Drive Right In

I laugh whenever I hear someone getting nostalgic about drive-in movies. People talk about taking the family to that great outdoor movie experience and watching great movies while bonding with their loved ones. Or maybe it is the young couple in love who went to the drive-in to escape the scrutiny at home.

My family went to the drive-in movies…and I have memories…but I would not classify them as nostalgic.

I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut with a father, mother and four sisters, two were older and two were younger. Well I guess that still exists today since we have aged at the same rate. Scheduling bathroom time was like coordinating a lunar descent. The family car was a Volkswagen bus, complete with metal floor and back seats that bolted into the floor so they could be removed for hauling of large items.

So off we would go, at the start of a sticky, summer night to the drive-in. My mom would throw bags of snacks together and we always had a cooler of soda and beer (the latter for my father). Now, bear in mind, you got charged for the number of people in the car, not for the “car load”. And you were not permitted to bring snacks or drinks into the outdoor cinema, so there were always three of us who got thrown under a blanket between the two back seats along with the snacks and drinks. Once the coast was clear, we could pop out and pretend to be mesmerized by the party!

But being under that blanket brings back horrible memories. I dreaded being one of the three smallest ones, because one of my sisters always had the smelliest feet imaginable. Once that stench was in a confined area, it could melt a tattoo off a sailor’s arm. If they could have manufactured that smell, it could have been used to end wars! Back off or we’ll use the foot odor bomb!

Not only was there the foot stench, but the blanket was the one that stayed in the car forever. It was the blanket that the dog would lay on when we went camping who knows what else was on it. So, there I was, sadly enough, hoping enough dog hair would clog my nostrils to keep me from gasping for air from the foot odor! I would have gladly just stayed home!

But that is just the start. There didn’t ever seem to be a breeze and the stale, calm, humid air was the perfect environment for that pesky enemy, the mosquito. Once the sun went down, the previews began. And the mosquitos would descend upon the car like a swarm of locusts upon an unsuspecting field of corn.

All during the first movie, those pesky bugs would suck the blood out of my arms and legs, buzz in my ears and fly up my nose. Of course, the dog hair had already fallen out, so that no longer served any purpose. I remember the next morning when I was able to inspect the damage from the night before. My limbs looked like I contracted the measles. My mother thought calamine lotion fixed everything so if you complained too much, you wound up looking like a pink and red puffer fish for the rest of the day.

So it was that my only chance of survival was to fall asleep and hope I retained enough blood to make it to breakfast. Now, as far as teenage voyages to the drive-in, I thought girls were yucky until I was getting ready to leave home for the Air Force, so that never happened. Now, I am happy that some people have happy memories of their drive-in experiences, but for this malaria patient, I would have gladly traded it for a pair of leaky swimming goggles.

Joe Alpaca – Childhood memories are a way of escaping today’s events. If you think you have bad childhood memories, think of being a baby chick having to peck its way out of an egg shell and then instantly having to learn how to peck for food. Or a baby turtle, hatching in the hot sand, digging your way out and having to hightail it to the water before being snatched up by a predator. How’s that drive-in now?

Peace out.