Summer is ending, here in the Pacific Northwest. School has started; the leaves are changing and the rains are beginning. My friend the archaeologist is beginning to question life choices. And soon enough, the Skyline Theater out in Shelton, down the road a piece, will be closing for the season. I don’t even think the swap meet keeps going through the winter, though I’ve never made it to the swap meet, either. I’ve been telling myself for years that I’ll get a group together and go to the Skyline—maybe next summer. Maybe when my daughter Irene is two and perhaps old enough to hang out in the car for a movie. Because the Skyline is one of two drive-in theatres within a hundred miles of me.

I remember going to the drive-in, when I was a child. Oh, not the Skyline; I grew up in Los Angeles County. But I saw both Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET in drive-in theatres as a child, as my parents had assumed that my sisters and I would fall asleep in the back of the car, surely half the appeal of the drive-in for the parent. The other being that it didn’t matter if we made noise and were restless; within reason, we could do that and not bother other people. Each car was a little self-contained. Not completely. We could’ve made enough noise to disturb the people next to us. But by and large? We were fine.

It’s interesting that, even as car culture has continued, the drive-in has faded. A lot of ink has been spilled about why, of course. Frankly, I think it’s in part because of the rise of the compact car. It’s not an enormously comfortable car to watch a movie in, and they were getting popular just at the same time as larger movie seats were. We Americans like our cars, but we like our comfort, too. And I can’t imagine having gone to a drive-in theatre with my family in the Subaru we got after the Volkswagen van we’d had gave up the ghost. The two people riding in the back would’ve been unable to see the screen.

It’s also true that the drive-in is an inherently limited venue. You can only go to a drive-in at night. Indeed, in a lot of the country, you can’t do much most of the year. The time of year that night is the longest is also a miserable time of year to try to see a movie outside. In the height of summer here, it doesn’t start getting dark until eight or later, so a double feature doesn’t let out until midnight or later. (And the Skyline does a double feature every night.) But though Washington seldom has the bitter cold and snow of, say, Minnesota, that doesn’t mean you want to spend five hours sitting in a car at night.

I think the romance of the drive-in is more charming in the abstract. Those pleasant memories of ranging in the back of the Vanagon with my sister on that wooden platform my parents built, eating Pick-a-Mix? That may well be better than the reality. We’ll see when the time comes, I suppose. I’m not at all interested in this week’s offerings, which is the other issue with the drive-in. Not a lot of choice. But if you’re not interested in the movie, I’m sure it’s fine, which is why it’s long been seen as the quintessential courting couple venue.

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