“Movies have never been more fun”
Go to a drive-in theater.
In fact, the quote above was on an advertisement for an outdoor screening of No Time for Sergeants starring Andy Griffith in the late 1950s. This was the kind of movie that prompted my father, a sergeant in the Army during World War II, to load his wife and kids into his Plymouth station wagon and head to the drive-in near our house in western New York. So it’s that night out to the movies that I remember more than the movie itself.
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Popcorn. Soda. Cookies. The laughter of siblings. Blankets to keep you cool at night. And finally, sleep.
Unless my mother needed a reason to quiet us down (“If you all don’t calm down, we’re not going to the drive-in tonight!”), we usually had no idea a movie was just around the corner. When my dad got home from work and was a few minutes late getting home, as far as we knew he was just by the garage organizing the tools he’d used during his day’s work as a carpenter.
In reality, he had removed the gear from the back of his station wagon to make room for his kids to watch movies in a prone position, in preparation for the “dollar-per-night” ticket prices, a discounted offer popular with movie-going families.
“We’re going to see Old Yellow tonight,” my father might announce at dinner, midway through dessert, at my mother’s command to make sure we didn’t leave any vegetables behind in our rush to leave the house.
“Yay!” the brothers shouted, jumping from the table. They hardly needed the sweet taste of dessert to get excited.
Back to watching movies
Of course, the selection of films was always changing. Most were either low-quality “B-movies” or good films that had long since been first shown.
They were family movies that parents could take their kids to. Or sports movies that my father and three sons liked. Or romantic comedies that made my mother say, “Oh, that was nice.” My sister was too young to care about the content of the movie. She could toddle around the car, no matter what movie was on the screen.
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Meanwhile, her brothers were busy fighting for seats in the back of our family car, and my dad would always back the car up toward the speakers, raising the last few feet so the kids sprawled out in the backseat could get a clear view of the screen. My dad still had the speakers hanging in the car windows, but he put his folding chair and my mom’s chair next to the rear taillights.
Every now and then, we boys would stop by the concession stand and buy whatever snacks we could get with our allowance or by begging our dads. There was a lot of fun to be had where the smell of freshly cut grass mixed with the smell of freshly popped popcorn.
My older brother was somewhat responsible, so my parents put him in my care, and later put both of us in my care. Maybe it was an overestimation of our abilities, or maybe it was just poor judgment on our part, but in an era of outdoor movie nights and fewer risks, we made far more good decisions than bad ones.
So who would try to abduct a child during a screening of “How the West Was Won” or “The Nutty Professor”?
Many memories still come back to me
I remember seeing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at a drive-in theater, but I don’t remember much about it other than that it was apparently taking place underwater. The movie was made in 1954, but I was born before that, in the 1950s, so even considering the significant wait time between its original release and its showing in the outdoor theater at our house, I was pretty young to hold onto memories of that particular movie.
My most vivid memories are of the drive-in itself and other locations I visited over the years afterward.
I recall that the sun went down not long after we arrived and began setting up for the movie.
It reminds me of the slightly distorted sound of movies coming from speakers manufactured in the 1950s.
My nose tries to pick up the smells of burgers, fries, and other food wafting from the only sturdy structure on the grounds: the ticket book, which, apart from the towering screen itself, doesn’t look particularly sturdy.
And my voice still speaks to the countless friends my siblings and I met roaming drive-in theaters during those years of attending outdoor movie theaters.
There is only one gap in my memory, and it occurs near the end of many memories of going to the movies in the warmth of a summer night, and it must have been sleep.
Other than that, it’s an experience I can easily recall.
In retrospect, “Old Yeller” was a very good movie, but not quite worthy of the enthusiastic exclamation mark we gave it.
So it seems the attraction has always been the drive-in theater itself.
Gary can be reached at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. Twitter: @gbrownREP.
