At the Drive-in

I love working at movie theaters but my favorite was the drive in. When I started there were only two rows of poles with speakers left. But the mike I used to make the pizza announcement was strait out of the 50's. The theater opened in the 50's and I bet it was the original mike. It also opened 10 days late because of bad weather, go figure.

I hate going to bed after 10pm and this job would keep me out until 2am some days, but I loved it. I would set my alarm and go to sleep after the other employees had gone. If anything happened to the film the alarm was loud enough to wake me up. I had the fun job of being the projectionist, everyone else gets to leave after the first movie and I'm there by myself the rest of the night. My boss's back yard was adjacent to the lot and he would stay up until I had left.

If I didn't feel like putting up with customers I would wonder around the lot, if it was hot I would go inside. Along with being the projectionist I was also called a "lot manager". I would get to kick people off the lot if they were doing things they were pissing me off.

The joys of any job, where to start. How about with the stupid phone calls.
Person: What time does the movie start?
Me: As soon as it starts getting dark.
Person: What time is that?

First I'll point out that the screens for a drive-in are always on the West side of the lot. Durf, lets think about this. Sun sets in the west, if sun is setting while screen is on west side of lot then - shadow is cast on side that is being watched and movie can start at dusk instead of after full sun set. No way! I have had to spell this out for many a people. This really should be common sense.

Now lets factor in time of sun set, is it cloudy, how cloudy is it (sometimes clouds would cause the movie to start later, no I won't explain it), how dark is the movie being shown (dark movies have to start later, no I won't explain this either), and this leads to there being a 20-30 minute range of when I could start a movie. All of this is common sense for me before I started!

So when people call and ask what time the movie starts, I'm sorry but it's really hard to tell. Ok that was a complete lie because by the end of my first summer I had the art of knowing when a movie would start perfected. I would know at least 30 minutes in advance when it would start. But if someone wants to ask what time does it get dark, I'm not releasing any more information.

Yes we play movies in the rain, we only stop if the power goes out. I get to pull the giant metal poll off the roof even when the sky is full of lighting. Yeah!

Creapy stuff happens too.

There was the night that I had to ask a man to leave because we were closed. He was high on something and I was alone. He just said, "oh, ok" and left, but really, I'm not that big of a person. What if he had been crazy?

Then one night, just last year, I was working at the other theater, the 8 plex, and got a call, "the drive in was blow away by a tornado, you don't need to come to work." Hellz yeah! I get the night off! I wouldn't have been excited if I would have known that they weren't going to fix it. I thought I was getting one or two nights off at the most, turned out to be the whole summer. Sad days. About 6 weeks later I drove by and it was nothing but an empty lot, except the box office which is steel polled and cemented into the ground, I still don't think they figured out how to get it out. I drove by and one lone tear rolled down my face.

My boss's wife whom I get along with great, most people don't, her back yard is attached and I know it affected her greatly when it was taken away. It affected all of us here in Kearney that actually attended it. The stories I heard from people who use to tell us about how their first date was at the drive-in, and I won't get to hear those stories anymore.

It's like losing a friend that I actually liked.