July 3, 2008
Drive-In (Incidents from the Life of Ryan)
At the drive-in, Sheila Ryan:
(1) Gained her first knowledge of the Holocaust.
(2) Proposed a fun activity she has yet to enact.
Separate incidents.
(1) There was only one of me (no siblings), so my parents often found it easy and cheap just to cart me along on their weekend dates with one another. Sometimes this meant packing pajamas and stashing me in a neighbor’s spare bedroom while they did whatever it was grown-ups did at parties. On other occasions it meant taking me out to a restaurant (such as the long-torched Torch of Acropolis on the western edge of Dallas).
Or carting me along to a movie. We saw Darby O’Gill and the Little People in a real theater, where I cried and dove for my dad’s lap when the banshee screamed and the dullahan came in his black coach to carry Katie off to the netherworld. But we saw Judgment at Nuremberg as the second feature of a double bill at the Jefferson Drive-In. My folks must have reckoned I’d fall asleep in the back seat within minutes of the start of what was essentially a courtroom drama — and they were right. I’ve never been a sound sleeper, though, and I did wake up, just in time for the scene in which the chief prosecutor (played by Richard Widmark) screens (archival/newsreel) death-camp footage for the tribunal.
(2) It was the summer I left Texas for good, a summer during which I adopted the habit of dropping minuscule micro-hits of acid daily out of simple self-defense as I prepared to flee. One night Allen and I decided to visit the Astro Drive-In, where the featured attraction was Mandingo. I don’t recall the exact point at which my irritation with the film tipped over into rage, but once the lid was off, I yanked free the speaker and gave it a heave, revved up the car, and tore off and away, with much tire-screeching and gravel-pitching. Declared to Allen, “Next time let’s just drive the freeway with the windows rolled down and pitch dollar bills out the window. It would be a better use of money, and we’d have more fun.”
Next time I visit Allen out in LA I swear I’m bringing me one hundred dollar bills.
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6 Responses to “Drive-In (Incidents from the Life of Ryan)”
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I really enjoyed Mandingo. Ken Norton was awesome.
I was still unsophisticated in a few (just a few) respects back in 1975 and so did not appreciate the awesomeness of Ken Norton.
Great stories, Sheila. This brings back memories of the Gemini Theater over on Central Expressway and Forest Lane. Did you ever get over there? Since it was right on a highway we used to just park on the service road next to the screens. You could roll down your window and sort of hear the sound coming from all those speakers inside. A kind of underwater sound. We watched Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and Bullitt many times that way, and later all of the Bruce Lee movies.
Your story of being taken to the Drive-in as a kid also reminded me of my parents doing the same thing. They had a real interest in science fiction and horror movies, and I recall many times of having my head buried under a pillow in the back seat to block out the image of The Blob, or of the cyclops in Sinbad roasting captured sailors over a fire. All a perpetual nightmare for me, with this causing no slowdown in exposure. I guess it made me stronger eventually! Remember those little green coils you burned in the car on a foil box, to keep the mosquitoes away? Looked like a burner on an electric stove? I saw those a while back in the Dollar store and bought one and lit it just to have the smell again, and those odd times.
The Gemini. Oh, yes. Two screens!
Wait a minute: are you planning to carry 100 one-dollar bills or one-hundred-dollar bills?
Not an indeterminate number of hundred-dollar bills, but an even hundred of the dollar variety. The hundreds are for Vegas.