Rolling Down & Dropping Popcorn

Forget the title. It will make more sense in a moment. Let’s start with the nostalgic and iconic pastime (circa 1950-1970’s) of family outdoor entertainment, the Outdoor Drive-in Movie Theater. In it’s heyday there were over 4,000 theaters. Now only 300 remain. Modern cinematic technology, changing American culture, and the 1970’s oil crisis most likely put the stranglehold on it and at some point it simply died off. Nonetheless, let’s roll back to a time when the whole family could load into the car and go out for a night of movie watching, usually three movies which meant my parents were definitely driving home with four young whippersnappers sleeping in the back seat of the car by the end of the evening.

My six year old childhood drive-in theater (a full 15 acres) came with a small amusement park on the premises at the front of the lot, just below the large outdoor screen. Families like ours would arrive before sunset and spend time riding on the small Ferris wheel, the merry-go-round, a miniature roller coaster and more. The sun always set too soon for my liking. I just loved going on all the rides. But alas, nightfall would approach and we’d pack it up and head back to the car to prepare for movie time.

For those of you unfamiliar with drive-in theaters, the customer parking was rather interesting. Row after row stretched and arced across the width of the property, facing the big screen were three foot high hills, perfect for pulling up onto and parking the car. It was the ideal height and right angle for everyone sitting in the car to be able to view the large screen and enjoy a movie out. Each parking spot was marked off with a three foot pole that provided the perfect outdoor audio (mono) solution, a speaker on a wire.

Nightfall had arrived and my mother and her four children were begrudgingly leaving the carnival rides. But not my dad, he had one thing on his mind… Popcorn! Our whole caravan was walking back to the perfect-spot, as my dad would always call it, where our automobile movie-viewing machine awaited. While my mother and her four kids loaded up into the car, my dad bee-lined to another favorite part of movie night, the Concession Stand! When I was young I would wander around this amazing colorfully lit panoramic view of movie-eating food displayed in the most tantalizing ways. Movie music and coming attractions would blast out of the speakers while customers meandered from section to section collecting popcorn, candy, hotdogs, hamburgers, soft drinks too large for my hands to yet manage, and the granddaddy of all savory movie treats, the PIZZA!!! This treat was so special it was only selected on the best movie nights, AKA my dad’s favorite movie was playing. Nope, tonight had a good movie lineup but it was going to be popcorn & soda pops for the lot of us. I’m good with that.

As I settled into my backseat spot in the car (number two in a line of four), I stood up and turned around to see through the rear window my dad walking into the concession stand. Mom said the movie would be starting in fifteen minutes. It was supposed to be some movie about apes taking over Earth. I had been looking forward to seeing this movie all week. The writeup in the newspaper showed pictures of what looked like real apes to me. I wondered how they got them to act. The wait was coming to an end. Fifteen minutes and we would all witness the miraculous and highly intelligent apes acting across the screen. Just then my older brother, Bob, jabbed me in the ribs and said, “You know the apes are fake, right?! Anybody with half brain knows that!” which was followed with another rib-jab. At the same time my sister, Karen, was getting into a bit of a debate with my younger brother, Charlie, over a piece of candy that had just been discovered in perfect condition in the back seat. I admitted to myself that she had a good argument, after all she found it. But Charlie was not going down easy. Another jab to my left ribs and still the candy ownership debate continued. I could guess the next (and highly feared) response in the car. Coming from the front seat in a towering vocal threat was my mother making the dreaded announcement, “I will take my shoe off!” No, No, not the shoe! Few things in life could generate more terror than my mother’s left shoe. I decided to try a backseat diplomatic approach. “We will be good” It didn’t even sound convincing to me. I lifted myself up to get a progress report on my dad. He was in line with a tray of soft drinks and the biggest bucket of popcorn I had ever seen. I slid back down into my seat. Movie time T-minus 6 minutes. Once the movies starts everyone will settle down. Then we will see what these apes are really made of. We can do this!

Another rib-jab from the left and on the right the candy dispute was escalating. “I swear on my father’s grave, I will take my shoe off!!!” Please not the shoe! T-minus 4 minutes. Where is my dad? I could now actually see the shoe. It was unlocked and armed. I decided to go back up and get an update out of the rear window. He was on foot halfway back to the car. I could almost smell the popcorn. At that exact moment, I got an uncomfortable poke in my lower extremities and howled with pain and surprise. Not good, not good at all. But what happened next even surprised me. I spun around (so I could face any sudden punishment) and found the shoe gone. My mother had pulled a game-changing audible and was reorganizing her parenting strategy. That’s when I heard this…

“Michael! Get up here in the front seat with me. You are going to watch the movies up her tonight” BRILLIANT! My mother was a brilliant woman. It all seemed so logical. Some complaining came from the back seat I was leaving, but that’s the cost of sitting in cheap seats, right? I could see my dad beside the car now on the driver’s side. He was placing the tray of movie yummies on the roof of the car. I wanted to get settled into my new first-class seating but I could not climb over the sofa-like front seat (bucket seats apparently were not invented yet) I could hear my older brother Bob laughing, “what a wimp. Here’s a little help.” And he butt-jabbed me again and this time I vaulted over the seat with my legs passing over my head, arms on the back of the seat, in a spinning attempt to spot my new front-seat landing. But nay, alas this was not be my fate tonight.

As my father secured the hard-wired speaker onto his car window and reached for the door handle, as Bob was now changing focus on the other candidates in the back seat for harassment, as my sister had just become owner of the prized candy, as my worried mother was witnessing my 360 degree airborne spin coming into the front, and as my father finally noticed the all-too-familiar family antics taking place inside of his car, something bad happened. As I watched my feet pass overhead and could see the large screen come into view from the front window shield, I had a brief moment thinking to myself that this really is a great spot to watch a movie, I lost track of where my feet were. My right foot was coming down in a very nice location next to my mom, but my left foot, still flaying, in the air had found contact with our car’s gear shift which in those days was mounted off to the right on the steering wheel column.

The next moment several things happened. First, my foot put the car in neutral. Second, I found my seat next to my mom, the landing wasn’t that bad actually, third, all nefarious activity in the back seat suddenly halted. Fourth, ever so slowly at first, the car began to move forward. You could hear the gravel complaining under the tires. Fifth, my dad reached for the tray and only got the two extra-large sodas. Next, the car picked up speed as it found it’s way down into the valley six feet in front of us. Then, the speaker wire between the pole and my dad’s front side window became taunt and then snapped. All speaker sound in the car seized. Finally the last event, the one that made my dad cry a little, the extra-large bucket of popcorn with extra, extra butter launched into the nighttime crisp air, landed at the edge of the front windshield and emptied its contents like a soft early-morning layer of snow. It accumulated down by the left windshield wiper. Butter ran down the glass on the driver’s side. I froze.

The neighboring cars that were immediately located around us all watched as this scene played out. My father ran towards the car, grabbed the car door and swung it open. A timid “hi” was all I could get out. He handed my mom the drinks and said nothing. He got into the car drove up to the next row right in front of us. It was empty. He parked and got out. The movie started. He filled the sad bucket with arm scoops of popcorn. When he finished he returned to the car and handed me the bucket. He tried the wipers but only smeared a thick layer of cooling butter across his side of the windshield. He still said nothing. He got out and headed for the concession stand, but before he made three steps he turned back and grabbed the broken speaker and put the new one on the window. He was gone for a while.

My brother Bob was right. The apes were fakes. They were humans. I felt betrayed. But the movie was getting good. My dad had made it back to the car and began cleaning the window with whatever supplies he had gotten from the stand. When he finally finished he came back in and sat down. We were twenty-five minutes into the movie and he had missed it all. Though I could see he was trying his best to calm down. He asked my mom for a sip of soda and she eagerly provided him the drink. He looked at me and asked if he could have some popcorn. I looked down. The bucket was empty.

Everyone had eaten the popcorn.

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