It’s the kind of summer night
when a warm breeze rubs up against you like your date in that
strapless dress on prom night so long ago. Not only that, but our
kids are restless and we need something to do. It’s the perfect
night, in other words, to see a movie at the drive-in.
It’s a half-hour drive for us to the pink neon sign of the Tru-Vu
down in Delta, in western Colorado. But we consider ourselves
lucky. For most people, especially in places where land is more
valuable as a place for condominiums than as an empty lot with a
big screen sticking up from it, a drive-in is not within reach.
By the time we squeeze our foreign hatchback between two
circa-1980s American cars, darkness is almost complete. But the
bright sign of the auto parts store across the street casts enough
light for me to see the guy in the little Chrysler next to us glare
— or it could be leer — at my wife as she sets up a lawn chair.
On the other side, a bunch of kids, at least six of them under the
age of nine, swarm around a lone woman like bees. She kindly offers
advice on how to keep our hatchback from blocking the view of the
testosterone-addled teenagers in pickup trucks behind us. With her
easy smile and long blonde hair, I can easily imagine her as a
drive-in princess not so long ago, sauntering like royalty among
the line of pickup trucks. But now, she mostly looks tired.
I have a confession: During my adolescence in Durango,
Colo., I never once went to the drive-in. It’s not that I didn’t
have the chance; the Rocket sat right on the edge of town, showing
two movies a night all summer long. But my crowd did other things
with our nights, things that seemed more high-minded at the time,
like blowing things up. Besides, my car was a baby-blue Fiat, the
horn honked every time I turned left, and smoke seeped from the
dash after just 15 minutes of driving. Not exactly a chick magnet.
It wasn’t until I was in college, during summer visits
home, that I discovered the joys of the Rocket. I remember one
night in particular when a couple of us squeezed into the cupboards
in the back of Ed’s camper van so as to skip out on the $2.50
admission. We set up our lawn chairs and figured out how to
surreptitiously sip the Windex-tinted vodka concoction someone had
mixed up. We felt out of place, but also detached in a way that
allowed us to sit back and observe.
There was the dust,
of course, dancing in the early evening light with the heavy smell
of popcorn and grease from the best burgers in town frying back in
the concession booth. Exhaust and hormones lingered in the breeze.
A couple of guys with buzz cuts and baseball caps in a pickup truck
jacked three feet off the ground eyed us suspiciously. Two girls
walked up to the truck, one in tight jeans and a loose T-shirt with
honey blonde hair gathered up on her head, the other in a short
skirt. She stood on tiptoe for a moment to flirt with the buzz-cut
boys, and revealed thighs tanned from a day down at Navajo Lake.
The boy responded by gunning the engine so loud our chests shook.
It was a scene played out over and over, on the edges of
rural towns all over the West, as much a part of summer as freshly
cut grass, sno-cones and warm nights. But not so much anymore.
Not in Durango, at least. Condos will replace the screen
and field of speakers. The developers promise to build responsibly
and somehow evoke the Rocket’s old neon sign. That’s all fine and
good, but what about the dust and the smell of grease? What about
the boys in their big trucks and the girls on their tiptoes and the
sense that if you could just hang onto this one night, summer would
last forever?
Back here in Delta, we reluctantly decide
to leave after the first feature. One of our daughters is crying,
and the guy next to us is definitely ogling my wife, and all the
kids on the other side seem on the verge of insulin shock from all
the candy they ate during the second movie. But as we pull out into
the night, I vow to return as many times as possible. Who knows how
long this drive-in will hold out against the modern world?
Jonathan Thompson is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado
(hcn.org). He is the paper’s associate
editor.
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