Malcolm Riviera (of 8-Track Heaven fame) stopped by for lunch and a chat. He was in a story telling mood, and he tells a good story. This one goes well with a sandwich that is pristine – made at home with well-scrubbed hands. Anything else? You might have trouble getting it down.
In the late 70’s, while a student at NC State in Raleigh, I took a job at the local drive-in movie theater in concessions. Even back then drive-ins were down at the heels, and the Forest Theater had seen better days. Still, it was cool to me. Even at minimum wage.
The snack bar was old, at least 25 years and showed every minute. What a circus, too. High school delinquents, adult trailer-park dwellers and country folk. The menu was simple, and simply awful. Everything was freezer fresh – hamburgers, fries, hot dogs, corn dogs and pizza – and of the lowest quality. Just the pizza approached edibility, as it was “homemade”. A frozen dough disk topped with canned sauce, frozen cheese and pepperoni. Our specialty? Pizza deluxe, made when the boss was away, and covered crust to crust with a thick layer of pepperoni.
The kids working the snack bar hated their jobs and their boss, and took it out on the food, dropping it on the dirty floor purposefully, randomly squirting stuff with mustard and ketchup, burning fries intentionally. Food was returned constantly by complaining customers. I felt sorry for them for patronizing the drive-in, let alone the lousy snack bar.
The lone adult cooking there was too burned out to bother with the grill. If she used it she would have to clean it, so she didn’t! Everything was deep fried (yum, deep-fried burgers and dogs) and everything was the same color, sickly gray. Luckily, the food was all eaten in the dark.
The popcorn was good. Freshly made in a real old-fashioned popper and doused with “seasoning”, a thick, yellow, buttery substance. The perfect popcorn medium. That and superfine salt made exquisite popcorn, the likes of which you simply don’t find in today’s theaters. Why was the popcorn so good and the other food so bad? Who knows.
The Forest Drive-In was closed in the early 80’s and became a weekend flea market briefly before being razed and replaced with an industrial park. I imagine it was a fine place in its prime, but not during my stay. It survived its final days on bad kung fu and porno, which seems to be the natural evolution for drive-ins.
I did read recently that drive-ins are on the rise again in the US, with new construction and preservation. Should you find yourself at a drive-in snack bar however, I still recommend sticking with popcorn and beware the corn dogs!
It’s almost a movie waiting to be made:
Starring:
— The projectionist’s junkie daughter, who ended up in prison on a drug
charge and left her 4 yr old son for dad to raise. The 4 yr old’s father was
black, the projectionist’s daughter was white, the projectionist was the
biggeset racist of all time, and of course drugs were involved:: the whole
thing was pretty shocking in 1979.
— The 4 year old kid. Too young to go to school, this kid used the drive in
as a playground. He was there every night, running around, watching
everything. The boss’s wife tried to take care of him but she was pissed off
that it had falled in her lap, and of course she was a racist, too, and
already some some nice WHITE KIDS of her own.
— The other projectionist, who was an illiteratre hillbilly from West
Virgiina the size of a refrigerator, who also carried a gun, and LIVED AT
THE DRIVE IN. He had no car, no home, nothing. He would sleep on the
stainless steel counter at night and use a stack of those little cardboard
food trays for a pillow, and lived on drive-in food.
— The customers: most of whom were either having sex (and leaving their
condoms all over the field for us to pick up the next day) or doing drugs
and drinking and raising hell. That’s when they would send the Hulk
Projectionist with his gun out to settle people down.
— The movies: the best Grade B cinematic swill of the 70’s, like “Swamp
Girl,” “Master of the Flying Guillotine,” and “Chain Gang Women”
— Me, who eventually was promoted out of the grill to the box office and spent my nights selling tickets and snorting coke while watching the same movie over and over for weeks on end.
The Lunch Encounter 