There is a Story Here…

by Mel

8 comments

1 Jessie { 08.25.13 at 12:14 pm }

I’ll have a serious story to provide once I think about it a bit, but that was my first reaction and it made me giggle.

2 Jessie { 08.25.13 at 12:15 pm }

Hey! It deleted half my comment! What made me giggle was the story being (insert plot of Cars here)

3 Lollipop Goldstein { 08.25.13 at 12:16 pm }

That’s so weird — I don’t even see the rest of the comment on the back end of the site. It just disappeared entirely.

4 Shmoo Radley { 08.25.13 at 4:27 pm }

This was a very happening drive-in restaurant in the 50s and 60s. Shiny Chevys and Fords filled with teenagers overran the place on Friday and Saturday nights after the movies let out. When the new bypass went in in the early 70s, the day-to-day traffic fell off and the owner found it more difficult to keep the place up. Then the new mall went in across town with its new theatre and restaurants, drawing what was left of the weekend traffic from the drive-in.

The owner shut the restaurant down by the early 80s and demo’d the main building after vagrants started breaking in and the city cited the owner. The canopy is still there because it was too expensive to demo – the posts are sunk into six feet of concrete and would require heavy equipment to remove. They were installed, after all, to withstand the occasionally marginal driving skills of teenagers in 50s Chevys.

5 Ellen { 08.25.13 at 4:30 pm }

BYOF.

6 Turia { 08.25.13 at 8:06 pm }

Highly recommended by those on a diet?

7 lcs { 08.25.13 at 8:06 pm }

It always starts with love doesn’t it in the hour before the late summer dusk. All the car windows were open and the air felt so good. I pulled into a spot at the drive-in.

“Do you know what you want?” she asked.

It was 1972 and drive-ins were going away. But this place, Ruby Red Burgers with the curious green awning, skipped past the 1960s without changing the menu or the checkered red apron worn by the waitresses. Her name tag said Holly.

I was leaving for college in two weeks and beginning to miss my town. There was no starting anything new here, and friends seemed to be gradually pulling away from one another. Everyone was getting ready. They were either enlisting or heading to college. Ruby Red Burgers would close in a few years after the McDonalds opened down the road. This era was ending.

“You look familiar,” I said to Holly. She had graduated high school the year before me and stayed in town without offering a reason why. We talked about the people we knew, and I gave my order to her. When she returned, we talked a some more and I imagined taking her out on a date. Asking for her phone number. Changing course. But I didn’t.

On the plane, I thought of Holly and her long hair, her easy smile and laugh, and I don’t know why. There was something about her, that something you look for in your future wife and may or may not find it.

Many years later driving with the windows down on a late August night and past the ruins of Ruby Red Burger. I thought about my divorce, my dispersed friends of my old hometown, and of a life miles away and, for moment, of Holly.

8 Alexicographer { 08.25.13 at 10:59 pm }

It had been a long day’s driving to get to the state park, but it was a lovely one and the campsite was perfect, right on the edge of a cove on the lake. Our family of three had gotten the basics set up and explored a bit — good to stretch our legs after 8 hours on the road — but mostly, we just wanted supper. After Jim promised me the GPS showed there was a family-style restaurant not 3 miles away, we piled back in the Subaru and headed down the road. The promised restaurant failed to appear, so he pointed us toward the next closest one, just another 7 miles. That one existed, but was closed Tuesdays (closed — Tuesdays?! What the heck?), so we headed along another 4 miles back the way we’d come and then a sharp left and another 6 miles, sure that the third time would be the charm…

(Names have been changed and I don’t think the picture’s of where we were, but otherwise, that is a true story from this summer)