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Topic: Post Your Picture in the Newspaper
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Aaron Sisemore
Flaming Ribs beat Reeses Peanut Butter Cups any day!
Posts: 3061
From: Rockwall TX USA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 02-27-2007 12:17 AM
Februrary 1986, Parkway D/I in Petaluma, CA:
The caption to the right reads:
Projectionist Aaron Sisemore, left, spends the final night on the job at the Parkway Drive-In. The now empty lot is zoned for retail/commercial development.
It really wasn't my 'final' night on the job:
I was there temping for Henry Walley, who moved to the Sonomarin D/I.
'Ends an Era' referred to the closure of the last 'family' drive-in in the local area (The Sonomarin, while still open until 1989, was a porno venue)...
Final movies were Rocky IV and 2010.
They were giving away free popcorn and sodas, candy and hotdogs were half price.
The Parkway sat empty, the building being broken into and occupied by homeless and heavily vandalized until it was demolished in 1989. In 1999, the property became the Petaluma Golf Center & Driving Range.
-Aaron
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Barry Floyd
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1079
From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 02-27-2007 02:08 PM
(Here's the article from last summer... I can find the picture on-line anymore)
Nashville, Tennessee
May 18, 2006
STARDUST MEMORIES
Summer nights swim with stars at Watertown's drive-in movie theater
by Jim Ridley
When most people hear the national anthem, they stand still. Christopher Floyd runs. Every weekend night, at the Stardust Drive-In in Watertown, the voice of LeAnn Rimes singing “The Star Spangled Banner” echoes from several hundred car speakers. Long before she gets to the rockets’ red glare or the bombs bursting in air, Christopher is on the move, bolting toward the drive-in’s projection booth with his custom yellow security vest flapping. As fast as his 6-year-old legs can carry him, he ducks into the booth and stands at the ready, awaiting his cue.
The instant Rimes trills, “O’er the land of the free-EEEE,” the kid his father Barry calls “the yellow-vested man of justice” flips the switch on the projector. Just after the song ends and scattered cheers and applause ring from the far corners of the lot, a dense white beam of light shoots out of the booth’s window, above the heads of families hunkered in pickup beds and couples snuggled in SUVs. The first image of the night flickers onscreen.
This scenario plays out about seven months of the year at the Stardust. When the weather turns cold and frost blankets the grassy grooves, or “rake,” where cars park on a slant for maximum screen visibility, the screen will sit empty on a wide piece of acreage off Highway 70, about 45 minutes from Nashville. But when the wild daisies that grow on the lot’s fringes start to bud and bloom and the sun starts going down in prime time, cars will snake down the Stardust’s gravel lane for another summer outdoors at the movies.
“The last movie I saw here was Van Helsing,” says Josh Mauthe, who drove all the way from Donelson with his wife Maria. “Van Helsing sucked, but I didn’t care.” They’re sitting outside their Honda CRV with two miniature dachshunds, Thelma Lou and Gabby, one of whom tries to snag a stray sausage from Maria’s pizza. When their first child is born in September, Mauthe says, they’ll have just enough time before the Stardust closes for the season to bring him to his first movie.
To people who didn’t grow up during the heyday of drive-in theaters, a night at the Stardust is an odd, inherently retro experience. It’s pure Americana, from the kids tossing footballs in the grassy lanes to the carnival-midway smell of funnel cake, popcorn and straw. It’s also something that was once headed for extinction. From a peak of 4,063 drive-in theaters in 1958, according to the United Drive-In Theater Owners Association, the number of America’s remaining “ozoners” has dwindled to 402.
The Stardust, however, represents a flicker of hope. Where the 1990s saw vintage drive-ins across the state padlocking their gates—including Nashville’s nearest, the Sumner in Gallatin—the Watertown blacktop is one of three new drive-ins to open in Tennessee within the past three years. All have adopted the features that allow outdoor theaters to compete with big-city megaplexes and home entertainment: multiple screens that downplay the risk of a dud and concession stands that essentially function as onsite restaurants.
“This will be our first year in the black,” says Barry Floyd, who opened the Stardust with his wife Dawn in August 2003. It is a cool Friday evening, less than an hour before showtime, and twin jet trails streak like comets across the sky over the slowly filling lot. In the distance, off Purple Tiger Drive, cars are just beginning to line up at the ticket seller’s shack.
The movie is Mission: Impossible III, a far cry from the Roger Corman cheapies, slasher movies and sex-bomb sagas that were drive-in staples during the slow fade of the 1970s. Die-hard drive-in fans don’t consider Tom Cruise an improvement. But it’s clear, watching the Stardust’s lot fill with activity, that the feature is almost beside the point. The main attraction is the hubbub of kids and parents, the proudly buffed trucks and vans, the pop songs echoing from speakers across the lot—the elements of a social occasion that, although more scarce, has changed remarkably little over the past 50 years.
The very idea of the drive-in is surreal: row after row of cars in an empty field aimed toward the tallest structure in sight, a giant movie screen rising incongruously from its rural surroundings. No wonder some lots are used as churches: it produces a kind of amazement, as if you’d stumbled upon some sort of shrine. On summer nights, the woods that circle the Stardust chime with cicadas and frogs, and little outside light reaches the lot. It’s essentially an outdoor room, with a sky full of stars as the ceiling.
“Any sign of ’em?” Floyd asks his wife Dawn through a walkie-talkie as he walks the lot. It’s hardly uncommon to see Floyd criss-crossing the grassy lanes: he strolls the area on both sides every night, greeting customers and checking car tags—Wilson, Davidson, Indiana. A 7-year-old boy walks up with his mother near the creek that trickles past the concession stand. “What’ve you got there, a frog?” Floyd asks. “Grasshopper,” the boy says, extending his closed fist. Then he corrects himself dourly: “one-legged grasshopper.”
Tonight’s walk, however, has an unusual urgency. In a sea of more than 200 vehicles, Floyd is searching for a single Honda Accord. Two days before, a girl named Jani brought by a special recording that she wants played before tonight’s feature. It is of supreme importance—so important that it prompted a minor crisis when Floyd tested it over the theater’s loudspeakers. The CD-RW Jani handed over wouldn’t play, and not a single store could be found in Watertown that carried the necessary CD-Rs. In the end, the ticket seller dipped into her own home reserve.
The car has been spotted. “Everything’s ready to go,” Floyd says. He begins the long walk from the front rows toward the concrete pavilion that houses the concession stand and projection booth. The peach-colored twilight on the horizon is fading to black. Unseen birds hoot and trill from the woods. The lot is virtually full. Children are settling into their parents’ laps, and in the spacious bed of a Dodge pickup, two guys hunker down in folding mesh chairs with their Big Gulps.
The pop song playing over the drive-in’s FM-radio frequency goes silent, and Floyd’s voice sounds from hundreds of cars all the way to Purple Tiger Drive. He makes the usual announcements: coming attractions, concession-stand offerings, a reminder to turn off lights while the feature’s going. “Where’s the birthday girl? Where’s Jessica?” he asks over the radio. Far off in the darkness, a chorus of squeals goes up from a pickup.
“Jessica’s spending her 17th birthday with us tonight,” the voice drawls. “Let’s give her a Stardust Drive-In Honk-A-Thon.” The lot erupts in beeps and honks, muffled only by the cavernous outdoor space all around. There is only one item left on the preshow agenda. “Somewhere out there tonight is Joe,” crackles the voice, “and he’s out there with Jani. We’ve got a special message to play for him, and we need everybody to be quiet for a minute.”
A hush falls over the lot, and then a girl’s trembling voice emerges from 300 car radios. “Hey sweet boy!” she says. “I love you more than anything in the world, and I am going to ask you if you will marry me.” In the dim light of car stereos, couples can be seen turning to one another. Floyd’s voice comes over the radio: “Do we have an answer?”
There is an awkward silence. Then, from somewhere on the lot, hidden among rows of club cabs and minivans, comes the faint but assertive honk of a Honda Accord. Whoops and hollers follow from all corners of the field. Over the radio, Floyd cues up the song that has become synonymous with the joy of impending matrimony: the theme from The Newlywed Game.
“I was making enormous amounts of money as a wedding DJ,” Floyd had said earlier in the evening, as the rows were still filling with cars. “But I needed something more.” He adjusts his glasses and looks around the lot. “On Sundays, my boys bring their bikes out here and terrorize the customers. When it calms down, my wife and I get to walk the lot. We go strolling down these gravel driveways, watching the families. That’s where we really get our satisfaction.”
In November, the Floyds’ third child will be born, just as the Stardust is shutting down for the year. The screen will sit barren, bare trees and cedars will flank the empty lot, and occasional snows will dust the grassy embankments where cars park in the summer. But tonight holds only the promise of warm breezes, new love and popcorn under the stars. All across the field, the strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” echo from hundreds of vehicles. Right on cue, just seconds after LeAnn Rimes salutes the land of the free, the screen fills with light. Christopher Floyd is on the job.
“It’s just a simple switch,” Barry Floyd says, with a father’s pride. “But he does something huge.”
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