- submitted by s.l on 08/19/2009
Good Old Drive-In Daze
By Steve Levenstein
I was reading an article in USA Today the other day that noted the number of drive-in movie theaters had dropped from a high of over 4,000 to a mere 500 today.
That got me reminiscing... thirty years ago I got a summer job at the Dufferin Drive-In. It was a homecoming of sorts; my parents had brought the family to that very same drive-in a dozen years earlier to see The Man Called Flintstone and later on I had watched a flick or two with friends or a girlfriend. Good times indeed! But being on the other side of the ticket wicket, so to speak, was a revelation -- and a lot more entertaining then anything up on the screen.
The Duff's feature film that summer was Smokey And The Bandit, 
already a couple of years out of the box and not one of Hollywood's better efforts to begin with. It seemed even less so after having to watch bits and pieces of it night after night as we drive-in staffers went about our mostly silent business.
By the time August's dog days rolled around, the only thing remotely funny about the flick was being sent to fix the marquee after some self-styled comedian had rearranged the lettering into gems like Bad Stinky Mouth, Monkey Tits or my favorite: Honky Breast Men.
The marquee (under it, actually) was where staffers who had over-indulged in any one of a number of controlled and uncontrolled substances were sent to keep them out of the manager's sight.
Now remember, this was 1979... society was still basking in the smoky afterglow of the Woodstock generation along with all of its paraphernalia. At the drive-in, paraphernalia was not only available, it was free for the most part and we staffers made out like, well, bandits. Here's how that worked...
Since anything found on the tarmac after closing time was ours to keep, drinkable libations were ours for the taking. There was much to take -- customers were often too inebriated by the flick's end to separate out their empty beer bottles and ended up leaving mixed cases just sitting there under the stars.
Once scavenged, the bottles were kept in the storage shed and 
the full-to-bursting beer fridge within. There was an element of danger to this though: rumor had it that some movie-goers knew of the traditional finders-keepers game and would pee in a bottle, re-cap it and mix it in with the others. I never cracked one of those bad boys, at least to my knowledge. Then again, after drinking enough free beer who could really tell the difference?
As for the more hallucinogenic recreationals, those were acquired by way of a special barter system the management neither approved of nor knew about. Staffers worked rotating shifts guarding the exit road against weasels who would try to sneak in, headlights out, after the movie had begun. We would wait in our cars and give our own headlights a quick flash when we saw a blacked-out, slow-moving shadow approaching. Usually this did the trick but sometimes the cheapskates wanted to try bargaining their way in. Sometimes we'd let them -- if the bargain was sweet enough.
Between one thing and another, it made for an enjoyable summer getting paid to do pretty much what our classmates were doing anyway. Of course, there WAS some actual work involved. I still have burn scars on the inside of my arm from the night when scalding hot oil splashed out of the popcorn cooker.Time has faded the scars but the memory of making dozens of big green garbage bags of movie popcorn hasn't. One whiff brings it all back.
We also had to repair the speakers from time to time, usually after a customer forgot the speaker was still hanging on their car window as they drove away (see "beer" references earlier). Ever hook up drive-in speakers to a quadrophonic stereo system? Sounds awful but looks awesome!
Having had the privilege of taking in the "drive-in experience" from both inside and out was something rare in those days, and little did we know it was about to get even rarer. In the early '80s the Dufferin Drive-In was sold to developers and the generous, beer-dispensing tarmac was torn up.
As with thousands of other old drive-ins, the location now lies buried beneath another bland subdivision with not even a theatrical street name to recall its past glories. I still recall them though, and in the end that's what really matters. Roll the credits...
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Steve Levenstein was born & raised at the then-northern edge of metro Toronto, Canada. Looking through the prism of the suburbs has not only given him a slightly skewed view of society, but has also helped frame the wider world as a series of variations on a theme. Closer to home, Toronto's multicultural mix acts as a rich, vibrant tonic -- an essential elixer that, by putting people out of their place, highlights the common humanity which lies within.
After a 15-year dip in the corporate pool, Steve abandoned the daily commute to focus on his first love, writing, and spending time with his family. Steve's wife of 18 years hails from Tokyo, Japan, and provides a unique window into the delights and diversions of modern Japanese culture while his 2 sons (the younger an established tech blogger in his own right) help keep the house from getting too quiet. Steve writes for a number of respected blogs including InventorSpot, WebUrbanist, Dark Roasted Blend and The Thinking Blog...read more rants
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