Drive in Theaters - by Gary with comments by Dori

I want to share a story about our family to help give a description of who we were and what we liked to do. For entertainment we loved drive in movies. When we were young we would go to the drive in movies in our old car. I remember my parents had old Chevy sedan, late 40's or early 50's.
Dori said - We liked to travel in the window seat of the back of the car.
We would lie in window like a cat, which now days would be completely illegal. We would take turns or usually Gary would ride there, he was smaller, I would be laid out on the seat.

We didn’t have a lot of money so we would prepare all of our treats before going. Mom would pop popcorn and fill up a brown paper shopping bag. I remember the butter would spot the outside of the bag. Then mom would cook up hot dogs. She did the whole bit, the bus, dogs, mayo, mustard, catsup and relish. Then she would wrap each individually in a napkin or tin foil and put them in a long, wide mouthed thermos. She could pack a dozen hot dogs into it with 6 on top and 6 on bottom. We did that for years.

Dori and I wanted to start eating before parking the car, it smelled so good. We would load up the hot dogs and popcorn and a 6 pack of pop and off to the drive in we would go. We would always go early for a good place to park and make sure the speaker worked. We couldn’t eat until the show started and everything smelled so good, popcorn and hot dogs! It was very, very difficult to wait for the show. We would ask, “Can we eat now?”; “No you gotta wait for the show to start!” When we could finally eat, we would eat ourselves sick with all this stuff. Dad was a big eater. And Dad like to spend money too, every once in while he would go to the refreshment stand (a building in the middle of the Drive In with restrooms and a food stand) and he would buy pizza. I remember mom would be fit to be tied after making all that food for us and he would say, “We can afford this”. We would always get sick from over eating.

I can remember that some of the nicer theaters had a playground in front of the screen, with swings and slides and a marry-go-round that would make you sick. We would go and play there before the movie would start. Dori had fond memories of this. This was a day in age where it was safe to let kids walk up to the playground and play. Back in Wauneta we could walk 7 blocks to the beach, play all day and go home in the evening. Mom never worried about us and we never worried.

We didn’t have videos, VCR, DVD’s. The ONLY way to get movies was the theater; early Television didn’t even play movies. There was the Drive In or Movie Theater and only one screen, no megaplexes. One movie would show for a certain amount of time and then change. I can’t even remember going to an indoor theater with our parents it was always the Drive In. They were everywhere, Kenmore, Renton, one up toward Everett, 1 or 2 on the east side. Then land became more expensive and theaters became the thing and Drive In sound boxes were replaced with stereo sound.

I remember we saw a lot of Walt Disney stuff. We saw Old Yeller. I’m so soft hearted I cry at movies today. So when that dog got rabies and his dad was going to shoot him and the boy said, “No, I’ll do it”, I balled my eyes out.

My dad loved going to the theater, he loved cartoons. I can still remember him really enjoying those, he would laugh and we would all laugh. I remember this one cartoon: Dad’s name was Cecil, a very uncommon name. And we watched this cat and dog cartoon. The dog was chained up and the cat was always teasing him and hanging out just at the end of the dog’s chain so the dog couldn’t catch him. On the dogs house was written Cecil, of all the names for a dog on this cartoon. We can still remember how the cat walked up to the dog and said, “Cecil? Cecil? Well La Dee Da!” My dad thought it was great that his name was part of the cartoon. We just howled. Dad loved to laugh, and spend time with us.