Come as you are, but stay in your car

Here's another taste of my book I'm writing about growing up in the 60s in the San Fernando Valley. It's 1967. I'm in high school. I'm going out with Eleanor, but I'm not getting very far with her. And trust me, it's not for lack of trying.

I didn’t fare much better at the Drive-In either. Drive-In theatres were big in the 60s. Gigantic parking lots with a huge movie screen. The novelty here was being able to watch movies in your car. In 1967 if someone opened a medical clinic where you could get gall bladder operations in your car people would flock to it. Usually B-movies booked into Drive-Ins – cheesy horror flicks or Jerry Lewis comedies.

Drive-Ins are highly romanticized but I never really got it. The sound was always atrocious. You would attach these clunky portable metal speakers to the driver’s side window. Everything sounded muffled and distorted. You were always going, “What did that mad professor say?” Today’s teen would last exactly two seconds with that fidelity.

There was usually one snack bar, a bunker that was a half-day ride on a bicycle from wherever you parked. Someone from your car would go to the snack bar and you’d see him again at the ten-year reunion.

The big attraction of course was privacy… well, semi-privacy. You could smoke dope or make-out unseen except for all the lost souls walking by, tapping on your window, asking where the snack bar was. Eleanor was too self conscious to let me do anything more than kiss her. Besides, she was very engrossed in the movie. How could you not when THE HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND was playing?