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The summer I snuck into the Pike 27 drive-in in Alexandria, Ky., America was in a major funk. Inflation was sky high, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford slugged it out for the White House, and Watergate played out repeatedly, thanks to All the President’s Men. The first modern presidential scandal spawned the second-highest grossing film in 1976. It even played the drive-ins, though why anyone would have wanted to see it there was beyond me.
Death Race 2000, Revenge of the Cheerleaders, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — now those were drive-in flicks. There was no sense trying to provoke thought in an audience too busy groping, drinking and puking to pay any mind. White House scandal or not, life went on.
I was 15 during the Bicentennial summer, a great age to learn about sneaking into drive-ins. Hiding in the trunk was the most obvious method. I don’t know if my friends and I were afraid to get caught or we just didn’t want to risk suffocating in somebody’s greasy, noxious spare tire compartment, but that was definitely out. I’d also heard of a girl who laid on the floor in the back seat with a blanket over her.
We were a little too proud for that.
No, the only way for four red-blooded guys to sneak into a drive-in was on foot — and barbed wire, armed security guards and bloodthirsty Dobermans be damned!
Actually, there were no Dobermans or armed guards at Pike 27. That was just a little bonus for our already excited imaginations. A guy with a walkie-talkie patrolled the drive-in outskirts. More than likely, he was the same guy who sold the tickets and possibly even worked the refreshment stand. The chances of him busting us were pretty slim.
The Pike 27 sat in a rural area, surrounded by farmland and open fields. A gravel road ran behind it, which is where a guy with a van dropped us off — Rick, Gates, Ralph and me. We waited out the magic hour in waist-high grass, going over our plan of attack. As soon as it got dark, we’d make our way to the barbed wire fence that marked the outer perimeter. At one-minute intervals, each of us would climb through the fence and scramble toward the van, which we were told would be parked a couple of rows in.
Not once did we discuss the movie we were about to see, which I have since forgotten. Nobody mentioned famous Hollywood names like Spielberg, Scorsese, Eastwood or De Niro. Mostly we just laughed about the audacity of our little caper.
Compared to some of our other antics, this was small change. My initiation into the gang a year earlier saw me helping Rick smuggle a case of beer out of the local Catholic church. I remember walking through town in broad daylight, Rick carrying a suspicious package under my coat, me with a big smile on my face.
Gates pulled a lot of smaller jobs, like lifting munchies from a quickie mart. The one time he got caught, a cop landed on him knee first, forcing Gates into the pavement. And Ralph drew others’ ire just for being Ralph. Lucky for us, the police didn’t patrol drive-ins.
When the time came, we moved to the fence and took our place in line. In a perfect world, the pecking order for sneaking into a drive-in would more accurately reflect the overall makeup of the moviegoing audience. Guys with glasses, bad acne and a Star Trek fixation, who have never had a date in their lives, would have priority. In this case, however, the criminal element overruled, and the order was set as thus: Gates, Rick, me and Ralph.
Gates was gone before I knew it. He had pulled himself over the fence on the branch of a small tree and disappeared among the cars. Rick looked as surprised as I was and had to stop to regain his count. A minute later, he swung over the fence and shot through the gravel. This is the moment when most geeks lose their cool, worrying over things like, “Is a minute really a minute?” and “Is ‘One Mississippi’ really a second?” I gave it my best shot and followed Rick.
The outer two rows were empty. I almost tripped on the gravel tiers that separated each row of speakers. The tinny, megaphone sound of late 1950s technology greeted me on every mound of gravel.
Five rows in was a white van with decals on the back windows. As I reached it, the side door flew open and Rick jumped out, slamming the door behind him. Without looking back to clue me in, he took off toward the concession stand. Faced with another decision, I hesitated, took a deep breath and opened the door. That’s when four guys I never saw before yelled, “You got the wrong van!”
To this day, the few seconds Rick sat in that van hold more intrigue for me than the 18-minute gap in Nixon’s tapes.
Like I said, life went on. The right van waited for us seven rows in. We all made it, eventually, and watched the movie, whatever it was.
There were some hot-looking girls at the Pike 27 that night, some good weed and Ralph said something funny. But that’s about all I remember. ©
This article appears in Jun 16-22, 1999.