The Drive-In Theater and Mom & Dad

Remember the Drive-In Theater? I barely do. My parents loved the movies and when you have kids, I think it's probably harder to go nowadays. We all know that you can't take kids to every movie- either the rating is R or you can't find a babysitter or you were the parent with the crying baby right in the middle of the theater once. The drive-in was a way around all of that.

Mom and Dad almost never seemed to plan the trip to the drive-in. We would be sitting at dinner and you could feel them getting restless. Something would go wrong, like we would drop the Kool-Aid or the pot of spaghetti. Ultimately, one of them would say, "we have to get out of here." And simultaneously, you could see the light in their eyes when they both thought, "who wants to go to the drive-in?!" And we would get into our highest gear to hurry and get ready. Mom would instruct me to get the popcorn popper out. She would go change into jeans and a sweatshirt and then come back to get the popcorn started. "Get the butter, she'd say." We would pop so many batches of popcorn in the little popper.

And we didn't have the hot air popper or the microwave popcorn. We used the old-fashioned, oil driven popper. She would get her Weiss Market paper bags out, unfold them and we began filling the bags with each batch that was done. We'd drizzle butter and shake the salt over the top and then close up the bag and shake it for a while to coat each piece. We'd end up with two or three bags of corn and head out to the theater. Each bag would look like it might fall apart from the oil and butter leaking through slightly. There were spots all over the bag, but it smelled so delicious.

On the way to the theater, Dad always insisted on running into one of our favorite corner stores- Stewart's, where he would pick up random pieces of candy: always a Fifth Avenue Bar, Twizzlers and maybe some M&M's for Mom. My brother and I would sit in the back and when we got to the movie, Mom would spread a blanket over us. I honestly cannot remember one movie I saw at the theater, but I remember Mom and Dad would have all of the windows down, so they could hear the audio from the little box next to our car. My brother and I would have a bag of popcorn of our own and after finishing our candy and popcorn, I think we must've fallen asleep. Now, doesn't that beat staying home with a babysitter?

I miss the drive-in. You know what was funny about it, though? Nobody ever really seemed to care what movie was playing.