HANK PHILLIPI RYAN: I burst
out laughing when I read the topic of today’s post. I love when Jungle Red has
a theme. You know we don’t plan it, but sometimes it just—emerges. (Exactly
what happens when you write a book, right?) So this week, as it turns out, is history,
and how our past creates and shapes our future. And for many of us—including me—my
past was partly shaped at the movies.
Not only in the plush seats
of the Esquire and the Uptown—oh, and the Vogue, I just remembered! But in the
backseat of our..gosh, what kind of station wagon did we have? It was blue, and
we all battled to sit in the wayback.
Anyway. Those buzzy speakers you
put in the window, that you could wear your jammies and still go to the concession
stand and get popcorn and DOTS, and that half the time, everyone else fell asleep.
Not me!
Susan Van Kirk, you were a
lucky little girl!
Growing Up at the Drive-In
After my dad returned from
WWII, my great uncle decided to build a drive-in movie theatre just outside our
Midwest town. Drive-ins were the rage in the early 1950s. Ours was a
family-friendly venue, and those movies left me with wonderful memories and a
half-cocked belief that anything could happen if I dreamed big enough. I’m sure
many of my ideas about love, honor, heroism, character, dreams, and even death
came from those early films. I didn’t realize it then, but I was also studying
plot lines, character motives, foreshadowing, and pacing.
During those years
in the 1950s and1960s, my dad was in charge. Being the manager meant he booked
the shows, trained the boys who worked there, maintained the grounds, checked
on the films to make sure they had been sent in or out, ordered the supplies
for the concession stand, kept an eye on the ticket booth, and walked the
perimeters checking for “problems,” like underage drinking and the possibility
that children were being conceived.
I was oblivious to
all of my dad’s headaches and responsibilities because I simply saw the
drive-in as a marvelous playground, a place of memories. At night my mom would
put my brother and me in pajamas and we’d go to the show, often falling asleep
in the back seat before the movie was over. Did I dream about the way to begin
a story or the clues that pointed to the ending? Not sure. Even now, sixty years
later, I can hear the car tires as we turned from Losey Street onto the
whirring sound of the Kellogg Street bricks, waking me up with “almost home.” Those
bricks have been replaced by asphalt, but that distinctive sound change stays
in my head forever—I can hear it even now.
Jimmy Stewart,
Clark Gable, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, Lauren Bacall, Debbie
Reynolds, Grace Kelly, Gary Cooper … These were my friends while I was growing
up. I still remember the sad ending of “The Benny Goodman Story” and the
heroism of Jimmy Stewart in “The Spirit of St. Louis.” I rode around the arena
with Ben-Hur, was terrified in “Vertigo,” laughed with Tony, Jack, and Marilyn
in “Some Like It Hot,” and was enchanted by John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in
“The Quiet Man.” My favorite actor by far was Jimmy Stewart, and I watched “The
Greatest Show on Earth” seven nights in a row. Each morning my neighborhood
friends and I would have our own circus parade, round and around the block.
My brother and I shared
other memories too. Some nights after my dad closed the place at 1:30 a.m.,
we’d drive the night’s receipts to the bank deposit, a policeman following us.
Then we would go to the Huddle Drive-in and have breakfast. I’m sure if parents
did this today with a six-year-old and nine-year-old, people would think they
needed to have their heads examined, or they might call the Department of
Children and Family Services. “A child out in a restaurant at 2 a.m.?” I still
fondly remember those summer breakfasts and the people who laughed in the
security of our family circle.
The whirring sound
of automobile tires, the metal speaker sitting on the car window, fireflies
dancing near dusk, the shadows as people moved past our car to the concession
stand, the smell of popcorn, and the triangle of projector light …these are
precious memories that sparked my sense of adventure and imagination from a
very early age.
People usually ask an
author what books influenced her. Instead, I’d like to know what movie stays in
your memory…or what drive-in?
HANK: The Huddle!
We had a Huddle! I haven’t thought about that restaurant for–fifty years. Are you
from Indiana, Susan? Okay, the drive-in.
I remember seeing The Blob. And …Beach Blanket Bingo? Hardly life-changing…somehow,
the classics were not shown at the—rats, I can’t remember the name of the one
we went to. But wow, we loved it. And oh—maybe
Bye Bye Birdie? Could that be? How about you, Reds?Drive-in history? (And do you recognize the song in my blog title?) (And Susan is giving her new book to a lucky commenter!)
…if two of them are
dead. Haunted by a terrifying event in her past, recently retired teacher,
Grace Kimball, is hired to research the history of her small town of Endurance,
a history that includes dark secrets people would prefer stay hidden. A former
colleague dies in a suspicious fire, and Grace’s curiosity leads her into
similar danger. She feels a growing attraction to her boss, but wonders if she
can trust this mystery man.
Endurance is a picturesque place … as long as you don’t mind
a dead body … or two.
************************
Susan Van Kirk is the
writer of a creative, non-fiction memoir,
