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Now playing: New England's drive-in theaters
By David Maloof, Globe Correspondent, 06/16/02
About 20 drive-ins live on in New England, which is 20 more than some people assume but nearly 200 fewer than in 1958, when drive-ins were at the peak of their popularity nationwide.
Ah, 1958. I can't quite recall those days of $3.75 blue jeans and $375 college tuition, of Eisenhower in the White House and Kerouac on the bookshelves. But I like to visit new places, which in this case would mean traveling away from antiseptic multiplexes or cloistered "home theater" setups and back to the glory days of drive-ins.
My wife, child, and I head down Route 9 one recent Saturday night to the Leicester Drive-In, a twin theater. But the screen near the box office looks as though it's had a few healthy bites taken from its top by some 1950s movie monster.
"Wind damage," the morose ticket-seller tells us, adding that the double feature — "Spider-Man" and "The Rookie" — will be shown on that screen. We U-turn and head for the Mendon Drive-In, only to be informed by a hand-written roadside sign that the same double feature is "Sorry SOLD OUT."
On foot and alone, like a teenager crashing the prom, I investigate the festive pre-show scene: music playing, youths tossing balls among the cars, while others settle into blankets inside cars or on rooftops. One group scarfs down a takeout pizza.
Two long lines lead into the snack bar, which sells not only food and drink but nostalgia: The front half of a pink 1957 Chevy protrudes from the snack bar's roof, and inside there's a Coca-Cola machine that once dispensed bottles for 7 cents each, as well as a jukebox offering such timely tunes as "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Li'l Darlin' " at the throwback price of 10 cents each (or three for a quarter). Elvis movie posters decorate one wall, while another holds license plates from as far back as 1955, the year after Mendon opened.
But the Coke machine is empty, and a young girl standing at the jukebox has lost her money trying to play the one song on the box that she knows: "Rock Around the Clock."
This trip back in time is going awry.
Oh, there are retro items at the snack bar like root beer floats and lime rickeys, and outside are two young sisters in matching purple pajamas. But what of the shrimp rolls and the jalapeno poppers, what of Eminem barking from a boombox, and what of the SUVs, vans, and family trucks that would look like Army base escapees at a 1958 drive-in? The speaker posts are there, but no speakers: These days, movie sound comes through your car radio; the posts have been left standing as combination artifacts/space markers.
Furthermore, though the cars rolling into drive-ins these days hold mostly families, it's tough to find a "family picture," if that means a G-rated one. Not only are such films scarce throughout the industry, but different drive-ins often feature the same bills, further limiting choice. In fact, we are wary of "Spider-Man" for our 5-year-old daughter, and vow to seek a tamer show for the following weekend's excursion.
It wasn't always that way. Tom Herb, whose family owns the Fairlee Drive-In in Fairlee, Vt., recalls seeing "Bambi" and "Herbie, the Love Bug" at the Candlelight Pix in Bridgeport, Conn. (As Tom's father, Raymond Herb Sr., puts it, "Disney is not what it used to be.")
But when I visit the Fairlee the following Friday, it does seem a good bet for time travel. The posts hold working speakers (though you can also listen on your radio). The carbon arc projector is the original Century Mighty 90 from 1950, the Fairlee's first year. Projectionist Jesse Pacht notes that they stockpile old equipment from defunct drive-ins — a kind of practical museum. The snack shack sells $2.05 burgers and 65-cent Fudgsicles.
And an hour before the box office opens, a 1952 Chevy sits in one of the back rows. "Does that car actually work?" I say, thinking of the ornamental half-Chevy back in Mendon.
"I hope so," says Al DeVaux Jr., a drive-in regular. "That's how I got here."
Meanwhile, Elaine Herb, Tom's mother, says some things at drive-ins have never changed: With free admission for kids under 12, she has seen a lot of mature-looking 11-year-olds over the years, as well as the drive-in tradition of trying to sneak people in in the car trunk. "I always say `How many?' " she notes, so they can't blame her for a miscount. But one time she saw three, and the driver said, "Four." "Don't you mean three?" she said. "No," explained the driver. "There's a jackass in the trunk."
The Fairlee sentence for trunk stowaways is eviction for the entire carload, and banishment for the season, she said. "One kid said, `You mean to say one mistake and the rest of my life I have to pay for it?' "
Get used to it, Junior.
While such tales take the listener back in time, The Fairlee also accommodates more conventional travel: The Herbs run a 12-unit motel between the drive-in field and the road. Inside, the small, neat rooms include a wall-mounted movie speaker and a rear picture window that looks out on the field and the distant 50 90 foot screen (which is steel, not wooden, and designed to survive winds up to 175 miles per hour).
Elaine Herb says that a two-night minimum stay is required on weekends (when the drive-in is open), because "That discourages the people who want to party hearty for one night." On this particular Friday night, a few cars eventually find their way to the motel and whatever entertainment can be found outside or inside its walls.
Across the Connecticut River, up Route 10 and onto Highway 135 in Woodsville, N.H., the Meadows Drive-In snack bar goes even further back in time, with $1.75 burgers and an orange Nesbitt's soda machine that co-owner Lee Tegu says still holds some silver coins.
Like the Nesbitt case, the 1954 Coca-Cola barrel on the snack bar counter is empty. But the dim light of the Coca-Cola sign has burned since the place opened in 1953 (and might even distract customers from the fact that the place now serves Pepsi).
The Meadows was one screen until 1997, when Tegu "twinned it," as he says. When I visit, one movie will project through a Mighty 90s machine like the one in Fairlee, and the other in the opposite direction through a newer, Xenon system located in a small room built atop the original projection area.
As cars roll into The Meadows, I head back to The Fairlee, arriving after 9 p.m. for one last look (and a late dinner of hot dog, fries, and root beer). Sitting at a picnic table next to the snack truck, watching the picture hundreds of feet away, what should look incongruous makes perfect sense.
Drive-ins offer two worlds in balance: You get to go out, but still make yourself at home. Your car is your mobile family room; your kids can come in their pajamas. "In the height of summer," says Elaine Herb, "sometimes they even bring couches in their pickup trucks and they sit outside."
On my night at The Fairlee, there's an odd and peaceful beauty to the sight of darkened, sleeping cars at the drive-in, a rare communion of nature and machine. Only the occasional slamming door or stray voice mars the soundtrack choir that fills the night. In the dark, from a distance, the cars could easily be from 1958.
The next night, I take the family to the Mansfield (Conn.) Drive-In. After our pre-movie meal on folding chairs and table, and a visit to the drive-in playground, we settle in for "The Rookie" — a movie whose prologue, by the way, is set in the 1930s, when drive-ins first opened. Our daughter shifts seamlessly from pre-show excitement to movie enthrallment to front-seat snuggling comfort with Mom and Dad.
As for Mom and Dad, we rediscover together what we had once known apart, and before long I remember that time travel doesn't only go backward. It can go forward, into the unexpected future of drive-ins themselves, and into another weekend this summer, when we surely will pack up and roll into a drive-in again.
David Maloof is a freelance writer who lives in Belchertown.