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Movie Nostalgia

When I was a kid, here was nothing l loved to hear more on a spring or summer afternoon than "we're going to the drive in tonight!" I LOVED the drive-in. Sitting in the family car, or later in my high school beater, eating home popped popcorn out of brown paper shopping bags and cracking the old cooler for a cold Dr. Pepper, while watching my favorite movie stars a 40x80 FOOT movie screen...it was excellent! When we were really young we'd actually get into our PJs before we left the house so that we could just sleep in the car....then get carried into the house without rousing...what a life! I remember sneaking out of my grandparent's house when I was 10 to go sit on the fence of the drive-in that was next door to their neighborhood and watch 'Bonnie and Clyde'. I couldn't have even gotten in to see it at that age, but there it was, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway (Faye Dunaway!!!) 40 feet high and blasting their way through anybody that got in their way! THAT was a good night!

As you can probably tell, I miss the drive in. The other night, as a I sat in the local megaplex, watching a latest blockbuster on a screen marginally bigger than the average home tv screen, listening to some gang banger who had visitation rights that day talk on his cell phone, I began to think about the drive in. Then I started to wonder what the drive in would be like tonight if they had survived...that is, what would they have had to have DONE to survive?

1) Admission would be about $10 a head...even with 4 in the car and 3 of your friends in the trunk, that still gets expensive
2) They would have had to have developed some ultra high-tech scanning apparatus that would detect:
-drugs
-weapons
-any refreshment (food, beverage, etc.) not from their concession stand
-oh....and anybody in the trunk!
3) They'd have to have and enforce a "no loud stero policy" (actually given what goes on in theaters these days...this is probably not true)
4) They'd have to install electric fences and sensors around the perimeter of the drive-in
5) they'd probably have to have a 'mirror image' of the drive in behind the screen and show another feature on the backside of it at the same time as the feature on the front (actually 'front' and 'back' would probably be meaningless)

Doesn't sound like much fun, does it?

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