Doing the Drive-in on Date Night

Heavy Chevys, Drive-inns, and Keep the Change-------------------------------
To the best of my recollection, the first time I ever went to a drive-in movie was with a bunch of guys from Lipscomb. The Great Escape, with Steve McQueen, was playing at the old Crescent Drive Inn on Murfreesboro Road and five of us went with three in the car and two in the trunk, since you paid by the person.
I don’t think I ever took a date to a drive-in movie though, since there wasn’t one in Carthage, I was not allowed to drive out of town (my world was bounded by South Carthage and Dixon Springs), it is doubtful that my girlfriend’s mother would have allowed her to go to a “passion pit,” and my parents would have had a fit if they caught me in such a place. Lipscomb girls were not allowed to frequent drive-in movies, so I was married before I had much experience with a drive-in. Pretty much when you go to the drive-in with your wife you watch the movie, although a little heavy snuggling was not out of the question.
Eventually Carthage did get a drive-in movie down on highway 25 by the golf course, along with just about every other town in America. From the mid sixties to the mid seventies, America was having a love affair with speed, big block engines, and land yachts like the 1975 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham we owned. Power adjustable front bench seats, faux leather upholstery, a marshmallow ride, and air conditioning as a standard in these behemoths was a counter point to Heavy Chevys, Four-Four-Two Oldsmobiles (400 cubic inch engine, Four on the floor, and dual exhaust), and Pontiac GTOs with wide blackwall tires and baby moon hubs. Motown was pumping out both the cars and the music America loved and everyone was looking for new things to both utilize and to show off their “ride.”
There were dive-in restaurants, Drive in Laundries, Drive-in weddings, Drive-in movies, and even Drive-in churches and funeral home viewing.
Since our oldest son Christopher was born in November of 1969, followed by Patrick in 1973, the boom hit right in the middle of their “got to have a babysitter” years, and our “ran out of money before we ran out of month” years. The drive-in movie provided a perfect solution to both problems, it was cheap to get in, there was no charge for the boys, and we could put our collapsible mesh net playpen (the latest thing) in the back seat. The leg lengths were adjustable to allow the playpen to be erected in the back seat of the big old Bonneville and the boys could watch a cartoon then lay down and go to sleep while mom and dad watched the main feature. There were not only speakers which came off the post and inside the car; there were also electric heaters on the post which would keep the car moderately warm in all but the coldest weather. A shared large drink and a medium box of popcorn from the concession stand, or in some cases treats brought from home at much reduced prices, created a perfect “date night” with no need to pay a babysitter. I would venture to say that most of the movies we saw during the period from 1969 – 1978 were at the drive in with two little boys snoozing peacefully in the back while mom and dad watched the movie and occasionally did a little smooching just for fun. Many families did the same thing, often arriving early so the children could the utilize the playground with swings and jungle gyms that often were located in the space just in front of the screen which was unsuitable for parking patron’s cars. If one went to the concession stand and did not get through the massive line before the intermission was over and the lights were cut, finding your car again could be a formidable challenge. I took to memorizing the number of rows forward or back and the number of lanes over to avoid peeking and poking into cars that ought not to have been peeked and poked into.
In 1973 the first oil embargo struck when the NATO decision to resupply Israel after the Yom Kipper War prompted OAPEC to drastically reduce oil shipments to the U.S. as punishment. This launched an avalanche of second guessing as to why carmakers had not foreseen the coming event and made smaller cars. The fact that we had and nobody bought them escaped everybody’s attention. Soon it was unfashionable to own a “gas guzzler” and the great love affair with “real cars” began to grind to a halt. Americans were buying Volkswagen Beetles, Datsuns, and Vespa Scooters and President Gerald Ford was encouraging Americans to WIN (Whip Inflation Now) as economists were forced to invent a new term, stagflation as both inflation rates and unemployment soared, forcing interest rates rocketing toward high water marks for modern times. The glory days were gone, predictably gone forever.
With the demise of the American love affair with the personal automobile and the rise of the concept of it as simply a means of transportation that needed only to be dependable, came also the demise of the search for a place to showcase your particular work of Detroit Art. Drive-in everything, including drive-in movies began to close in droves and today they are mostly as extinct as the U. S. Carrier Pigeon, although a few exist as a novelty here and there. As inflation drove the value of the land they sat on up by double digit increases yearly, and the cost of electricity, gasoline, and hot dogs shot up, the joy of sitting in a small car equipped with bucket seats seemed less than a fading memory and soon only a big screen carcass punctuated the landscape here and there, the cost of demolition being greater than the value of the small parcel of land on which it sat.
The old Crescent Drive-inn in Nashville was replaced long ago by a giant Kroger and attendant businesses, but if you are on Murfreesboro Road and are interested one day, stop in and view the great aerial shot of the glory days of the Crescent.
All things change and cultural icons disappear but one thing only remains constant. “Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who bids the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits keep, Oh hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril of the sea.”
Have a blessed day, Bob