The Johnny All- Weather Drive-In
By: Salvatore Centonze
This is one of my preccious memories of my "Good Old Days"". Here it was, 1965 and I finally had my own car: a black 1957 Oldsmobile convertible. It was nosed (all the chrome and hood ornaments removed from the front) and decked (same for the trunk) with a 1959 Oldsmobile engine. You might think I was a car aficionado, but really, it was the only car I could afford.
Now that I had my car it was time to drive up and down Wellwood Avenue in Lindenhurst to see who was there and give them a nice wave. Of course, the top was down no matter what the temperature.
It was time for me and my “OLDS” to go to the “Johnny All Weather Drive In” on Sunrise Highway in Copiague, Long Island. You could go to this drive-in and watch a movie from your car or go into the cinema and watch the movie there. It was open all year, rain or shine, day or night. It had outside parking spaces for 2,500 cars and the indoor cinema could accommodate 1,200 people.
It was every teenager’s intent to go to the drive-in when you got “your” car. This is where my happenstance occurred. I had a younger girlfriend named Colette, and we had been going out for a fair amount of time. When I got my car, we decided to go to the All Weather Drive-in. The only issue with this decision was that her parents would not allow her to go in cars with boys and certainly not to a drive-in. We decided to go anyway. What could happen?
Well, we got to the drive-in just before dark. I parked and took the speaker off the stand and hooked it onto the inside of the driver’s car window. We were waiting for it to get dark so the movie would begin. A car pulled up next to us and parked. All of a sudden Colette slithered to the floor of the car saying in a nervous and strained whisper “That’s my mother and father.”
Luckily, they didn’t know what my car looked like. I only briefly met her mother and never met her father. Here we were, just a few feet away from her parents. Crouched on the floor of the car saying in her loudest, panicked whisper, “Get out of here, get out of here! My parents are in the next car!” I calmly rolled down the driver’s side window, placed the speaker back on the stand, put the car in drive and drove off. All the while I was in a cold sweat, hoping that neither parent looked my way as we departed the drive-in.
All turned out well, we were never caught. Our relationship continued until she went to college and I was drafted.
I sold the ”Olds” in November of 1966, just before being drafted and the Johnny All-Weather Drive-In closed permanently on September 3, 1984.
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