My parents would pack up my two
sisters and I into the family station wagon and we would go to the
Ford Wyoming Drive-In. The speaker looked like a sideways 50's radio that my grandpa had that was made by
Philco. The window rolled down, the speaker's metal hook was put over the edge, and the window would protest,
squealing as it was rolled up.
My parents sat in the
front seat, us
three girls in the back seat, angling around my mother's
80's hair, my dad's head, and the annoying
rear view mirror. I saw bits and pieces of movies between fighting with my sisters, sleeping, and playing in the
gravel lot.
An Officer and a Gentleman.
Chariots of Fire.
E.T.At times it was too cold to
go outside of the car and play. We would sit in the back seat, wrapped in the blankets we brought off of our
twin beds, trying to breathe through the blankets in order to avoid the smell of
Kools and
Newports. My parents always seemed to sit
motionless in the front seat, not scooting across the bench to snuggle or hold hands. They simply sat and smoked and stared at the screen. My sisters and I would all
fall asleep before the second movie started, but every once in a while I'd wake up to the familiar sight of the
chasm between them - and the giant moving picture in the foreground. They would drive us home and carry us inside. It usually woke me up when I was lifted from the
back seat, but I learned to pretend to stay asleep. If you were caught waking up, you had to
walk in on your own.
Drive-in movie theaters are
grey nostalgia.