St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3) (11 page)

It was enormous, a huge campus. And beautiful: trees, ravines. I parked the car, got out, walked for a bit.

My guide told me that its charter was less than thirty years old, that there were sixteen thousand students here, more than ninety percent of them Ohioans, that there were seven hundred thousand volumes in the libraries. As a state university, its tuition was around four thousand dollars—double that if you were from out of state—staggering sums to me, especially when you factored in living expenses as well.

In the bookstore, Dayton's aviation pioneers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, were represented by a silhouetted logo of their famous biplane. A metaphor for discovery, change, literally throwing off earthly shackles, defying gravity, they had taken flight, freed themselves.

As at Bowling Green, and as I had the previous evening from the window of my room at the Hampton Inn, I pictured Adam sitting in libraries here, surrounded by seven hundred thousand books, studying in the state where he was born.

Research, books, community service, the arts and sciences—opportunities engulfing these people in their green and gold sweatshirts, under the bright Ohio sun.

In my mind, Adam and I became one. I was attending classes with him. If I had gone to university, would I have been smart enough to understand what was happening to me? Was there a way to learn what I wanted to know, especially when I wasn't even certain what it was that I wanted to know?

I envied Adam his life. I envied him that he still had a father.

It was 10 a.m., was warming to a hot, clear day.

In the night all things were possible, anything could happen. The dreams had proven this to me. Things changed, ever so subtly, every time I awoke. The world shifted, in fractions, the past and the present existing together, inside me. My mind roamed free.

The sun beating down changed all that.

The booklet in my hip pocket told me that Kettering, where Bobby Swiss lived and worked, was named after Charles F. Kettering, who, along with Edward Deeds, developed the modern automotive starter and ignition systems.

I sat in my Honda, keys in hand. I looked out through the windshield into the glare of morning, tried to will the night magic to appear. I inserted the key into Kettering's ignition, turned it, heard the Delco battery fire the noisy valves of my 1960 Chev to life. I closed my eyes, saw the shaky three-speed gearshift on the steering column, felt its wide bench seat beneath me.

ELEVEN

I

West of 675, off Shakertown Road, just outside Kettering, I saw the Belmont Auto Theatre.

$6.00 A CARLOAD

OPEN WEEKENDS

THROUGHOUT THE WINTER

HEATERS WILL BE FURNISHED

FOR YOUR COMFORT

NO ALCOHOL

ON THIS

PROPERTY

I got out of the car, stood with my hands in my pockets. Then I went up to the fence and peered through.

I know a lot about drive-in theaters. I've made it a point to find out. I like them. I bought a book about them once— written by some guy who had taken a trip along Route 66, searching them out. He liked them even more than I did. I'll tell you a little bit of what I know.

By the early thirties, Detroit was rolling cars off the assembly line, Hollywood was churning out movies. The first drive-in opened in New Jersey in 1933, an unexpected offshoot of the two growing industries. Over the next decade drive-in theaters began to appear all over the States: Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Massachusetts, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Rhode Island, New York. By 1942, there were ninety-five of them, scattered across twenty-seven states.

As I recall, Ohio took the concept to its bosom: it had more than any other state. Eleven, I think. Like the one I was looking at right now. Good old Ohio.

During 1941-45, the War years, for all the obvious reasons the whole phenomenon flattened out. But it blossomed again with a vengeance after the War. Before 1950, their number had increased from around one hundred to over eight hundred. By 1958, there were close to five thousand.

And the one near Copiague, New York, on Long Island, almost overlooking South Oyster Bay and Ocean Parkway—that was one of the largest, one I wanted to get to, but never did. It hosted twenty-five hundred cars, had an additional twelve-hundred-seat, heated and air-conditioned indoor viewing area, playground, cafeteria, and restaurant with full dinners. A shuttle train took the moviegoers from their cars to the various destinations on the twenty-eight-acre site. I also heard of one in Lufkin, Texas, and another in Troy, Michigan, both of which claimed parking space for three thousand vehicles.

Onward and upward, fun and novelty for everyone, unlimited expansion. Playgrounds might incorporate minitrains, boat and pony rides, talent and animal shows, even miniature golf. Fried chicken, burgers, pizza: fast food was a natural.

In the 1960s and seventies, the party wasn't quite over, but it was ending. The numbers leveled, the enthusiasm waned. By the end of the eighties, they were closing with regularity. Suburban ones were engulfed by housing and shopping developments, their property too valuable. Many of the rural ones just withered and died. There are close to a thousand dead drive-ins across the U.S., weeds sprouting freely—graveyards, the speaker posts like headstones.

The States has fewer than a thousand left. Canada has about seventy-five.

The drive-in theater. Although you can find one in most countries on the globe, they're a particularly American hybrid. Passion pits for teens, cheap entertainment for families. Young couples with an infant could avoid the hassle of a baby-sitter—just plunk junior in the backseat with a bottle, let him sleep.

Yet what was its life span? Seventy years? Eighty? Like a person's: birth, development, excitement, expansion, set- ding, then decline.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, I always wanted my parents to take me to a drive-in movie. It never happened. They would just chuckle when I mentioned it. It wasn't something they could relate to. I guess there's no better way to build an obsession.

The first one I ever managed to get to was with my older cousin Jo-Anne—Eleanor's daughter—and her boyfriend (later husband) Bob. They were teens and my brother Dennis and I were six and eleven. It was summer vacation, near Bancroft, Ontario, some 160 miles northeast of Toronto, where Jo-Anne and Bob lived. Just outside of town, you turned off at Bird's Creek, onto a dirt road.

The Bancroft Drive-in. I loved it—a horror double bill. On a hot July night, Dennis and I sat in the dark, in the backseat of Bob's car, enthralled.

Last summer, when Jeanne and I were visiting a friend who has a cottage in the area, I detoured down that road just to have a look. The road is paved now, and there's no sign of the drive-in theater. It's gone. Vanished. Not abandoned or grown over, just gone. Houses line the road. After more than forty years, I couldn't even determine where exacdy it had been. I even wondered if I'd imagined the whole thing.

But I didn't. It's still there. I know it is. Like my '60 Chev, like everything else that ever existed, it's all there. Because it happened. Because I was there. Because it's inside me.

I remember a summer evening in my teens, cruising around Toronto in my father's car with my buddy, Joe. We ended up on Kennedy Road, north of Eglinton, near the Scarboro Drive-In.

Summer '61. I was seventeen. Mantle and Maris each had thirty-five home runs by mid-July, and Ford Frick, Commissioner of Baseball, ruled that for either of them to beat Ruth's record of sixty, they had to do it in 154 games, instead of the new, expanded 162-game schedule. Gus Grissom was pulled from his Mercury capsule
The Liberty Bell
in the Atlantic near Grand Bahama Island, just before it sank three miles to the ocean floor. The baseball Leafs were probably playing the Buffalo Bisons down at the old stadium near the foot of Bathurst. I think that was also the summer that Cupcakes Cassidy was at the Casino ("Tops in Variety and Burlesque") at Queen and Bay.

If I'd stayed home on a Saturday night, I'd end up sitting with family—Mom, Dad, Nanny, maybe Dennis too—all compromising on acceptable fare on the RCA black-and-white:
Gunsmoke
at eight;
LawrenceWelk
at nine. My only hope was talking them into switching from good old Lawrence at nine-thirty to
Have Gun Will Travel.
Now that wasn't bad.

Anyway, the Scarboro Drive-in while cruising.
From the Terrace
was playing. Adult entertainment. I don't remember the second feature.

We didn't drive the car in. We parked it on a dirt road and went in on foot, across fields, through ditches, over a barbed-wire fence—all in the dark.

I remember my feet were soaked, that Joe fell on his back, his leg hooked onto the barbed wire, that even as we were doing it, we knew it was insane.

Why did we do it? Because we were seventeen. It was wonderful.

That was my second time at a drive-in. Under the summer stars, beside a speaker post at the rear of the lot, we sat down on the grass, ate popcorn from the concession booth, and watched Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

II

After I got my own car, the Chev, I tried taking girls a few times. The North-East. The Dufferin, the Scarboro, the 400, the 7&27. Most of my dates thought it was kitschy the first time, but I can't recall any enthusiasm for a second visit. I took Fran, my first wife, once. She didn't like it. I began to think I was the only one who liked them.

I gave them up for years. Until Jeanne. She liked them. Adam liked them. We had fun.

By then, there were only two left: the 400 and 7&27. Now, they're both gone too.

"Did you ever go to the drive-in back home?" The first time I asked her, we were driving down the 400 into the city. You could see the multiscreen complex off to the west.

"Yeah, I went, lots. The Trail Drive-In, about a mile south of Ashland, on Route 60. Right near Crisp's hot dog stand. Crisp's had apple turnovers with powdered sugar and ice cream. Good eatin'. If we didn't go to Crisp's, we'd hit the Bluegrass Grill on Winchester. Get a hot dog and a root beer, or one of their Flying Saucer Burgers, with the special sauce." A smile. "The Trail's gone now. Wollohan's Home Improvements is there." She toyed with her hair, that way she has. "There were others. Flatwoods had a drive-in—The Corral, across from Espy Road. Another one in Summit. Huntington had one—called The East. Had a rising sun on it. I think it's still there. The others, though, like The Trail, they're all gone too." She was remembering more. "Sometimes we'd go farther, make an evening out of it, maybe even a night. But that was part of the fun."

I brightened. "Where'd you go?"

"Across the river, into Ohio. The Kanauga, near Gallipolis. Route 7 North, on the Ohio River. About thirty miles." She was warming to it. "Bunch of us kids from Ashland might go in a couple of cars. Sometimes, a lot of the boys would hide in the trunk and we'd sneak them in. That was part of the fun too."

"Ever get caught?"

"Nope. Place was started up by a local family after the War—passed down through generations. It's still family owned and operated. Lot of 'em are. We think they knew, but didn't care. I remember Monday night was Carload Night."

"Most women I've met haven't liked drive-ins," I said.

"You like 'em?"

I nodded. "Love 'em."

"Well, fella," she said, "this is your lucky day."

I looked at her, at the smile.

"Again," she said.

"Others were near Lexington: Mount Sterling, Paris, Stanton, Winchester. Went to the one near Mount Sterling a couple of times, but that was pretty far. Must have been a hundred miles. Besides the Kanauga, we tried the Scioto Breeze, outside Lucasville, north of Portsmouth. Another one near Jackson, Ohio. And one in West Virginia—on Route 35 at St. Albans. That's near Charleston. It's closed now. I heard they turned it into a lumberyard."

I stopped and looked at her.

"Yeah?" She tossed the hair from her face.

"Amazing."

"What is?"

I shook my head. "I never thought I'd find you."

That summer, 1989, after a trip to Boston, on our way back through New York State, we dawdled, enjoyed the drive. Around dinnertime, we pulled off I-90 through East Greenbush, outside Albany, and looked for a place to stay for the night. At the Econo Lodge in Rensselaer, I got out, went inside, and asked the girl at the desk how much.

"Fifty-four ninety-five. Unless you want the upgrade. It's got a fridge, coffeemaker, hair dryer . . ."
 

"How much?"
 

"Fifty-nine ninety-five."

"Upgrade me." She didn't know who she was dealing with.

I saw it while browsing through brochures and a local newspaper, sitting on the bed in our fabulous room, looking for a place to eat. Jeanne was studying the hair dryer. "The Hollywood Drive-In," I said.