This drive-in was called the Cactus Drive-in and opened in 1951 to serve the rapidly growing east side of Hooterville. Now it is about in the center of the metro area and is kind of a rough part of town.
This is a picture of the Cactus, now the DeAnza Drive-in taken in the 1970's. Trust me when I tell you that it looks the same today as it did then, just older. And without the crappy Pinto Wagon in the foreground, of course.
Back in 1968 going on a date to the drive-in was the thing to do. Our drive-ins included the Midway, Rodeo, Apache, Frontier and the one that is closing, the Cactus. I'm leaving out lots of theaters, because I'm no longer able to remember their names.
The movie we saw on that first date was Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski.
After the movie we drove around town a bit, burning up 25 cent a gallon gas. We ate at a restaurant north of downtown. The restaurant is long since torn down and the property is part of a college campus.
The drive-in movie property will become just another crappy shopping center with the usually assortment of stores no one really cares about.
Time marches on.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
Oct 1, 2009
It's funny how random things often connect in life.
Roman Polanski got arrested this week for having sex with an under-aged girl about a zillion years ago. But you already know that. I'll get back to Polanski.
The drive-in movie theater where Mrs. Sneed and I went on our first date back in 1968 closed up this week. It is the last drive-in in Hooterville, maybe in the universe for all I know.
This drive-in was called the Cactus Drive-in and opened in 1951 to serve the rapidly growing east side of Hooterville. Now it is about in the center of the metro area and is kind of a rough part of town.
This is a picture of the Cactus, now the DeAnza Drive-in taken in the 1970's. Trust me when I tell you that it looks the same today as it did then, just older. And without the crappy Pinto Wagon in the foreground, of course.
Back in 1968 going on a date to the drive-in was the thing to do. Our drive-ins included the Midway, Rodeo, Apache, Frontier and the one that is closing, the Cactus. I'm leaving out lots of theaters, because I'm no longer able to remember their names.
The movie we saw on that first date was Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski.
After the movie we drove around town a bit, burning up 25 cent a gallon gas. We ate at a restaurant north of downtown. The restaurant is long since torn down and the property is part of a college campus.
The drive-in movie property will become just another crappy shopping center with the usually assortment of stores no one really cares about.
Time marches on.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
This drive-in was called the Cactus Drive-in and opened in 1951 to serve the rapidly growing east side of Hooterville. Now it is about in the center of the metro area and is kind of a rough part of town.
This is a picture of the Cactus, now the DeAnza Drive-in taken in the 1970's. Trust me when I tell you that it looks the same today as it did then, just older. And without the crappy Pinto Wagon in the foreground, of course.
Back in 1968 going on a date to the drive-in was the thing to do. Our drive-ins included the Midway, Rodeo, Apache, Frontier and the one that is closing, the Cactus. I'm leaving out lots of theaters, because I'm no longer able to remember their names.
The movie we saw on that first date was Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski.
After the movie we drove around town a bit, burning up 25 cent a gallon gas. We ate at a restaurant north of downtown. The restaurant is long since torn down and the property is part of a college campus.
The drive-in movie property will become just another crappy shopping center with the usually assortment of stores no one really cares about.
Time marches on.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
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11 comments:
Hey, there are a couple out here also, still hanging on and when I was in Iowa we saw one, but it was so tiny and in a field, it was hard to tell if it was still open.
Wow, I didn't see the movie, but remember gasoline and lines on alternate days in '71, at .26 a gallon ; )
Those were the days.
Cheers to you and yours!
nope, not the last drive-in in the universe - there's one about an hour from here. It was our date of choice too, with a hamburger and malted afterwards. We used to pile as many neighborhood kids into the station wagon as possible and then get in for $1 a carload :)
Drive-ins are sadly a thing of the past. Who doesn't remember sneaking someone in in the trunk? It was quite a social place, cruising around to see who else was there, meeting up in the place that sold the best buttery popcorn in town. Occasionally actually watching the movie.
As for Roman Polanski, he's an old man in his 70's for God's sake. Don't we have better things to do with our money these days than bring him home from Switzerland and prosecute him? Even the girl, who must be in her 40's now, isn't interested in revisiting the past.
According to a story in the paper today, there are still 338 drive-in theaters left in the US.
When I was in Zambia (almost 20 years ago) I went to a drive-in. It was a horror flick - something about answering the phone & the noise in the receiver killing you. Then the film shriveled up & they couldn't fix it - so we got a rain check. Never went back - that was the last time I went to a drive-in. I need to find out what the heck that movie was & how it ended!
There's one in Santa Fe Springs, but it's a swap meet. I don't know if they even show movies any longer.
We used to go a lot as kids. Saw E.T. at the drive-in. That was awesome because we all got to scream our heads off with joy when he came back to life...
My husband lived in a really bad part of town for a while when he was about twelve years old. He and his cousin discovered that if they climbed on the roof and sat on a certain precarious point, they could see half the screen at the local drive-in that showed porn.
We used to go to the drive-in with our friend's parents who drove a 1961 Chevy Impala convertible. We wore our jammies to the movies, watched, ran around outside the cars, looking for couples who might be making out, and bought terrible awful hideous snacks at the snack stand.
Meanwhile Mr. and Mrs. Ryand would sit in the car and get drunk. We were so lucky that somehow they always made it home from the drive-in without killing all of us. Sheesh.
Drive-ins are so weird. They're never very comfortable, the sound is always awful, and let's face it -- no one's really there to see the movie. It's definitely an idea whose time has come and gone, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
All the drive-ins here in Florida have become flea markets. Go figure!
I was never a big Drive-in guy, mostly because I didn't have a car. But there were a ton of them when I was comin up.
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