Honest  Entertaining  Funny  

I really miss drive in movies. 

September 20th, 2006

I still smell the freshly fried doughnuts and hear the pop pop prickty poopopop of the exploding kernels.  The little explosions are so dramatic so grabbing of a little boy's attention, and each one screams "I TASTE GREAT.  GET YOUR PARENTS TO BUY ME!"  As I reach up to hold my dad's hand we walk past the popper and I feel the heat radiating from it warming my hand, my arm and small cheek, and my heart.  I am so exited I could explode.  The neatly stacked popcorn buckets dazzle the eye with their bright vivid colors, each size depicting a different movie monster.  The Frankenstein is the king of the tubs just as he was the king of the monsters, the biggest of all the popcorn sizes.  This is only as it rightfully should be.  No mummy should rule, not right at all.  And monsters like vampires and the Gill Man from the Black Lagoon should be for slurpy and wet things like pop, lemonade and Iced Tea, which they were.

"Buy the Frankenstein dad!  Can we get the Frankenstein dad?  Please."

We never got the Frankenstein, ever.  Never, never ever!  We would always get the smaller wolfman or mummy sizes.  It was like some sort of badge of honor my parents wore that they never, ever splurged on anything.  They were rational, calm and logical members of the intelligent, forward thinking, university crowd of the 60's.  They took Parent Effectiveness Training classes for kripe's sake, had a HI-FI, Fischer stereo that consumer reports told them they should buy and a Dodge Dart with a push button transmission that nobody told them they should buy.  People like that don't snap up gaudy over priced Frankenstein sized garbage cans of popcorn on a whim when there are perfectly rational choices like the bushel sized wolfman tub or KFC bucket sized mummy pail.  And anyway, they would always buy me a zucchini sized individually wrapped pickle with the picture of a petulantly, pickle bodied person on the cover dancing to a tune only he could hear while brandishing a straw hat above his head.  I still wonder why he was so exited to be eaten.  Man those were good pickles.  Sooooo sour and salty.  YUM!  I still run across those pickles in a plastic envelop every now and then and when I do, I BUY them!

Everyone was there

Outside the food and snack warehouse  you could find and meet everyone you knew.  Standing under the buzzing, humming and often crackling, yellow florescent lights that weren't supposed to attract bugs, but gave off the softest of yellow glows because they were encased in layers of dead and dying insects, I might say "Hello" to an aunt while crushing, crispy crunchy June bugs under my PF Fliers or have my hand crushed by the fission powered paw of one of my uncles.  I might try to duck into the stadium sized bathroom to avoid cousins I wished weren't related to me, or run off to play on the playground in front of the mammoth screen with cousins I was glad I was related to, or try to hide inside of one of the giant cement drain pipes put in the playground for us to play on hand in hand with a cousin I wished I wasn't related to for a very different reason.  Nudge, nudge, say no more! 

Everybody was there.  A person at the drive in was likely to run across parents and kids that they knew from school, from church, from cub scouts or girl scouts, that lived on the same block.  They had a good chance of running into the guy who fixed their car or fixed their food at the local Italian bistro.  They might share a speaker pole with their minister or a local police officer or the kid down the street that got his driver's license just yesterday.

It was far more of a meeting hall than a church could ever be, because every type person of every religion worshiped in this church and when this church was full it would hold four thousand people or more depending on how many were in each car.  And those four thousand came primarily from a six square mile area.  Much farther then that and you were into the territory of a different drive in theater.

"It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then"
-Alice, Alice in Wonderland

One of the many ways I am screwed up!

And now, years later, I find myself caught in the vise like grip of a vile destroyer and most of the time don't even want to free myself from it's destructive grasp.  The vile destroyer is a villain known as Nostalgia.  Nostalgia is like a thief you invite into your home, load up his bags with all your precious belongings: your cell phone, your computer, your printer, even your iPod; then feed him lunch while you watch The Price is Right; help him carry the couch you sat on while you watched it out to his van; give him your number and ask him to call tomorrow if he pleases, you hope, you hope, you hope he'll call tomorrow.  Maybe you'll just call him instead.  Just in case, anyway, cause he might not call back.  And you simply cannot go more than 24 hours without him stealing something from you.

Really, it's that bad.  Nostalgia hurts us, but we help it to hurt us, beg it to, want it to.  Lately, my wife has had to forbid me from going onto websites devoted to drive-in movie theaters, not because there's anything wrong with websites devoted to all things DI.  DI, by the way, is the acronym all these DI sites seem to use to refer to DI's.  It took me a while to catch on to that.  I kept wondering, "What the heck is this DI crap.  What in (*&%*^ does DI mean?  Is it Detective Inspector or something?"  I watch too much Mystery on Public TV, and... I can be remarkably thick.  Anyway, there's nothing wrong with these sites.  In fact, they're remarkably good at tugging at your heart strings and giving you a fatal case of backwards vision.  Which is what they are trying to do, and I believe with good reason.  They don't want what was good from the past to simply be forgotten or swept away.  Back to why my wife had to forbid me from going on to DI sites:  I would come to bed every night a complete mess.  A completely screwed up weepy, blubbering, sobby mess.  I would be just crying, snot hanging from my nose, red swollen eyes sniffling out words between snuffs and puffs, "I would gib a year ub my life just to see my parents as a young man and woman <snort> again and to just <snuffle snuffle> sit in their laps.  I would beg dem nod <honk snuffle> to grow old.  I would jusd <sigh> hug dem and beg dem nod to grow old.  And den I would asg dem to tage me to a drive in movie."

To which she would reply, "Oh Jesus, you've been on one of those drive in movie sites again haven't you.  For Christ sake, you're like some sort of addict or something.  For the love of God would you just stop obsessing about Drive-ins."

I must say two things at this point. First, I could hardly even write the former quote without crying.  To see one's parents young again... To see one's parents alive again, is a fantasy that is both compelling, heartrending and, I suspect, pretty universal.  Second thing, it's at the same time completely useless and asinine, probably even sinful.  I can't EVER have this fantasy.  There is an impassible and ever widening chasm of time that separates us, rips us and tears us kicking and screaming, forever, from our past.  We can look back over the chasm, but we can never ever cross it.  And since this can't happen, it's a complete farce for me to waste one second of my life pining away and withering like a sad little grape in the sun.  I don't want to be a raison.  Also,  I should be worrying about my own children.  After all they're living in the middle of the fantasy that I'm pining away for.  I'm not that old yet and they can sit in my lap and beg me not to get any older.  Well, the one that isn't a teenager yet can anyway (see I Love My Dog.).  In fact he does exactly this.  And, even though he can't have what he asks: I will grow older.  He knows that.  He isn't so much wishing me not to grow older as he is telling me how much he loves me right here and now, just the way I am.  And, that's a pretty nice thing to say to someone.

What I should say to my parents.

And really, I should take my son's example.  Rather than wishing to go back, rather than allowing myself to be swallowed whole and consumed by nostalgia and begging them not to fail me by getting old I should be happy for the great childhood I had, thank them for it and let them know it's okay with me that they are old.  After all, they haven't failed me, time does this to everyone.  Then I must tell them that I love them right now just they way they are.

And, you know what, according to www.michigandriveins.com there are still ten drive in theaters left open in this state.  I think I'll make them take me and my family to a Drive-in next summer, maybe the US-23 in Fenton.  Funny thing is, they probably would buy me the Frankenstein popcorn now.  Time changes people. 

 

Interesting Drive-in Factoids
 

 

Marquee from Tawas drive in located in East Tawas, not Tawas.

Factoid: More people who were at least one hundred miles from home saw movies here than any other theater in America (I just made that up!  But, it could be true)





 

Image PreviewThis is the landscape dominating screen of the Dearborn drive in, ironically, not in Dearborn, but rather in Dearborn heights.  What is it with these places.

Factoid: This was the most profitable drive-in in the United States.





 

This is the marquee, sign and screen of the Algiers DI complex.  And do you know what?  It isn't located in Algeria!  I sense a pattern here.

Factoid: The Algiers had the biggest drive-in screen in America.





 

 

The massive Ford Wyoming 1-5 and 6-9 complexes, with a tank farm between them.  And you guessed it, it ain't in Wyoming! 

Factoid: The Ford Wyoming is the largest drive-in theater in America.

 

Factoid: The three record holding theaters, the Dearborn (most profitable), the Algiers (biggest screen) and the Ford Wyoming (largest) were all within 10 miles of each other and were all owned by the same two brothers.

 

One of the greatest websites I have ever seen.

www.michigandrivins.com

This site has it all, great layout, great art, easy to use and wonderful content.  It blows my mind how much great information this site contains.  It must have taken years of collecting information about Michigan Drive-ins from many sources to put together all the wonderful articles they present.

I encourage everyone to check it out whether or not you miss drive-in movie theaters, you'll love this site.  Just don't let it suck you into terminal nostalgia like I did!

The best feature of this site is the section describing the ten drive-ins still operating in the state of Michigan.  If you think that is a quite a few, as I did at first, think again.  Ohio has almost fifty.  WOW!  Anyway.  Here are the ten sites.  If you want detailed information about these theaters, you will have to visit www.michigandriveins.com or follow the links to their articles by clicking on each theater's picture.

The 10

 


The Hi-Way Drive-in Theater

 

 

The US-23

 

The Miracle Twin 

 

 

 

Getty 4 

 

 

Ford Wyoming 1-5
 

Ford Wyoming
 6-9

 


Sunset


5-Mile