Childhood Memories

I really miss Drive-In movie theaters. The beginning of Spring always reminds me of the late 70's and going to the Sunset Drive-In on Whitesbridge Avenue in Fresno. From March through October every year, you could see some really great movies (back before Cable TV and VCRs/DVDs were in every house).
We'd always arrive about an hour before dusk, because their was a playground at the foot of the big screen. Swings, slides, monkey bars. There'd be tons of kids running between cars. People crowding around the snack bar (I recall they made a really excellent Pepperoni pizza that you could order by the slice with a big paper cup of Pepsi with ice - good eats).
Mom and sister would take the front seats of the car, while my older brother would spread a blanket on the roof where he and I would stretch out and watch the movie. Unless it was a horror flick, then chicken little me would take a spot between mom and sissy in the car.
At night the wind blew through the tall palm trees that lined three sides of the theater. Some nights the legions of stray cats that lived and bred around the theater would yowl and fight. It was an eerie sound, but it was part of what made Sunset Theater unique. It was a rural drive-in, unlike most of Fresno's other drive-ins.
I drove past the old Sunset Drive-In last summer. It's long gone, of course. All that remained there was a field of rusted junk machinery, old cars and badly overgrown weeds poking up through the crumbled concrete where we used to park to watch movies. All the speaker poles are gone. No signs of stray cats. Even the big palms were gone. Sad day.