Last Friday night Nadine and I were awake past 3:00a. It wasn’t that we couldn’t sleep. We were watching the latest installments in the sagas of Spiderman and the Men In Black at the Skyline Drive-In Theater near Shelbyville, IN.
Drive-in theaters had their heyday for fifteen brief years (1950-1965). Countless great and awful movies played on these vast screens. Similar great and awful stories took place in the cars fanned out in the pie-shaped lots facing those screens.
I can’t help but have a nostalgic feeling whenever I encounter a drive-in. As of 2017, there are only 330 left in the United States, down from a peak of 4,000 in the late 1950s. A half dozen or so are on the National Register of Historic Places.
This is starting to sound like a chronicle. A chronicle is a recounting of facts and data: the king died and then the queen died. A story is much more: the king died and then the queen died of grief. Stories are why people flock to movies, whether viewed in air-conditioned halls or with the windows down.
The first chapter of my drive-in life happened at the largest drive-in the world (still operating today): the Ford-Wyoming Drive-in in Dearborn, Michigan. My mother took me and my two siblings in 1963 for the premier of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. She told me that I laughed so hard that I hit my head on the roof of our station wagon. (That movie was the first DVD I ever bought years later)
My Drive-in movie trail took me next to the Parkway Drive-in on the shore of Canandaigua Lake in upstate New York. Goldfinger, Planet of the Apes, Tony Rome – classic movies my Dad loved. We moved away from there in 1971 and the theater was torn down in 1984. It is a mad world.
Drive-ins served as cheap dates during college years in Knoxville, TN. The Twin-Aire Drive-In on Clinton Highway was the first time I saw multiple screens. My now wife probably didn’t appreciate my choice of the horror flick Grizzly. It became a casualty of a bear market six years after I graduated.
My most excellent Drive-in memory happened on August 7, 1979. We had gotten married two days before and were on a road trip to Canada. As we looked for dinner in the vicinity of Owen Sound, Ontario, we saw a marquee for Star Wars: A New Hope at the Owen Sound Twin Drive-In. A no brainer for a sci-fi nerd like me. We’ve seen every episode since. The theater is now history; closed just over a year ago.
Our first home together after college was in Pendelton County, WV (1979-1984). I’m glad to say that Warner’s Drive-In north of Franklin still operates on weekends. Toy Story 4 is showing tonight.
Our kids have memories of the (now closed) Sky Vue Drive-In near New Castle, Indiana.
All this is to say that whatever the medium, we human beings are story-telling and story-making creatures. I’m glad that we gave up some sleep last night to live another chapter worth remembering; not only what we saw but also the way we were.