St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3) by Terence M. Green Page A

by seven hundred thousand books, studying in the state where he was born.
    Research, books, community service, the arts and sciences—opportunities engulfing these people in their green and gold sweatshirts, under the bright Ohio sun.
    In my mind, Adam and I became one. I was attending classes with him. If I had gone to university, would I have been smart enough to understand what was happening to me? Was there a way to learn what I wanted to know, especially when I wasn't even certain what it was that I wanted to know?
    I envied Adam his life. I envied him that he still had a father.
     
    It was 10 a.m., was warming to a hot, clear day.
    In the night all things were possible, anything could happen. The dreams had proven this to me. Things changed, ever so subtly, every time I awoke. The world shifted, in fractions, the past and the present existing together, inside me. My mind roamed free.
    The sun beating down changed all that.
    The booklet in my hip pocket told me that Kettering, where Bobby Swiss lived and worked, was named after Charles F. Kettering, who, along with Edward Deeds, developed the modern automotive starter and ignition systems.
    I sat in my Honda, keys in hand. I looked out through the windshield into the glare of morning, tried to will the night magic to appear. I inserted the key into Kettering's ignition, turned it, heard the Delco battery fire the noisy valves of my 1960 Chev to life. I closed my eyes, saw the shaky three-speed gearshift on the steering column, felt its wide bench seat beneath me.
     
     

 
    ELEVEN
     
     
    I
     
    West of 675, off Shakertown Road, just outside Kettering, I saw the Belmont Auto Theatre.
     
    $6.00 A CARLOAD
     
    OPEN WEEKENDS
     
    THROUGHOUT THE WINTER
    HEATERS WILL BE FURNISHED
    FOR YOUR COMFORT
     
    NO ALCOHOL
    ON THIS
    PROPERTY
     
    I got out of the car, stood with my hands in my pockets. Then I went up to the fence and peered through.
     
    I know a lot about drive-in theaters. I've made it a point to find out. I like them. I bought a book about them once— written by some guy who had taken a trip along Route 66, searching them out. He liked them even more than I did. I'll tell you a little bit of what I know.
    By the early thirties, Detroit was rolling cars off the assembly line, Hollywood was churning out movies. The first drive-in opened in New Jersey in 1933, an unexpected offshoot of the two growing industries. Over the next decade drive-in theaters began to appear all over the States: Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Massachusetts, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Rhode Island, New York. By 1942, there were ninety-five of them, scattered across twenty-seven states.
    As I recall, Ohio took the concept to its bosom: it had more than any other state. Eleven, I think. Like the one I was looking at right now. Good old Ohio.
    During 1941-45, the War years, for all the obvious reasons the whole phenomenon flattened out. But it blossomed again with a vengeance after the War. Before 1950, their number had increased from around one hundred to over eight hundred. By 1958, there were close to five thousand.
    And the one near Copiague, New York, on Long Island, almost overlooking South Oyster Bay and Ocean Parkway—that was one of the largest, one I wanted to get to, but never did. It hosted twenty-five hundred cars, had an additional twelve-hundred-seat, heated and air-conditioned indoor viewing area, playground, cafeteria, and restaurant with full dinners. A shuttle train took the moviegoers from their cars to the various destinations on the twenty-eight-acre site. I also heard of one in Lufkin, Texas, and another in Troy, Michigan, both of which claimed parking space for three thousand vehicles.
    Onward and upward, fun and novelty for everyone, unlimited expansion. Playgrounds might incorporate minitrains, boat and pony rides, talent and animal shows, even miniature golf. Fried chicken, burgers, pizza: fast food was a natural.
    In the 1960s and seventies, the party wasn't