To make matters more difficult, the seventies advent-ed this strange new device. It was called color TV. What an unbelievable thing color was. In the fifties, they actually began making television without a wooden box built around it, in the shape of furniture. You could buy one and set it on a table.
But color, what an added dimension. And programming that wasn’t in color was doomed. Movies had mostly been in color for a few years, but how could you transmit color over the air? What a miracle.
Movies were another subject altogether. The newest movie only came out occasionally. Not two or three each week. All the theaters were single screen.
There were some drive in movies that had multiple screens. Because as kids we didn’t want to get far from our cars, we almost never went to the movies, only the drive in.
There may still be some of those around the country, but generally, they have disappeared from the landscape like two lane highways and railroad tracks. Our drive in had four screens. There was a post that you took the speaker off, hung it on the window and quickly rolled up the window.
It was cold out and besides, you wanted to make sure that your cigarette smoke was not wasted out. Breathing it twice was a norm. And everyone smoked. Everywhere.
We would assign someone to go and get the popcorn and other stuff, schlep it across the gravel fields, hoping to remember where your car was and checking on all your friends that were there. We usually would park together and share beverages and maybe even dates. This was a normal end to the Friday night drag cruise.
Phil Brewer's Blog 