Drive-In Movies

It was the summer of 1965 my sister Mary Rose was pregnant with her soon to be born son. One night while sitting around my brother-in-law Tom, said lets go to the drive in movie. My sister asked me if I wanted to go and without hesitation I said yes. What are we going to see? I asked. Frank Sinatra in Von Ryan's Express, Tom said. I was excited. I had never been to a drive in before and to see Sinatra in a movie, well you could imagine how I felt.
       The drive in movie theatres are gone today, but oh what memories they bring.  How many times did we fill the car with as many people as possible, some hiding in the trunk, so we didn't have to pay more than a certain amount. They were the place to go with your date every weekend, so you could "make-out". All kinds of people would be there, you always found someone you knew. Funny things always happened there too;
I remember one of my wife's girlfriends forgetting to remove the speaker from the car window as her boyfriend drove away; good thing windows were less expensive in those days.  Parents use to bring their kids in their pajamas, and just let them sleep in the car as they watched the movie. I remember doing that with my daughter, but when my son was old enough the drive in disappeared.
     That night my sister and brother-in-law took me was something I have never forgotten. It was a tradition my wife and I carried on before and after we got married. We went almost every Friday night when the weather was nice. We would go get hoagies and chips and drinks and picnic in our car . We even went when it rained. We didn't watch the movie as much though.
     Drive in movie theatres are gone now but their memories are with us forever, and when my grandkids get a little older I will pass on the stories about all the good times their mom-mom and poppy had there.