The Drive-in Banshees

The Drive-In Banshees - James Fox

The drive-in movie theater was gone. In its place stood a three-story shopping mall. One Saturday I could see that mall in my hometown as I was stuck in traffic atop a highway off-ramp. I was on my way to visit Mom at “the old homestead.”

My dad is gone now, and basically so is the town where our family grew up. Oh, it's still on the map, but it's not my dad's town; not even my town anymore. The orchard that used to be across the street from our house is now a subdivision, seven miles inside the city limits.

There are other changes too, such as that shopping mall where the drive-in movie theater used to be, the one that had screened horror movies on Saturday nights.

Overlooking that dramatic change, I thought back to that time of innocence in our recent history when so many soldiers returned from war to build the peacetime prosperity my generation enjoyed.

So many, like my dad, had put away the sabers of war to quietly take on those mundane duties required of the generation that populated the growing suburbs of the late fifties and early sixties.

For many of these men and women, planning missions was replaced with household budgeting. And the only operational logistics they now faced were the competing demands on their time by Little League, swim meets, Scouts, and neighborhood barbecues – all of the typical demands of raising children.

This was to be a daunting task for so many whose own childhood had been stolen by the Great Depression and the war years. But with the courage born of their baptism by war, that generation set out to conquer these new demands with hard work and an undying faith in the future. And they were heroes, all.

Dad flew many different aircraft as a Navy Aviator during World War Two and had been transferred into the U.S. Marines. Subsequently he was called back into service, piloting a Corsair, providing close air support in the Korean War.

There were medals with ribbons in his sock drawer, so we kids figured Dad was a hero. But our neighbors knew Dad was a hero whenever the first warm Saturday night rolled around after school was out for the summer.

After an early supper, Dad would hose off the station wagon, wash the windshield, fold down the back seat, load in some sleeping bags, then round up us “Banshees” for the trek to the horror show at the drive-in movie.

Banshees, those wailing harbingers of doom, was the nickname our Irish grandmother had given us kids. Just perhaps it was quite fitting; “Ben and Betty Jean have seven kids,” the neighbors marveled, “All boys, and Ben's going to make the drive-in run tonight!”

The drive-in movie routine never varied. Mom would get out the stove-top popcorn popper and draft one of the taller boys to keep shaking the handle, until a huge aluminum ice bucket would be brimming over with popped corn. Dad used to look at that bucket, wink at Mom and sigh.

I once heard him tell a visiting friend that back when there were dinner parties and Saturday night card games, that bucket used to chill martini shakers, and something called “French Seventy-fives.” Then Dad had given that sigh and said, "Of course that had been when there were only two or three kids in the family." But now the ice bucket was reserved for this summertime popcorn ritual.

Once the bucket was full, we'd pile into the station wagon, and Dad would back it down the driveway. I used to think Mom wished she could come too, because she'd stand on the porch waving, a brave smile on her face, as the tears welled up in her eyes.

Years later I would recognize those same teary-eyed smiles on my wife's face, whenever I volunteered to take our children away on some “just Dad-and-kid's” outing.

Dad's station wagon didn't have air-conditioning, so we'd roar off with the windows cranked down, the road noise drowning out the bickering for seating positions. The next stop was the root beer stand, the one with the big root beer mug rotating on the roof.

Dad always insisted that the root beer was “fresh-brewed in that mug," but even the youngest of us recognized that it was just a painted sheet-metal tank with a stove-pipe handle. Dad would buy one of those big “family-size” jugs of root beer, so we could head off on the final run, trying to get to the drive-in before sundown, so we could play on the swing set and giant slide up near the screen until the show started or the bullies and mosquitoes ran us off.

One summer night, the newspaper noted that Edgar Allen Poe's “Fall of the House of Usher” starring Vincent Price, was playing. Dad was a former Marine - he wouldn't be afraid - so we talked him into making the drive-in trek.

The night was sweltering. Heat radiated from the gravel hillocks of the drive-in. Most of us got out of the station wagon to sit on the front bumper. We couldn't really hear the window speaker, so the sound coming from the bullhorns below the movie screen added an eerie echo to the show.

As we huddled together on the bumper the coffin lid up on the screen began to shudder and strain against the clinking chains wrapped around it. Our youngest brother had stayed in the car on the sleeping bags spread across the folded down back seat. But now he scrambled forward into Dad's lap for safety.

The bullhorns magnified the coffin lid's creak as it slowly lifted an inch. Suddenly bloody fingers clawed through that opening! On the bumper we gasped and huddled closer together. In the car our youngest brother must have pushed away from the steering wheel in fright.

Now, when someone sits on a car bumper watching a horror movie, they are only inches away from a horn that is activated by someone pushing the steering wheel hub...... our feet didn't wait to find the source of that sudden blaring sound - they just started running!

In my hometown, the debate lingered long over who had been the most frightened; the boys sitting on the station-wagon bumper, or the people in the rows of cars up front. Those folks had first been startled by some idiot honking and then once more by a flock of screaming banshees running past.

I was in my early thirties with a son of my own before I realized... Dad probably honked that horn!

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Note- This story originally started four paragraphs down, beginning with - Dad flew many aircraft -
I had written this for, and read it at, a family gathering on my dad's 75th birthday. We lost him two short years later.
What I encourage you to do, is to share your memories with those you love while they are still around.
I acknowledge that public speaking is known as the greatest fear of so many of us, but
I am so grateful that l took that leap of faith to write and share this story when I did.
My family requested I read the story again at my dad's eulogy and several relatives suggested I publish this.
I added that five paragraph frontispiece and The Front Porch periodical accepted and published it.
Nostalgia Magazine later reprinted it, entitled "The Drive-in Dad."

Published fnasr 2004 by The Front Porch periodical.