Drive-In Movies

I remember my very first date. The boy was a kid I went to high school with, but I don't remember his name. He came to my house to pick me up in his truck and we went to to see a move at the drive-in. That was the place to go on a date when I was a teen. I remember when there were times that my girlfriends and I would go sit in a car outside the drive-in to watch a movie because we didn't have the money to pay to get in.

It was fun. Even though we had no idea what they were saying, we would create our own story to go with the movie we were watching. But going to the drive-in was about the best place to be on a Saturday night. They always played two movies. One not so new and then the feature film. You could buy a bucket of buttered popcorn and sit on the tail-gate of a truck or the hood of your car. Many times there would be an entire group of us that would take up a whole section of the drive-in parking lot.

Some of the best memories I have happened at the drive-in. They use to charge by the person, so we would get as many people as we could in the trunk of a car. I had an old Ford Galaxy and we could get 3 or 4 people in that truck. Once inside the drive-in we would find our friends and spend the night watching movies. On Halloween, they would always have an entire night of old horror movies playing.

I am sure they have drive-in movie theaters here in Missouri that are still in operation, but I have not seen one. I was watching World News Tonight on NBC and they did a report about drive-ins. They said there use to be over 4000 drive-ins in the United States, but now there are fewer than 400. The main reason is because they no longer make “film” everything is digital. The cost to convert a drive-in from film to digital is $160,000.00. Since Drive-ins are not as popular as they use to be, most just do not bring in enough money to justify the cost to change, so they close.

Funny, you hear about every one going tailgating at sports events. There people have to pay for parking, stand out in the heat or cold then pay for tickets to go in to watch the event. All of that can cost a family of four several hundred dollars. Wouldn't it be great if the drive-ins could make a come back by encouraging families to spend an evening tailgating, BBQ'ing even selling area's to groups to meet in, then end the evening with a great family movie. I would plan a community, church or family evening around that.  https://www.facebook.com/ForSuchASeason