Once Upon A Time>

Summertime Fun

Keugene48 136 posts Jan 20, 2011 6:14 PM	I loved to go to drive ins when I was a kid. Mom and Dad would decide in the early evening to go and the preparations would begin. Mom would sometimes fry hamburgers and put them in buns and wrap them in aluminum foil. Then we would pop popcorn in our special popcorn pan (very heavy with a crooked lid). The popcorn was dumped in a brown grocery bag, one for the front seat, one for the back. We had a thermos for water, sometimes take Cokes but they were a special treat on paydays. We grabbed pillows and blankets and we were ready. After we arrived at the theater Daddy would drive back and forth trying to get the best spot. Then hooked the speaker on the door, find out the speaker didn't work and we would drive around some more to try to get another good spot. Then we opened our foil wrapped soggy warm hamburgers and homemade popcorn and warm water and ate it like it was good. Some people would flash their flashlights on the screen, kids would play in the playground or sit in chairs by their cars. I loved the sound from the speakers, even though it was tinny and muffled, the advertisements and the songs. We resisted the dancing hot dogs and soda cups and waited for the movie to start. About the middle of the first movie Daddy would go to the concession stand and buy us ice cream cups with little wooden paddles to eat it with... that was the only thing we ever were allowed to get at the concession stand. We hardly ever stayed for the second movie, my dad was a morning person and he didn't like to stay up late. But we kids were sleepy too. Then when I got to be a teenager I could go to a drive in on a date but I had to take my brother with us. He was a pretty good chaperone, never told what he saw or blackmailed me. Of course having a brother in the back seat limited what did go on anyway... guess that was the whole idea. My mom was convinced that the root of all evil began at a drive in. She was pretty much right, at least for me the times I sneaked out without bringing my brother. I haven't been to a drive in in years. One more thing from my childhood that is gone, although there are drive ins still around. But what is the point? We can sit around in our PJs drinking Cokes and eating popcorn in front of the TV with a screen almost as big as the one in the drive in and pop in a movie any time we want. Only the surround sound is not tinny and muffled and there are no dancing hot dogs.
cilla46 19 posts Jan 20, 2011 8:26 PM	Your post sure does bring back those hot summer nights at the drive-in!My mom did the popcorn thing too but we would drink warm iced tea with ours! Every once in a while we would get something from the concession stand if my dad could afford it!Those days were some of the best.
FAITH 16 posts Jan 27, 2011 10:08 AM	Yea, we'd do the homemade popcorn thing but Dad always stopped at Lawson's and got a couple of those fruit drinks in milk cartons like you get at school for my sister and me. I don't remember what he and mom drank, but it was probably beer...
smurfnana 22 posts Feb 20, 2011 8:00 AM	I guess we were the lucky ones. Mom always made a jug of Kool-aid to take with us! We still do the drive in a few times each summer. Only difference is we take microwave popcorn and a cooler of pop. Our daughter has a Chevy Tracker, so she and her husband open the back and lay in it, and we have a truck. Last summer, we decided to get an inflatable mattress for the back of it, and we lay there. The gks usually have a blanket or chairs, until the youngest decides she'd rather sit with us on the truck. It's still as much fun as it ever was!
Falconboater 5 posts Apr 06, 2011 11:37 AM	Dad worked at East Dayton Tool on Keowee and Leo Streets. We lived in the Five Oaks neighborhood. Everyday during the Summer, he wuold come hom for and on his way back to work take us to Phillips Aqautic Club to swimm all afternoon. At 5:00PM we would walk over to the shop and come home. Lois Schmidt who ran the business was the daughter of "Old Man" Phillips who used to ride around in the golf cart. Lois's son Mike is the famous Phillies baseball player Mike Schmidt. On the weekends we would head to Grand Lake where we had a cottage.
marty52 4 posts Apr 08, 2011 9:35 PM	ahhhhh,,,southland 75, many great memories. remember billie the kid in kettering? you know i never understood the demographics and markrting. whenever a disnney film was playing, like ol yeller,or swiss family robinson, the line was backed up 4ever. who was doing marketing and what didn't they get??
tlturbo 242 posts May 13, 2011 7:23 AM	I never went to the drive-in's with parents - not sure why. But after I started dating - that was another story. AH YES - the Southland 75 - I assume you mean the one near where the Dayton Mall in Centerville is - next to I-75? That was a favorite place for the corvette crown to go - we would line up along the back end, put the tops down and sit on the back deck. One incident I'll always remember. If you know corvettes, behind each seat was a recessed compartment in the fiberglass floor. Behind the passenger seat it held a battery if memory serves me but the one behind the drivers seat was empty. Being fiberglass with a drain hole in the bottom if made what else??? A great cooler. Before I was 21, I had friends that would buy me a bottle of Cold Duck (man what we would drink back then), put ice in that compartment, stick in the Cold Duck and head to the drive-in. I remember one night my gal friend and I leaning on each other as we staggered to the restrooms at the concession stand. And yes, I remember Billy the Kid Stepp - raced a couple of his cars up at Shelby Raceway in my 69 vette.
PaulH 25 posts May 18, 2011 7:46 PM	tlturbo--Actually the battery was behind the driver seat. At least in the 68-82 models. The jack was stowed behind the passenger side, but there was room to put some drinks. Once during the summer of 71, I was driving north on Dixie almost to Needmore when there was an explosion in my 68 T-top and I was instantly covered with glass and a really foul smelling sticky liquid. I quickly pulled into some parking lot to figure out what the heck happened. The lid on the passenger side box was wide open and inside was the remains of a half gallon bottle of Bali Hai wine. The week before, I had gone to the drive-in with a date and we poured some into paper cups and put the bottle back there and I forgot about it. All the driving around that I did apparently shook it up enough and it built up pressure til it just blew. I had to hose out my vette in a car wash and then got a shop vac to get the water and glass out. Oh yeah. I had to hose myself down too. A deputy sheriff had followed me to the car wash. When he smelled the sour alcohol on me, he smelled my breath and laughed when he looked in my car as I told him what happened. He was still laughing when he drove away.
JBlair 40 posts Jun 05, 2011 10:49 AM	Keugene48, 'Really enjoyed your entry. The first guy I ever went to a drive-in with came back into my life 30 years later, we hit it off again, and decided to go back to the Belmont Drive-In east of Woodman for old times sake. We didn't intend steaming up the windows again as we had many times; 30 years later bodies don't work the way they did originally! But we could only stay so long because the mosquitoes were awful. The speakers were even worse than we remembered, or could that have been our older ears? Ah, aren't couchs and remotes wonderful? Last Edited on 5-Jun-2011 10:50 AM
donw 124 posts Jul 31, 2011 11:51 PM	Summer bump... Tonight my wife and I went to the drive-in. We drove over to the Wilmington Drive-In on Rt. 134. FWIW, we watched "Cowboys and Aliens" - very, very appropriate drive-in fair, where you check your brain in when you watch the movie. This is noteworthy for both of us because it's probably been 30+ years since either of us had been to any drive-in. In my own case, I had probably not been to a drive-in since the late 70s. Several significant things have changed in drive-ins between the 70s and today: Admission is flat fee charged by the carload, thereby obviating the old school practice of stuffing a bunch of morons into the trunk to duck the ticket charge. :) You use your car radio. The speaker stands were still standing with no speakers. I suppose that the speakers get auctioned off to "Mel's Drive In" clone restaurants across the USA as Americana kitsch. The last drive in I probably went to was the Skyborn, when I was in college, and in those days it was an X-rated drive in, and I was one of the idiots hiding in the trunk. :) In our family our drive-in obsession back in the 1960s revolved around my two older brothers driving the three of us out to the Belmont Auto or the Southland 75 to see some ridiculously gory slasher film or zombie movie. I mean rock bottom crap like "The Devil's Rain" or "Texas Chain Saw Massacre", which we would see for pure camp value. A prerequisite of summer viewing pleasure at the drive in is that the movie must rot your brain from the inside out. :) Our first stop on the way to the drive-in was Mr. Wood's carry-out on Bellaire Avenue in Belmont, where we would pick up soda in returnable bottles and chips. Once we got to the drive in and watched the first feature for awhile and the drinks were getting warm, we would get restless for the snack bar. I was the kid so I was always sent out to the snack bar while the adults waited back in the car. One brother always salivated over the "James River Brand BBQ Sandwich" that they would show during intermission. Usually, I would get lost in the parking lot walking with a tray full of drinks and food back to our car. Once I went back to the concession stand and they paged my brothers to come and get me. :) We went to the Wilmington Drive in tonight because it's close. The difference between it, and the old school drive ins like the Southland 75 is stark. The Wilmington DI is tiny in all respects. The Southland 75's concession stand back in the day was like a modern day McDonald's at noon rush hour with people lined up for orders. Anyway, drive ins are still out there. Partake and relive your youth a little, as we did tonight. :)
Tkambitsch 1 post Aug 01, 2011 7:59 PM	I was recently introduced to Mike Shulz and Beth Habegger two members of the Nassau Street Lay Marianist Community. They are UD grads from several years ago that didn't want to just go out and get regular jobs after graduation. They have begun an urban farming operation on abandoned land between Nassau St., Beaumont Ave., Andrews St., and St. Paul Avenue. That land was once the home to Cool Pool, where many east dayton kids spent quite a few hours during the summers of the mid-sixties. Beth and Mike and their community of about a dozen volunteers and interns rent one house and now just bought a second house that border their "farm." They grow veggies and sell them at markets and to restaurants in the Dayton area and also host meals for the poor in the Twin Towers district. They have two other plots of land in the neighborhood that they are developing as urban farms. All in all these are some pretty impressive young people. I visited Beth and Mike after work this past Friday. We had some beers, toured the grounds and hung out at one of the houses to talk about the neighborhood and of course I couldn't help but share with them much of my hist ory of the area. They had only one grainy photocopy of a photograph of Cool Pool in its day. Otherwise they are pretty clueless about this chunk of east Dayton history. I promised that I would try my best to give them a better picture of the place. I went looking through our family albums in my possession but didn't find any. I've ask my St. Anthony's class of 1969. Nom luck. Does anyone have photos of Cool Pool?
dave5838 10 posts Aug 14, 2011 1:42 PM	I've got to return to Dayton. Drive-in movies are no longer around where I live today. Great memories of drive-ins.