My friends and I have been talking about Drive In Theatres.

When I was a kid I thought Drive Ins were great because you got to sit in your car eat Popcorn and watch a movie- or if you were a creative kid like me you’d stretch that evening out to a full night of fun.

I used to Roller-skate around the lot before the movie and during intermission and count how many people were in their cars ” getting some Nookie “

That was what my older cousins called it.

Let me clear something up here:

I used to think ” Nookie ” was a word for eating Pizza- I thought it was the steam from the Pizza that fogged the windows up.

Give me a break I was like eight or nine at the time and it made sense.

Plus I was pretty clueless.

Anyway….

When I was about 12 I found out that a bunch of teenagers from the neighborhood used to drive almost 50 miles away to go to a Drive In by the airport- and watching these kids plan for it made my head hurt.

I couldn’t believe how complicated going to the movies was for these kids. I thought they were dumb- how hard could it be to get yourself to a Drive In?

They spent days trying to get a car, hours trying to get a story together about where they were going and somebody always slipped up and someone always got busted before ‘movie night’ and that was always dramatic with barefoot kids in bell bottom jeans running from house to house trying to salvage the evening.

It made my head hurt just to watch this.

Me and my friends and cousins went to the Drive In almost every weekend and we certainly didn’t spend days and days planning it.

We just badgered our parents into making somebody take us.

Later on- when I was about 12 one of my neighbor friends told me the older kids were driving all the way down there to see what our Grandparents called ” Stag Films”.

The kids told me that you could see a bunch of them for free- of course you had to sit on a fence in the cold and dark with a bunch of airplanes landing and taking off every 10 minutes over your head and you couldn’t hear anything because you didn’t have a car to attach a speaker to.

” But man, who cares? ” they’d say.

And I’d think, ” well I would. “

God I’m glad I knew how to keep my mouth shut most of the time.

Later there was this city or county ordinance passed that said Drive Ins couldn’t show  ” Stag Films ” anymore so that took care of the older kids going on road trips to airport to watch movies.

On the other hand, if you just wanted to go to the movies and maybe goof off on the playground equipment or stand in line at the concession stands and buy popcorn and hot dogs or play pinball while you waited for your friends to use the bathroom you could still do that- it may not have been as adventurous as watching a movie from the street with the threat of ” THE MANAGER ” chasing you off…but so what?

It was fun while it lasted.

That’s all gone – the Drive In is no more.

The compromise is that now days you can have little TVs in your car or you can watch films on your computer- it’s all very convenient and all pretty Soulless

-and the worst thing of all-

You can’t roller-skate around a dark lot full of cars parked on wavy pavement and count how many people are in their cars getting Nookie anymore.