I drove down Banner Street the other day on the way to a job site and saw workmen taking down the screen. Well, they weren't exactly taking it down and there were only two men there. One was in the cab of track hoe, kind of like a giant backhoe on crawler tracks. He was ripping the wood frame and plywood screen apart one chunk at a time, smashing the chunks into pieces, and then using the thumb on the bucket to pick up the splintered pieces of wood and put them into the dump truck. I assumed the second man drove the dump truck because he was just standing there watching.
It seemed like desecration to rip that big screen apart like that. The Movieland drive in theater had been a fixture of the community for almost fifty years. You'd think they could treat such an icon with a little more respect.
The projection/snack bar/restroom building had gone to a landfill a couple of years before, and right after that, the rows of car speakers sitting on racks on poles. Gone too were the rows of low mounds of white rock those speaker poles sat on. The mounds were to lift the front of the car so you could see the screen over the car in next row. Everything had been bulldozed flat in preparation for the new strip mall that was going to be built there. The swings, monkey bars, and slide for the kids that sat in front of the screen had been sold when the building was demolished.
Movieland had never shown first-run movies. Those movies made the rounds of the sit-down theaters before they made it to Movieland, and a lot of what Movieland showed would be called "B" movies today. We didn't care, back then. It cost a buck a person to get in, kids under twelve got in free, and there were always double features on Saturday night. If you knew the girl taking the money at the little booth at the entrance, she wouldn't check to see how many guys were stuffed into the trunk.
Tuesday night it was a buck for a carload. The drive in was a great place for families to see a movie without hiring a baby sitter. They could bring their own popcorn and drinks and not have to pay two or three times the grocery store cost at the snack bar.
Movieland was also a cheap date and with the right girl, it didn't really matter what was on the screen. Those were also the days of car seats in the back wide enough you could almost lay down on them. Standard equipment for a night at the drive-in was a couple extra bucks for the snack bar and at least one "rubber" in your wallet.
Now, I'd be lying if I said all us guys got that lucky. Almost none of us ever did. Girls of that time had mothers who viewed murder to be a distant second to their daughter losing her virginity before she was safely married. Those mothers cautioned their daughters about all the things boys would say and do to get them in the back seat with their panties off, and usually ended up saying something to the effect that they'd suffer a lifetime of shame for a half hour of pleasure if that happened. Their daughters listened back then.
The other problem with getting that lucky was the owner of Movieland knew that people who parked in the back rows couldn't see the screen very well, and probably had no intention of watching the movie. There was always at least one guy walking the back rows with a flashlight, and if he didn't see at least two heads in the front seat of a car, he'd walk over to investigate. The girls were mortified the guy might see them sans clothing, so not many ventured into the back seat unless they were on a double date.
We did pet a lot though. The girls liked kissing and some, at least if they were eighteen or over and you'd had more than a few dates, would let you feel their boobs through their bras. If you'd been dating for a year or so, she might even let you unhook her bra and feel her nipples. It was a lot harder to get further than touching breasts and nipples. The girl might be getting hot and starting to pant, but just one touch lower and she'd grab your hand and say she just couldn't do that and she hoped you'd understand.
Well, we did, sort of. While our dads usually told us the mechanics and we all compared notes, our mothers sternly warned us about forcing a girl to do anything. They also told us if the girl got pregnant it was the duty of the boy to marry the girl and make an honest woman out of her.
Yes, by the end of the week, the Movieland Drive-In would be just memories, but they were great memories to have.
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My best memories began the summer I was eighteen. I'd graduated from high school and had a summer job at the lumberyard making two dollars an hour. Two bucks an hour doesn't sound like much today, but back then it was enough to put gas in my old car and pay for a Saturday night date if I didn't go overboard. In the fall, I was college bound, so I had to save as much money as I could. That's why the drive-in was so great. It was a way to take a girl out without spending much of my college money.
Most girls didn't mind going to the drive-in for a date. We weren't yet old enough to go anyplace that served alcohol, and all the local clubs did. There were two actual, sit-down movie theaters around, but they were half an hour from our little town and it cost more to get in. It was either the drive-in or sit in her house and play games or watch TV, all under the watchful eyes of her parents.
The first girl I took to the drive-in was Jennifer Maxwell. Jennifer lived three houses down from ours, so I'd known her for a long time. I liked Jennifer, but I didn't have any special feelings for her. I just wanted to spend some time with a girl instead of the guys at the lumberyard. Jennifer was "safe" in that we were already friends. She wouldn't turn me down because of that and for another reason as well.
I think she accepted that first night because Jennifer wasn't exactly an attractive girl. Even though she was eighteen, she was still gawky in a lot of ways. She didn't have much in the way of breasts and her ass was narrow enough it looked like a boy's ass. She also didn't spend much time with her hair or makeup. Her long blonde hair was usually done in a pony tail, and I'd never seen her wearing lipstick, let alone any mascara or the other things girls did to make themselves feel beautiful. She also wore the ugliest eyeglasses I'd ever seen.
Jennifer didn't go in much for fancy clothes. She'd worn dresses to school, but only because that was the dress code for girls. The rest of the time, she wore baggy pants, button up shirts with the sleeves rolled up and tennis shoes. I figured that was because her mom made most of her clothes. My own mother said Jennifer's mother didn't have much money.
Most of the guys my age figured she was a lesbian. I knew better, because I'd known her for so long she would tell me about anything. I knew Jennifer didn't go out of her way to discourage men from asking her out. She just never went out of her way to give them a reason to do so. With Jennifer, it was pretty much, "this is how I am, like it or not". She told me why one night between features when the screen was filled with dancing hot dogs, milk shakes, and candy bars.
"Jerry, my mom has had to work so hard all these years to raise me without a husband to help her. Well, I'm not going down that road."
I said I didn't know what she meant by that. She smiled.
"When I had my first period, Mom explained what was happening to me and why. She also told me I had to be really careful around boys from then on. She said my period meant I could have a baby now, but that she hoped I wouldn't make the same mistake she did. I was pretty naive then, and asked her what that mistake was.
