Why are the windows on that car fogged up?

After reading Pearl's blog a couple of days ago, a re-run of an older post about going to the drive-in as a 12 year-old babysitting tag along, I was sent mentally spinning off into all the memories of the drive-in theater visits of my youth.

I went to a lot of drive-in movies. It was one of the few treats of my youth. The parental units would would gather the three of us kids up and toss them into the backseat of the `48 Ford sedan and take us to the drive-in just outside of town. This happened maybe only twice in each of the summers before I was whisked off to Florida in `56.

I do not remember any of the movies we saw. For one thing, I couldn't see over the front seat. For another, I was usually busy avoiding permanent damage inflicted by my brother. I think I would have rather have stayed home but I was never given that option.

After we moved to Florida, the opportunities for drive-in movie outings increased. Summer is, after all, 9 months long down here. But we didn't go very often. In fact, we only went a couple of times. This was because the only way to keep cool in a car in those days was to have the windows open. And if your windows are open at night in south Florida, there's a fair chance you will have all of your blood drained from your body by mosquitoes before the first movie was over.

I don't recall the movies we went to then, either. That would be because my father and mother chose the movies, not us kids. And their taste in movies never matched mine or my siblings'. I only remember slipping out of the car almost immediately after it was parked and heading for the playground up by the screen or hanging out at the concession stand, only returning to get popcorn and sodas at intermission. In order to protect ourselves from the mosquitoes, my brother and I would run behind the truck spraying some kind of insecticide as it rode up and down between the rows. This would leave a protective layer of DDT on my bare skin and clothes (and my lungs). I could have stayed in the car and breathed in the fumes from the citronella coil which my father would light up and set on the dashboard. That coil didn't do much good except chase the mosquitoes toward the back seat.

It was later on, in my teens, when I found out what drive-in theaters were good for. I went more often then. Especially after I got my own car. And the occasional girlfriend. I learned a lot at the drive-in. A drive-in theater was a teen's no-tell motel. Girls who wouldn't let you come over when her parents were out would still go to a drive-in movie with you at the drop of a hat.

I still don't recall what movies I "saw" on those drive-in theater dates. But for much different reasons. Except one... while I was living in Orlando (long before Mickey Mouse owned it), I took a hot date to see "The Haunting" and actually watched it all the way through.

Scary movie.