Blood, Guts, Jaws And a Roach
 |
| Jaws |
Drive-in movies had been a part of my life since I was a little kid. The bad thing was, as a child, you really didn't have a say so in the selection of the movie. There weren't a lot of kid's movies back then anyway. A few Disney animated movies, about 4 of them, that was it. I spent many a Saturday night looking over the shoulder of the adult sitting in the front seat. When we saw scary movies, which would frequently be the case, I would hold my hands over my eyes and peek out between my fingers. If it was really scary, I would lay down on the floorboard and pull my pillow around my eyes and ears. If I was lucky, I would fall asleep. The only movie that I can remember that really scared me was The Creature From The Black Lagoon. That lizard looking monster was more than I could handle.
As a teen, drive-ins were a way to go hang out with a car full of your friends. Sometimes there might be several cars of friends socializing, or maybe it just might be you and a guy or two couples in the car. It was easy to bring beer into the drive-in, and I can't count the number of times kids hid in the trunk to avoid paying and then popped out once the car was settled into a spot. I think I went to every drive-in in Virginia from Stafford County to Falls Church and in Maryland, everyone in Prince Georges County.
Now that I had kids, I was in a different mode. It was a treat for them to go. They could play in the playground before the movies started and then come back to the car. Generally, they were only able to stay awake for the first movie. After that, it was quiet, and Mary and I could watch the other movie and talk. The only bad thing was the heat of the summer in Dallas. I don't know how we did it; I guess we were just used to it.
Mary and I would go to the walk-in movies to see movies that we really wanted to see. No kids. Adults and young adults. That summer, we went to see Jaws when it premiered. It is still one of my all-time favorite movies, but just like the Exorcist, it was a groundbreaking movie; the blood and the gore and the shark were awesomely extreme for that day and time. It was actually very shocking to me to see that much detailed blood and frantic shark feeding. It left a very strong impression on me. The catchphrase for advertising the movie was, Don't Go Near The Water. After seeing that movie, I have never gone into ocean water deeper than my ankles, and I had to be able to see them through the water. It left a scar on my water and sand loving soul that has never gone away.
It was the kind of movie where the audience screamed at the tense times, at the vicious, bloody munching of the shark, and at some of the way, the scenes were shot. When the police chief is throwing out the chum and griping about having to do it, and Jaws shows up over the back of the boat, you can see and feel the fear in his face and voice. And then he utters the classic line, "Gonna need a bigger boat!" It was so great. I loved those old movies where the audience was prompted to react to what they saw on the screen. When the movie ended, and the crowd was leaving, everyone would be talking excitedly about their favorite part. Those were good times.
After the movie, we would find a place to eat, someplace that wasn't horrendously crowded. That meant the cool places were out, no Chile's, no TGI Friday's. None of the places on Greenville Avenue, they were all too crowded. After riding around looking for a place to go, we finally stopped at Kip's Big Boy on Northwest Highway. It was a little crowded, but nothing like the other places.
We were standing in line, waiting to be seated. I was talking to Mary, and movement caught my eye directly in front of her. What was that?
I wasn't sure, and then something moved again. It was on the guy in front of Mary. Okay, now it was driving me crazy. And then, after staring intently at it for minutes, I figured it out. Oh, my God. It was a roach on the guy's shoulder, sitting on it like a tamed pet. I grabbed Mary's arm and hissed, " Look, look!" She saw it, and we both busted out laughing. Roach shoulder! Was that his date or the chaperone? We laughed so much I thought I was going to throw up. We didn't ever go back there to eat again. The memory was just too much.
A few weeks after we saw Jaws, I took Glen and Jeff down to Galveston for the day. About a 4 or 5-hour drive from Dallas. Galveston was located on the Gulf of Mexico. They had never seen an ocean before. I had bought them toys to play with in the sand, I made a picnic lunch, we were going to have a nice day.
They slept all the way until we got to Houston, and then they were wide awake. They loved the water and the waves and the sand. I hated eating or drinking anything because it all had sand in it. Yuck. So I was sitting on a blanket watching them, and my youngest was 4 by then, started fussing about something biting his foot. What? No! No! He was crying, and I could not move, honestly. I could not move. "Get out of the water." He just stood there crying, and I was frozen in fear. "Get out of the water!" I screamed it as loud as I could. Everybody in Galveston Bay got out of the water; somebody grabbed Jeff and brought him to me. Apparently, Jeff was being nibbled on by sand crabs or some kind of baby crab; he was fine. But I was mesmerized by fear, and it was from watching Jaws. And I am still like that, I will walk at the edge of the water, and that is it.
And here it is, summer, right now. All I can say is, DON'T GO NEAR THE WATER!
Respect the shark!
Comments
Post a Comment