June 1, 2024
Just Saying…
By Q.C. Jones
QC Goes to the Drive-In
Hello everyone, it’s your old pal QC here, and I am thinking about summer. Today’s a bright sunny warm day in our Quad-Cities, and I find myself procrastinating. Allowing a few commitments to slide, I closed my eyes and conjured up the perfect summer. Unlike normal “garden variety” dreaming, daydreaming doesn’t require a Posturepedic mattress, a My Pillow Guy mat on which to rest one’s head, or even a few hours. It’s like taking the leash off your brain and letting it run wild for a second, a minute, or maybe something longer.
For a microsecond or two I thought about the summers of ‘69, ‘76, and 2024. As a poet once said, “I closed my eyes and dreamed myself a kitchen.” Well, in my case it wasn’t really a room for cooking food, but more of a picture of the perfect summer. My mind ran barefoot through dozens of summertime activities. In scene after scene, I found myself in places I planned to visit, and activities required to create the idealistic summer of ‘24.
Then, like one of Zeus’ great lightning bolts from heaven above, it struck me. I have not been to a drive-in movie for decades. Drive-in movies were a staple of my young summers. One of my fondest childhood memories involved mom, dad, and all four of my siblings loading into the family station wagon and heading out to the Frisina Drive-in.
Each of these adventures involved a great deal of family logistics. Kids were instructed to dress in their PJ’s and bring their favorite pillow. Mom spent at least half an hour preparing snacks which included several paper grocery bags full of greasy popcorn, apples and, on special occasions, a Tupperware full of celery and carrot sticks. The drink of choice was Kool-Aid, which probably played havoc on the PJs, pillows, and the car’s upholstery.
Attending the drive-in was such a special event, we even went while on vacation. At age 13, QC and the family were enjoying a camping trip to the Lake of the Ozarks and immediately following dinner, dad surprised us with the opportunity to go watch John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn in the original True Grit. Our attire didn’t include the pajamas of our younger days, so we had the opportunity to get out of the car and mingle with a couple dozen vacationer-kids on an amazing playground built into the drive-in. It was cool and, being a dapper young teenager, I got to flirt with a pretty girl from St. Louis.
As I progressed through life, my drive-in experiences changed. First, it was sneaking into the drive-in. One of my friends had a lumbering albatross of an automobile with a giant trunk and a “pass through” from the trunk to back seat. A group of five guys would go to the movie, but only the two in the front seat paid. The rest would crawl through this passage once safely positioned in the back row of the drive-in.
The movies we went to were not the same family fare as described before. Our tastes ran more along the lines of the budget trash called “drive-in” movies. In case you weren’t one of the people watching the movies from the back row of the drive-in, allow me to give you a couple of examples:
The Pit and the Pendulum – This classic starred Vincent Price in what should have resulted in a drive-in Oscar. It involved a horrid execution device and is probably still showing on some low-rent streaming channel.
The Tingler – Also featured Vincent Price as a mad scientist who discovers a parasite that attaches to human spines. Nobody is scarier than Mr. Price who is an American treasure.
The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini – Believe it or not this one was an offshoot of the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello beach blanket movies. Your friend QC Jones had a crush on Annette, especially when her little Mouseketeer sweater started showing some budding boobs. Can I say that in this publication? Was I a dirty old man at age 7? Well, “maybe” to both questions.
Skipping forward a few years to age 25, I continued my love of drive-in movie action. While living in Ames, Iowa, my lovely bride and I often hit the drive-in with our friends. But we took a different approach. The Ames drive-in allowed the use of lawn chairs, or in our case those cheap chaise lounges available at the local K-Mart for $4.99.
We would park out in the back, position our chairs, drag out a cooler of beer, then sit and watch the picture-show in maximum comfort. A true confession: If a movie lacks the right kind of action, I fall asleep. At least once, I woke up at 5:00 A.M. in a lawn chair in an empty drive-in. The movie didn’t star Vincent Price.
Just saying… QC Jones.
