Drive-In

We took the kids to the drive-in on Saturday night, the sort of shameless exercise in cheesy nostalgia that we feel we've been parents long enough to foist upon our unsuspecting young charges.

At first, everything was hunky dory, a real slice of innocent good vibes straight out of the Eisenhower era. We backed the Vista Cruiser in so the boys could settle into a comfy cocoon of sleeping bags and pillows in the back of the wagon, and hung the speaker firmly from the hatchback support. A rollicking collection of Elvis' best movie tunes provided the perfect soundtrack. We settled into our lawn chairs with a big bucket of popcorn and a warm feeling of being the Best Parents Ever.

With the arrival of a beautiful, sepia-toned dusk, a vintage "Welcome to the Drive In" trailer and a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon set me to grinning like a fool. This was Paradise, 1950's style. Suddenly, I was Ward Cleaver; a snappy, successful paterfamilias. My bomb shelter was the best in the neighborhood. I owned a color TV, and had a fridge full of Oleo. All was right as rain. Until I realized I couldn't hear anything over the buzz.

Too quickly, we realized the folly of deciding to spend a warm mid-summer evening in a low lying Wisconsin field after a month of near-biblical rainstorms. The buzz, of course, was the sound of 10,000 mosquitoes, setting forth on their nightly rounds and finding no better feeding ground than right here in this swampy pasture, with a captive audience of movie watchers offering up an abundance of fresh meat.

We hurriedly sent up a defensive cloud of deet, but it was too little, too late. The beasts had swarmed the children, now wiggling and itching and crying out, trapped in the back of what had become an insect feeding pen. In an attempt to save the evening-and not waste the $24 we had paid to get in-we hurriedly swung the car around, rolled the windows tight, and resettled the kids in the front seat with big, conciliatory soda pops and promises of safety from the buzzing scourge. So long as those doors and windows stayed rolled tight-and mom kept vigilantly swatting the remaining invaders-everything would be just fine....

Except for one thing. With the kids camped in front, and mom squeezed into the back, there was hardly room for Big Daddy and his 6'4 frame to shoehorn into the vehicle without suffering from either severe leg cramps or mind-shattering claustrophobia.

Now, I've persevered through worse, or so I thought. Hell, I sat through my sisters Mary Kay induction ceremony; I could survive this. I gamely set up a couple of lawn chairs, sprayed myself down with bug spray, wrapped myself tightly in a blanket and stretched out just off the front bumper. Which was cozy and comfy and bug free for all of about 15 seconds.

Long story short, Ward Cleaver proceeded to spend three hours bouncing from leg to leg, swatting and scratching and cursing and wishing like hell that the projector would explode or the tornado sirens would go off or there would be some other natural bloody excuse for me to just jump behind the wheel and get out of that fetid, swampy, malaria-breeding ground with some small fraction of my sanity, and flesh, intact.

Alas, we all survived, and the kids are even talking about going back to the drive-in someday. I'm not sure yet where I stand on it, though. In the driveway tonight, a mosquito--or some other flying nuisance--passed by my ear, a little too close for comfort. I instinctively bolted inside, dove on the couch, and breathed a sigh of relief at seeing my television, cable box and DVD player ensconced in the beautiful, bug-free, 21st-century indoors.