I posted this on a hometown message board. Thought it was worth reposting here. Hard to believe it's been almost 30 years (a few small details changed for this blog):

Back in the 70's, we had two drive in movie theatres. One on the south side of town(south of the main park, if memory serves correctly), and the other up by the fairgrounds (possibly even on the same site...I wasn't big into taking mental pictures of the places at that tender age). The one up north you didn't go to, and us kids would always be asking our parents about going to that one whenever misfortune led them to drive by its banner marquee. Our parents kindly deflected the question, and, if we pressed too hard, the discussion would ultimately be silenced with a bribe, their terms fulfilled when we pulled into Bob's Cone Corner.

Movies were a rare luxury then (my kids don't know how lucky they are; we have a DVD library of several hundred movies, they can't even IMAGINE being part of a generation that oooh'ed and ahh'ed when Dad brought home the Betamax...but I digress). I was seven years old, Mohammed Ali, Roger Staubach, and Evel Knievel were my heroes. We loaded up the car and headed to the new movie playing at the drive in on the south side. That movie was Star Wars.

As a seven year old, of course, the movie did not hold nearly as much appeal to me as did the playground up under the drive in's massive screen. It was basically a way to use the space between the nearest rows of cars and the screen, and to keep the children occupied before the movie started. As I did the rounds of the playground with my friends, I was oblivious to the dancing concessions over my head, and I was even able to ignore the words that scrolled across the screen, and the opening scenes of the movie.

But a few short moments later I would discover the magic of the movies in a way that would transform me forever. In a flash, I saw the biggest, scariest villain I had ever seen in my life, just a few scant yards overhead, and literally, larger than life. Darth Vader is hard to ignore when his head's 40 feet across.

My eyes didn't leave the screen for the remainder of the movie, and that movie still stands out in my memories, as it was the first movie I remember going out to see.