Done With Drive-Ins

About a month ago, our local paper included an article about the nostalgia and low prices of drive-in movie theaters.

I clipped the article, one of hundreds in my physical possession, with thousands more saved in digital archives, that I wanted to comment on.

With our children's summer vacations coming up, I added "Going to the Drive-In" to my mental bucket list for summer '18.  I then forgot about it.

Just last weekend, I took Friday off as detailed in my prior two posts and took the family to Brookfield Zoo, which we joined again after not having gone for the last four or five years.

Our daughter had asked that day if we could go back to the drive-in in the City of West Chicago, another venue that we had not gone to for about four years.

We have gone to our fair share of movies over the past few years, typically at a monstrous 30-screen AMC theater, a slightly smaller theater at the world's busiest shopping center, or one of two small local theaters in neighboring towns.

Ticket prices, of course, vary widely depending on when you are going and the theater's amenities  I have slowly come to accept paying $12 or so for tickets, plus "convenience charges," and selecting which seats that we will be parking our butts in, online.

Not so with the drive-in.

The one that we went to is one of only three remaining drive-ins in the Chicago area per Dann Gire's article.

While my wife and I definitely agree on the nostalgia factor as detailed in Gire's article, we are good and ready to return to comfortable seats where we can both see and hear the movie without constant interruptions and threats to our safety.

I could write hundreds of words on our complaints, but in a nutshell they are:

1. We were asked to move back a few rows back behind the behemoth SUV's after getting a great spot.  Our Subaru Legacy wagon was deemed too large to be in the fourth row.
2. We went with our daughter and her BFF.  In the car next to us, a young couple, perhaps around twenty years old, were snuggling under blankets with the back of their car open and facing the screen.  I think that our daughter and her friend could have completed the sex ed unit of their summer school health class by observing them during the movie.  Good for the happy couple, but I wish the young lady would have been quieter.
3. Cars were showing up fifteen, thirty, forty-five and an hour into the movie.  Some were late for the Star Wars movie, others were early for Adrift.  I do not know because I did not ask them.  My wife and I were sitting outside in folding chairs in front of the car while the girls were in the car and eventually had to roll up the window so they could run the audio on the radio and hear.  Cars were driving within a few feet of my wife and I, some with their lights off and others with their lights on.  I was constantly ready to grab my wife and dive for cover, but it would likely have been too late had one of the cars not seen us and run us over.
4. The movie started showing around 8:45, before it was fully dark.  I realize that the projector is quite a distance away, thus the image was very dark on the screen.  I know there were many scenes shot in the dark in Solo: A Star Wars movie, but the entire film looked like a 1950's film noir detective movie.
5. The speakers are quite old and we left it on the pole.  Even though we were outside and speakers were on throughout the area, neither my wife nor I heard about half the dialogue.  This is due to cars driving by, the couple next to us getting hot and heavy, airplanes flying overhead and cars zooming by on the road and, of course, the poorly maintained speakers.

We might have a few more, but you get the gist.  We could not really see or hear the movie and there were cars driving within ten or fifteen feet of us every ten minutes or so throughout the movie.

About midway through the film, my wife turned to me and said that she had no idea what was going on..  (Spoiler Alert!)  We both surmised that Han Solo and Chewbacca were on a mission to obtain some type of precious element to pay back some gangster for failing to obtain it earlier with Woody Harrelson's character.  One, we did not give a shit about that and, two, neither of us cared much for the guy depicting young Solo.  I should note for new readers that my wife and I are in our late forties, thus not the target demographic for this movie.

Seeing as how the original three Star Wars movies were my favorites while growing up, I still feel obligated to see any Star Wars movie put out by Disney no matter how screwed up it is.  

My favorite scenes in the movie were when Solo first met Chewy and later when he discovered that his Wookiee buddy could pilot the Millennium Falcon.  Chewy tells him that he is one hundred and ninety years old.  Who knew?  I thought Chewy was a Millennial, about thirty years old.  He and Solo were definitely seeking financial independence, but you cannot retire early if you are already closing in on two hundred years of age.  Maybe the typical Wookiee works to the age of three hundred.  

I remarked to my wife that despite not being able to see and hear much besides hearing a young lady thoroughly enjoying whatever the young man with her was doing (Seriously!  I know that I am old-fashioned, but is doing it out in the open and only ten feet from a married couple in the back your parents' minivan acceptable?), wasn't it great going to the drive-in?

I recounted all the good times that I recalled going to the long-defunct drive-in theater in Ironwood, Michigan in the U.P., the town where my family spent the month of August nearly every year as I grew up.

She recounted how much she enjoyed going to the Highway 39 drive-in in Westminster, close to the California town where her family spent part of her childhood, then remarked that she is over the nostalgia and ready to sit in a comfortable seat where she could see and hear the movie without gigantic SUVs coming within feet of us every few minutes.  Some were being driven by teenagers, which made me extremely nervous.  

There was also a family in a new Honda CR-V parked in the row in front of us who felt compelled to start their engine, thus shining the headlights in our eyes, about every fifteen to twenty minutes throughout the movie, most likely in an effort to ensure that their car battery did not die.  

It did not take long for me to realize that I agree with her, and wholeheartedly at that.

As Gire writes, Palatine's beloved "ozoner" joined most of America's drive-ins on the slow road to extinction. Drive-ins peaked in 1958 at 4,063. Since then, they've been on the endangered entertainment species list, dropping to around 320.

At last report, Illinois has 11 operational drive-ins with just the three in the Chicago metropolitan area, although I would argue that the one in Sterling is not anywhere near the area.  I have worked in the field of economic development in Illinois for eighteen years and had never heard of the town prior to this article.  

Google maps has Sterling, Illinois, at 116 long miles from Chicago, or a two hour and ten minute drive.  Not exactly in the neighborhood.

The drive-in that we went to, the Cascade, has been on the market for a while as a future development site.  It is just a matter of time before some developer comes along and puts up apartment buildings, townhomes, a senior living facility or a medical complex.  I am sure that the land is more valuable for something like that than its current use as a drive-in hanging on for dear life.

Despite my list of complaints about it, I know that I will miss it when it's gone and will probably recall the delight in our daughter and her friend walking around the lot and going to the concession stand for popcorn and pop rather than the squeals of delight coming from the car next to us.

So will we be able to take our grandchildren to a drive-in theater?  Not likely.  

If we do, we might have to go on a hundred mile drive, or more, and make it part of a trip.

Even though my wife told me not to have a word with the couple next to us, and rightly so, I can assure you that if the same thing happens when we take our grandchildren to the drive-in, I will surely give that coupld (probably babies or young children now) a piece of my mind about etiquette.