed and the large cemetery two blocks away (we had to pass it going to and from the drive-in). Long fucking night.
>at my urging, my mom and brothers piled into the car to see a classic sci-fi film called ‘a Boy and His Dog‘. It starred Jason Robards and a young Don Johnson. It was based on the Harlan Ellison story about a young man and his telepathic mutt, scraping out an existence in a post-apocalyptic world.
I really didn’t think the director would include the electric jack-off machine that the good citizens of Topeka employed to milk the occasional traveler in order to keep their population growing, but he did. Fortunately, my dad stayed home, so I avoided a certain ass-whupping. My mom was pissed but – respecter of cinema that she is – let me finish the film. Which was cool, ‘cuz the story has such a happy ending.
Blood: Do you know what love is?
Vic: Sure I know. A boy loves his dog.
>when I was a teen, I had a friend named Kent who lived across the street. One of the activities we engaged in as neighborhood threats was to climb the fence around the drive-in and turn every one of those speakers all the way up. This way, when we came back later via the woods at the edge of the fence, we could see the screen and hear the soundtrack.
My brothers and I continued this behavior when we worked at another drive-in during the summer. My brother would pick up the litter and while he was out there would crank each of those clunky metal boxes. The volume would be great enough that we could easily hear everything from our stations inside the concession stand. One of the consequences of this was that I ended up knowing the soundtrack to Robert Stigwood’s cocaine-fueled mish-mash of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band‘ intimately.
> We worked at a drive-in, named after the main street it was on. This was also a place of memories. It was where I first began smoking cigarettes at 16. I’m not proud of it, but it was also where I posed a threat to the health of everyone that purchased food at the concession stand. To wit: the adult manager of the theater never threw anything away, even when she obviously should have. This often led to some ugly snack situations:
>the butter for the popcorn was kept in a crock pot set on low. At the end of the night, it would be unplugged and put in the fridge for the next night. Sometimes it would become so rancid, it would kinda deflate/melt the popcorn. This would require more popcorn on top to hide it.
>once I pulled a pre-made pizza crust out of the cooler. It had a number of greenish, moldy patches on it. I was going to toss it out and when I told the manager this, she asked asked me to hand it to her. She then proceeded to excise the mold and then handed it back to me to use. And I did.
>the hamburgers and hot dogs were put in foil pouches and laid underneath the heat lamps where folks could grab ’em. At the end of the night we would put ’em all in fridge. We would repeat this process until they sold. Once, a customer came back saying the hamburger tasted like it had spoiled. Instead of a refund, we gave her free, equally unpalatable hot dogs.
My most striking memory from this time, though, was one evening when the sliding doors were pulled halfway in preparation for closing. These doors were just huge sheets of safety glass (maybe 7′ by 10′), the kind where the glass is poured around a sort of chicken wire mesh to hold it together when it’s shattered. I remember pulling the hamburgers that we hadn’t food-poisoned/sold that night when I heard this loudass CRASH! Looking up, I see this kid, maybe 6 or 7, looking surprised as hell, standing just inside the doorway, having just crashed through the glass of one of those doors. After standing there for a second looking unscathed, a perfect criss-cross pattern appeared on his skin. Then the blood started flowing in a less gentle manner, the kid started howling, and we started applying dry dish towels to staunch the flow.
He ended up okay; however, I had to stay late to clean up, including all the broken glass the firemen had added to the mix bashing out the rest of the glass from its frame (evidently if they arrive on a scene like this, they’re trained to ensure that all the glass is broken and on the ground before they leave).
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