Summer Movies Had Me A Blast
June 2007 In and Around Town - Delta

I read an article in last month’s Entertainment Weekly about summer movies in which the author reminisced about summer movies of his youth. Also, last month, they announced that the Solano Drive-In in Concord is reopening.

My memories of drive-ins are probably not as X-rated as most people's. Mine mostly involve going to the drive-in with my parents when I was little, wearing my jammies, and then pretending to fall asleep in the back seat so my daddy would carry me in the house. That was quite a feat for him, considering I probably weighed 80 lbs. when I was 8.

By the time I hit my teens, I was no longer fat, but I was still a geek and didn't date too much. So my drive-in memories mostly involve piling in the trunk with 12 of my friends, or hiding under a blanket in the back seat to avoid paying. And for whatever reason – ignorance, apathy, or inhaling too many car fumes-- the dork at the cashier counter wasn't suspicious of one teenager going to the drive in by him/herself. (P.S.: Kids, don’t try this today! Besides, a lot of drive-ins charge per car, so why bother?)

All of this brought back memories of summer movies, when I didn't have to hire a babysitter and take out a second mortgage to see a movie. Here are some key flicks from my formative years:

Star Wars (1977): I saw this on a summer camp field trip, and no, it wasn’t science or band camp, but this movie may have single-handedly turned me into a geek. Although as a pre-teen girl, I didn’t care about the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo and mostly thought that Luke Skywalker and R2D2 were soooo cute.

Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977) While not quite as epic as Star Wars, a monumental film for me nonetheless, because it was the first movie I saw without adult supervison!

Grease (1978): My friends and I almost didn't see it because my friend's sister refused to drive us to the theater because she couldn't believe we wanted to see such drivel. So we told her we changed our minds and were seeing some other movie, and snuck off and saw Grease anyway.

E.T. (1982): An early teenage drive-in experience, I saw this with about 6 friends crowded in my best friend’s Chevette. The other cool thing was that I think this was one of the first times we used the car stereo tuner to listen to the movie, instead of those clunky speaker thingies you hung onto your side window frame.

Flashdance and Risky Business (1983): I lump these together because these movies helped define the upcoming era, and somehow I knew it even back then. Plus, I loved Jennifer Beal’s attitude, and I thought Tom Cruise was sooooo cute – even cuter than R2D2 (hence, the extra “o” in “sooooo”).

Got a summer movie memory to share? Post it at my new psychedelic home at http://kmoss.livedigital.com/blog