Gonna spend the night at the drive-in with the one(s) that I love

Saturday night the kids and I visited a vanishing piece of Americana culture – the drive-in.

My first outdoor-movie experience was at the Comerford Drive-In just outside of Wilkes-Barre, PA, circa mid-60s with my parents. I can’t remember what the movie was, but I do recall just how great it was to watch a movie from the back seat of my Dad’s Dodge in my pajamas.

We went fairly often, and as I got older one of the rites of passage in that neck of the woods was the "all-nights," normally held on the weekends of Memorial Day and Labor Day. These consisted of four of five features starting at dusk, and lasting until daylight. Teenagers sneaking beer onto the grounds in the car trunks and trying to stay awake for the duration. I never made it all the way through.

The Pike Drive-In in Montgomery, PA, was our go-to outdoor theater. It went through several iterations, including a XXX period, which made for a few strange scenes. In fact, I have to admit that I have not experienced anything creepier than the lurkers around the Pike concession stand at 11 p.m. during an unnamed triple-feature around 1974 or so. But, to our delight, there was a small patch between the trees on Route 15 where if you parked the car just right, you got a fairly decent glimpse of the screen. And for a carload of teenage boys trying to see a dirty movie, well, that was like hitting pay dirt.

Thankfully, Saturday’s trip was decidedly less weird and seedy. And some things remained frozen in time: The crunch of the tires on gravel when you enter the lot. The so-bad-it’s-great food at the concession stand. Having your eyes avert the screen for a moment as the first star appears overhead. Needing to turn the sound up just a little louder to drown out the crickets.

This particular drive-in allowed you to sit outside the car (I don’t know if that is common at all drive-ins now or not), so we backed into the stall next to the old posts that used to hold the speaker (the sound now comes from your FM radio). We opened the hatch and put out our two lawn chairs, next to other cars that had spread out blankets that soon were covered with popcorn.

Between features, they had to change the spool and that break in the action meant a few contests to give away movie posters: “The first person to come to the concession stand with jumper cables wins a copy of a 'Spiderman 2' poster.”

As the night moved on, Ruby moved from sitting in the hatch to my lap, snuggling in tighter and tighter as summer night’s air brought a very faint chill.

At that moment, the real world seemed very far away, and the movies playing on the giant screen did not even matter.

Today, only about 375 drive-ins are operating, down from about 4,000 during the 50s and 60s. The closest one to us is an hour away. When the second movie ended, we folded up the chairs and the kids climbed into their seats and quickly fell asleep.

The midnight trip home was silent. Sometimes the long drive to Nostalgia is worth it.