Let's All Go To the Snack Bar: Drive Ins turn 79

Today's Google doodle celebrates the 79th anniversary of the drive-in movie theatre.  If you don't know the history of how they began, google it. I am one of those "midlifers" referred to in one of the dozen or so articles I read, "snuggling on the bench seat of ...cars while watching a B movie".

As a late-Sixties teen, my drive-in experiences, while not particularly torrid, were a big part of dating, a learning curve for dealing with boys and, often, an hilarious group experience with friends.

The San Fernando Valley suburbs of Los Angeles are where I cut my teeth on "adult" things.  The drive-in played a significant role as a relatively safe venue for drinking, smoking cigarettes, smoking pot.  As the passion pit of choice, many of my friends had their first or ongoing sexual encounters there. One friend was busted by cops walking the grounds & peeking in cars for illegal or illicit activity.  Unfortunately, she was in a state of deshabille while in the act with her boyfriend.  If memory serves, they were taken to the police station while their parents were called.  Jeez.  My dad would have put me in convent school if it had been me.

I distinctly remember one night my boyfriend, my best friend, her boyfriend and I went to see "2001".   That movie was supposed to be groundbreaking and ahead of its time.   It was, however,  long and boring.  We did the usual things kids did when bored:  drank beer, smoked a joint, got the munchies, went to the snack bar, bought food and candy, ate it and made out.  My GF was so intoxicated she passed out.  She had thick hair down to her waist.  When it was time to go home, we woke her.  She had a Sugar Daddy stuck in that hair.  We couldn't get it untangled.  It was truly stuck.  And Sugar Daddies were BIG.  

Her mother had to cut that thing out of her hair leaving a rather unsightly cut in the middle of the back of her head.  She took the brush to her behind when she finished cutting.  She later cut me out of her wedding as a bridesmaid.

The Sepulveda Drive In was the cheapest drive in in the Valley.  A car load was $1.25.  They definitely showed B movies but we'd all go anyway because nobody had any money and we always had to pony up gas money for the driver.

If you wanted to see a first run movie at the drive in, you'd hide with several friends, in the trunk of the car or under blankets in the back of the station wagon.  Surprisingly, it worked over & over.

My favorite part was always Intermission when the screen lit up with animated food singing & dancing "Let's All Go To the Snack Bar".   I can still sing it.  And do you remember "mushy roomy rooms"?    

I don't know when drive ins lost their luster.  I know as long as we lived in SoCal, we'd go.  Our first viewing of "Star Wars" was at a tri plex drive in and it was thrilling.  As children during the heyday of the drive in, our parents put us in jammies, drove to the drive in, backed the station wagon or truck into the space where we watched the movie from the comfort of our own car bed.  It was great!