"Let's all go to the lobby"

I just read a newspaper item that attested that drive-in movies are staging a come-back. A cinematic genre that was largely dead by the late 1970s is reappearing on the scene in a number of communities throughout North America. That’s cool, in a nostalgic sense, for me. I misspent a lot of my earlier times at assorted local drive-ins.

Part of the impulse for the resurrection, I gather, is that so much of the public is pissed off with conventional movie houses, which have largely become those nasty little multiplexes in shopping malls. Largely gone are the massive and impressive movie palaces of yore, only to be replaced by extended hallways that boom out obnoxiously loud soundtracks, and are populated by equally boorish and obnoxious patrons who have absolutely no idea of the concept of public decency, politeness, decorum or ‘indoor’ vocalization. As I’ve said before, my most recent forays to a movie house were not agreeable experiences, and what should have been a relaxing entertainment left me, instead, with emotions bordering on rage by the time I departed.

The drive-in, however, presents no such problem. You go in your own vehicle. You can bring your own food and drink. You can bring the kids, or you can leave them at home. You can talk as loudly as you want, smoke whatever you want (not that I’m necessarily recommending that but, hey’ it’s your car). You can even have sex if you choose to – but don’t be too obvious about it because I might be parked right in the next slot, and you know how sensitive I am.

Drive-ins, to me, epitomize the entertainment of a simpler time. In my community, we were well served with such a cinematic option. In Burnaby we had the Cascades at Grandview Highway and Boundary, the Lougheed on the highway that bore that name, and further along Lougheed, at Sperling, there was the Paramount.

Drive-ins were created for pre-TV families and randy teens. For the families there was no need for a babysitter because the whole family, and maybe a few neighbor kids could be piled into the old Hudson or Nash and everybody could take in the movie. Smart moms decked the kids out in their jammies before leaving home because they knew fatigue would prevail before the double feature was over on a summer night. To our irritation, Mom would always pack a picnic of eatables and we weren’t permitted to be seduced by the dancing hotdogs and ice-cream bars at intermission when the call would go out – “Let’s all go to the lobby …”

At which times we would protest that a burning need to pee had manifested, so could we please go to the little blockhouse where the can was – and the food concession.

“Can’t we get something? Please-please-please?”

Sometimes she’d soften a bit and grant us the wherewithal to get an ice-cream bar or popcorn.

And I mentioned the randy teens, but only to be prurient. Everybody knows that thousands of postwar babies were conceived in the back seats of ’47 Mercs. Or, so the mythology went. For some reason I invariably ended up with a ‘nice’ girl at the drive-in.

“Stop that! If you don’t stop this minute you can take me home.”

This was usually at the same moment as my ‘lucky’ friend and his girl were in the back seat exploring the potentialities of multiple orgasms. Or so I thought. Or so I would have thought if I’d had any idea of what multiple orgasms meant at that time.

In one instance a local drive-in ran an epic documentary called Mom and Dad, and we all wanted to go to see that one because it purportedly contained a plethora of dirty images. Actually, what it was was an ill-devised bit of propaganda that probably caused all ‘making-out’ to cease virtually immediately as black-and-white images of the rigors of terminal VD flashed on the screen. This was the same footage that GIs were shown just before they went on leave, just to keep the lads on the straight and narrow, you understand. No doubt they worked for a while. They sure did for us.

Here you had sweet little Johnny and his bobby-sox wearing sweetie, Becky-Sue making out like mad on the family sofa, and then you had a person (who you construed to be Johnny, with his genitals rotting off in the terminal ward of some hospital. By God, it was scarier than Reefer Madness.

I think drive-ins should definitely increase in popularity and have a monumental return. It’s a great way to propagandize our wayward kids.