When I was your age...

I remember back when I was a kid and my parents were still together, one of the things my parents enjoyed was going to see Clint Eastwood 'spaghetti westerns'. I guess they were produced in Italy or something and thus they were called by that name. Anyway, I was no older than 10 -- that's when my parents split up -- so Clint Eastwood wasn't even a name to me, just squinty eyed glare and thin cigarillo poking out of his grim mouth. It wasn't so much the movies I remember as the venue. They dotted the landscape when I was a kid, but you don't see them around much anymore. As a matter of fact, if you played a variation of "punch buggy" -- slugging your seat partner every time you saw one -- you'd likely fall asleep waiting for the opportunity to get in a 'legal' hit.

What I'm talking about is Drive-In Movie Theatres. Those unmistakably tall and wide screens lit up to five or seven stories tall, giving real heft to the phrase 'larger than life'. It's small wonder I recall Clint's squinty glare and his cigarillo -- they were as big as the family station wagon on those screens.

My husband shares the delight and nostalgic 'awwww' that I feel when we happen upon one of these cherished relics of our separate but oddly joined past. They conjure memories of too much sugar, swing sets set in sand with the screen looming too closely behind, fast friendships made at the foot of those surreal screens meant only to last for the night... The feeling of freedom at parents close enough if the need arose, yet far enough out of pocket to give us our first thrill of independence. Not to mention the giddy joy of watching the stars at the same time you watched a movie from the hood of your car.

We are lucky enough to be caught in a triangle of Texas towns that gives us a choice of not just one, but two Drive-Ins. Oh, there are more -- this one in the picture that I snapped on the way to Grapevine TX, and another down the road a piece (that's a good Texas phrase) featuring a gapped-tooth stare from the sheet metal slowly dropping off the screen's facade occupied by a herd of cows that think the car corral (auditorium, maybe?) makes a good wind break.

I never fail to feel a little sad when I drive by that one.

But back to the picture. You can't see it, because we were driving too fast, but the audience section isn't bermed and ready for cars -- it has rows and rows of benches! Can you imagine? Where did the cars park? And how did you listen? Or, maybe the benches were just the 'front rows' with plenty of room for cars behind. I dunno.

Still... it must have been one heck of a Drive-In in it's day, huh?