Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

The Ancient Ruins

of Drive-In Theaters

by Eddie Sykes

Class of '66

When travelling through Italy, I was struck at the Roman ruins spread across the country side. There were no historical monuments that denoted their significance. The ruins were just standing there driving my curiosity wild. Recently I was driving on a stretch of highway between Tupelo and Birmingham. On the outskirts of two small towns I noticed the ruins of two old drive-in theaters. The tall screen still stood in the middle of a field of tall grass. The weather beaten screens were still standing and it reminded me of the ruins in Italy. I am sure some young kids have asked "What was that?" The Drive-in theater was an icon of the 50's and 60's that drew us together for various forms of night-time entertainment.

Drive-ins were doomed by the technological advances of air-conditioning and stereo sound systems. Only a few are still operational today. But, boy did they play a role in our lives. They were a gathering place for us just like Jerry's and Shoney's. Most of us rarely went to any of those places to eat or watch the movie. Drive-ins were a paid parking place for teenage misadventures and a good excuse to stay out late. The best part was that if you got bored, or your friends didn't show up, or things didn't work out on your date, you could always watch the movie.

I remember once taking my mom and aunt to the drive-in to see "The Ten Commandments." My aunt, who was a little senile, questioned "There's not anyone in most of those cars?" I didn't have the nerve to tell her that in most of those cars there was at lease one person who was hoping to break one of those commandments. I kelp ducking down all night so that no one would see me with them on a Friday night. I did explain to her the next day why the drive-in was nicknamed the "passion-pit".

"Making out" was the term we used. It was a common accepted activity on dates to the drive-in. I don't think kids today "make out". They just skip over that and go straight to sex. We would kiss for hours and never really expected it to end with sex. That doesn't mean that most of us red-blooded guys didn't try. It was kinda like baseball. We just hoped to get to first base then worry about advancing to the next base another time. Most of us broke up before we got the third base. More often than not the guy was lying when he said he got a home run. I took some of those "home run" gals out and I never got past first base. Maybe it was because most of us were nice guys who thought "no" meant "no".

We would also go with friends to drink beer. The drive-in was a great place to park and drink without worrying about getting caught. I remember going to all night movies "Dust to Dawn" with my friends Marin Lee and Ken Martz. One time we took Marin's old Ford and filled the wheel well (in the trunk) with beer and ice. You know we didn't have coolers back then like we do now. The beer made some of those "B" movies seem really funny. I remember seeing one of them on TV years later and wondering how I ever thought it was funny. I'm sure it had to have been the alcohol.

Most of the time only one person would pay and the rest would get in the trunk. I remember the rush of fear that came over me as I said "one please" while a trunk load of kids were giggling and making the car shake. But, we didn't always have enough money for one to pay and we would drive in the exit with our lights off. That was the good ole days. You could get away with those things then because people expected you to be honest. However, over the years they finally caught on to all our tricks and they hired security guards as well as put in those things in that would puncture your tires if you went the wrong way.

My girlfriend, Sandra Parks, and I went to the drive-in nearly every week-end. She spent the summers with her father in South Carolina, so many of our dates were in the winter. We went rain or shine, because we rarely ever watched the movie. Most of the time we didn't even know what was playing until we got there. My heart would sink when I saw that an Elvis movie was playing. The only passion that night would be directed to the man on the screen. I knew my place and that my night was ruined, because he was the king, and I was at best just a prince. One time the rain turned to ice and we like to never got out of the drive-in. Our parents were hot that we didn't come home sooner, but really we were oblivious to what was going on outside (no Elvis that night). The drive-in played a historical significance in my life that I wi! ll always treasure! But, I have to admit I never got past third base.

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Late December -

Back In '63

by Tommy Towery

Class of '64

Eddie's article on his thoughts about the drive-in, made me open up my copy of "A Million Tomorrows...Memories of the Class of '64" and look at my own writings on the same subject. Here is what I had to say about a drive-in date.

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The failure to receive the check gave me a good excuse to call off the date I had made with Connie for that night. I simply told her I couldn't afford to go. That was true, but not the whole truth. There was another valid reason why I didn't want to go out with her that night. I had been seeing and talking to her a lot for the last week or so. Things were getting too serious again. I was getting too comfortable being with her. We were starting to be a pair once more and she was making her future plans just as she had before. I decided to try to head off the problem.

If I had no money there could be no date. That sounded simple enough. The one thing I didn't plan on was her mother coming through with the money. This was a rare and unexpected event. Teenage girls' mothers had always been adversaries, never allies. Her mother had made up her mind a long time before that her little girl was seeing too much of one person and it needed to be slowed down before trouble developed. Several times she tried to intervene but only succeeded in making her daughter that much more determined to have her own way. Her actions that night caught me off guard. I was aided by a former foe.

Her mother's decision to back the date and to supply the needed funds, caught me unprepared. My perfect excuse for not going out with Connie was lost. There was nothing left but to continue with the date. It was so strange to see her mother trying to help out her daughter's romance. She had tried so hard before to end it. A new side of Connie's mother was seen that night.

Our date was to a Woody's Drive-In to see a movie. Later on, the Four Seasons came out with a song entitled "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)," and it has always reminded me of that night.

Oh, What a night

Late December back in '63

What a very special night to me,

I remember what a night.

The night was really not that special but it was that unforgettable, and the song always takes my thoughts back to my own night, late December, back in '63.

First of all, December is not a good month to go to a drive-in movie, not even in the deep South state of Alabama. It still gets cold and I think that night was one of the coldest in history. Heaters in drive-in's were unheard of in Alabama and the longer we sat there the colder it got. To make it worse, of all movies we could have picked to see, we selected "Lawrence of Arabia." The memory survives so well because of the stark contrast between the heat and sand on the screen and the cold and frost on the car. To sit there and watch the men sweating and getting sunburned while I could see my breath and was almost getting frostbite was such a contrast. Thinking back about it, it was a wonder we survived the night at all.

We really didn't have to worry about the cold but there was another, more silent, threat awaiting us that night. I came upon a great idea of how to keep warm at the drive-in in the winter. I had a can of Sterno left over from one of my camping trips. I decided that I could sit it in the floorboard of the car and light it and it would keep us warm. The idea of suffocation never entered my mind. Fortunately for us the Ford was in such bad shape that there was a big gaping hole in the floor through which you could see the street below. I tried to cover it in the winter to keep the cold air from coming through, but couldn't. So, thanks to the hole, we probably had enough fresh air to keep the Sterno from burning up all the oxygen in the car and suffocating us. We could have ended up in a lifeless lump in the back seat for the owners of the drive-in to come by and find after the movie was over. What a story that would have made: "Teenagers Die in DriveIn."

We sat watching Lawrence on the screen, as we cuddled in a blanket to try to stay warm in the car. Starting the engine to warm up the car and use the heater was out of the question. I didn't know if I had enough gas to do that, and besides the heater never worked that well anyway. So, in the back seat, snuggled under a blanket, the two of us sat and watched the movie. Of all the movies that were released that year, we had to pick an epic. It went for hours and hours of men and sand on the big screen.

The Ford was one of about ten cars sitting in the theater lot. With freezing hands and freezing feet, intimate contact is not one of the prime thoughts in a person's head. Survival comes first. There would be other times to snuggle up in a blanket for fun, but only if we could survive the elements of that night. It's a wonder the blanket didn't catch fire from the can of Sterno that was burning in the floorboard. It was an experience that will always be remembered, usually in thanks for not becoming a tragic statistic.

We missed our chance of being the only two people ever to freeze in a theater while watching "Lawrence of Arabia." It would make a great Trivial Pursuit question when the game was finally invented two decades later. "Who were the only two people ever to freeze in a Drive-In while watching an Oscar-winning spectacular?" It would become a famous question, one that everyone would memorize the answer to so that newcomers to the game would say in astonishment "How did you know that?" Fame escaped us that night. The fogged-up windows, the blanket, the Sterno, and the hole in the floor prevented us from taking our place in history.

The real historical fact about the night, was that on that night, my last formal date with Connie took place. We would go out together alone a few more times, but we would never have another real date when we went somewhere special together again. That night brought to a close a romance that had survived many trying times in the previous years. The romance went cold, as cold as the night of the drive-in. I decided that it was too risky to continue seeing her and that her plans for the future and my plans for the future could never coexist. The last date took place. My first love would then and forever be a part of my past. An era had ended.

* * * * *

And that was the way my Great American Novel covered the night we spent at Woody's Drive-In. For those of you who have had a chance to read my book I apologize for the duplication. But there are still a lot of newcomers to the site that have not had the chance to read about our lives back in 1964. I am sure that there are other tales that have gone untold for many years. We've shared a few of them in the past about sneaking in and all, but very few about actual dates to go to the shows. Anyone want to offer up any memories? I'd expecially like to have a female slant on a drive-in movie story.

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Subject: Homecoming 2003

Barb Biggs Knott

Class of '66

Tommy, the photo album is wonderful. Looks like everybody was having a lot of fun; I wish I could have been there.

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Subject: Blue Water Springs Park

Terry Davis

Class of '64

Boy remember that place well, some of us, mostly football players would go out there, we knew the man who ran the place,and he would leave the place open and let us swim and do all the p[lace..he would go on home and told us to lock the place up when we left.. Mike Chism, Wayne Deason, Milton Shelton ,Don Cornelius, Joe Barran and myself among others..any one else he would not do that for..can you imagine someone letting kids do that these days..his name was Homer if anyone remembers him.

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Subject: Photos

Linda Ragland Dykes

Class of '64

Tommy, wish Frank and I could have made Homecoming 2003 - his job prevented us coming! I have tried several times to open website with photos - no luck - am I doing something wrong?

(Editor's Note: I can't really tell if you are doing something wrong, since I am not sure what you are doing. If you click on the blue "link" it should take you to the photos of the Homecoming event. I'm not sure, but you may have to have your computer set to accept Cookies to view the sight.)

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Carole Bradshaw Choomack

Class of '65

Cartersville, GA

carolec@wcpas.com

I have been enjoying this web site for some weeks now. My youngest brother, Alan, class of 1971, alerted me to it. It's really fun to see names and pictures of people and places from such a special time. I was surprised to see my name in Susan Simms note about the Bible presented to her father by his sixth grade class at Rison. I wish I hade more memories of that year. I do remember Mrs. Ward,4th grade and Mrs Nelson(I think), 5th grade. I remember that in Mrs. Neslon's class we practiced our multiplication tables by racing to write them as fast as we could on the blackboards. We did it so enthusiastically the boards in that classroom were pock marked. Maybe it was that experience and Mr. Blackburn - my ONLY math teacher at Lee - that led me to teach high school math for the first few years of my adult life. Now I work as an accountant - so I'm still doing math! Thanks again for the web page!

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