Child of the 1980's - The Drive-In Theater

                Drive-In movies were a huge part of the lives of children and young adults during the 1950’s and 1960’s.  Though drive-ins technically existed prior to World War I the first true patented drive-in opened in Camden, New Jersey in 1933.  Even after that they did not become a true part of culture until the 1950’s.  The growing popularity of drive-ins was evident at this time.  In 1948 the United States had less than 1,000 drive-ins compared to 17,000 indoor theaters.  By 1958 the numbers were changing with roughly 4,600 drive-ins opened in the country and approximately 12,000 indoor theaters.

                Drive-ins were a welcome change from what could be crowded indoor theaters.  First off one could sit in their own vehicle and watch a movie.  In fact the largest drive-in theater for a long time was located in Dearborn, Michigan and used to hold 3,000 cars.  It was eventually surpassed by the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop.  When the 1980’s began the drive-in was still going strong with approximately 3,500 screens located across the country.  However this decade would end quite differently.

                Growing up on Cape Cod I remember vividly going to the Yarmouth Drive-In located along Parker’s River.  There were also screens located in Hyannis, Dennis, East Falmouth, and Wellfleet.  During this time in the early 1980’s I got to see movies such as Return of the Jedi, E.T., Flash Gordon, and even Friday the 13^th Part III at the Yarmouth Drive-In.  It was such a thrill as a child barely in kindergarten to be able to lay down under a blanket with pillows and snacks and watch a movie on a screen that was between 90-100-feet wide.  Shows started at dusk and were double-features.  The first movie was usually the more family friendly since it was likely that the kids would be wide awake and wired for the show.  The second movie was usually a little looser, probably not R-rated, but likely a solid PG, or PG-13.  It felt like an adventure, a unique experience, being outside yet feeling like you were in your own living room.

Dennis Drive-In courtesy of Cinema Treasures

               
      The 1980’s began with five drive-ins on Cape Cod, and 3,500 nationwide.  By 1990 that number was below 1,000, and there was only one survivor on the Cape and that was in Wellfleet.  What caused the downfall?  Causes range from the rise of cable television to the wider availability of VCR’s.  Drive-Ins did not totally vanish, and still haven’t, but today they are more of a niche, something neat to experience once during the summer if possible, not a weekly ritual like in its heyday.

So for Cape Cod children of the 1980’s wondering what happened to the other four, here are the answers.  In East Falmouth the Cod Drive-In was first to go as it closed in 1980.  Today it is the site of J.R. Brody’s and Falmouth Lumber, a concrete slab likely where the tickets or refreshments were sold is still there.  The Dennis Drive-In on Hokum Rock Road closed shortly thereafter.  In its heyday it had room for nearly 1,000 cars and even had small planes landing and rolling up to watch movies.  Today it is an overgrown field near an industrial park.  If you walk around you can see old pavement, concrete slabs, and an occasional speaker or speaker pole.  The Yarmouth Drive-In I frequented as a child closed next in 1985.  Today it is an open field across from Capt. Parker’s Restaurant on Rt. 28.  The last Cape drive-in to close was the Hyannis Drive-In which shuttered in 1987.  Today it is a shopping center anchored by Toys R Us, Home Goods and Shaws.

Wellfleet Drive-In today courtesy of Wellfleet Cinemas

The Wellfleet Drive-In is still hanging on and has now found a second life as children of the 1980’s wish to recreate that old drive-in magic with their children.  Today there are only 336 drive-ins left in the country, that’s about 7% when compared to the prime of the late 1950’s. 

What movies do you remember seeing in the 1980’s at the drive-in?  Do you get the chance to go today?  For a trip down memory lane check out Drive-In Theater.com, and stay tuned for more buttery and sugary treats 1980’s style!

Click here for my last Child of the 1980's blog about Mascot Mania!

Going Next Level: Johnny Kelley Half 2013

            I had trained for half marathons many times in the past. I had used other people’s training programs to get to where I thought I needed to be.  As happens with experience in any field the more you do things on your own the more apt you are to listen to yourself and not others.

            My last half marathon I ran was three months ago, and that one I had basically run with my goal being to cross the finish line uninjured.  After injuring my Achilles tendon during my marathon training last fall I had been hesitant to go all out in any sort of training for fear of reinjury.  After successfully completing the Hyannis Half in February I decided that I had recovered enough and it was time to let it all hang out.

            In training for the Johnny Kelley Half I chose a different route.  Rather than do the normal long run, tempo run, recovery run, etc training plan I focused on speed.  Nearly every run I did during my training was the same: run as far as I could as fast as I could.  It didn’t matter if I could only do four miles or if I could do ten, as long as I went all out and was sufficiently gassed at the end I had done it right.

            My ultimate goal was to build up my stamina, obviously.  Ideally in going all out for ten miles I would be able to pace myself better over a half distance and set myself a nice new personal best.  My runs leading up to the Johnny Kelley Half were routinely 7-9 miles with a 7:30 pace.  Using this info I set my eyes on a sub 1:50 half which would top my PB by about 5 minutes.

            Race day came, cool and raw.  The race route had to be changed due to the fact that one of the roads was being worked on by the Army Corp of Engineers.  They said that due to recent rains the road work could be compromised by a thousand runners.  The race route had to be changed on the fly.  This decertified the course, and also left no guarantee that the route would be exactly 13.1 miles. Let me end the speculation, it wasn’t.  Using my running app on my iPhone to keep my abreast of my time and pace I found that the new course was 13.6 miles, a half mile too long.

            I started slowly as I had learned was best for distance.  I’m being sarcastic as I have often had a problem with starting too fast, going with the flow of the crowd, and ending up tired by about Mile 8.  As I got past 5 miles I felt good, my legs were feeling it and I realized that my PB goal was easily in reach.  The speed training for the half was working. 

            I stayed on pace throughout the full course which seems minor but for me this was the first time that everything fell into place.  I finished the 13.1 in 1:48, beating my PB by nearly 8 minutes.  When I was done I had nothing left.  I crashed in the nearby grass as I normally do.  I like to lay in the grass for a few minutes to catch my breath and let my body recover. 

            Normally after a longer race the last thing I want to do is run again. I am normally so sore and sometimes injured.  After the Johnny Kelley Half all I wanted to do was run again.  I had finally found a training plan that worked for me and the best part was that it was my own.  I hadn’t read someone else’s plan or asked for advice. I had my own idea and put it into practice and succeeded.  Sure, this was an idea for training for a race, but it seems to be sort of a metaphor for life also.  Sometimes if you listen to yourself and follow the path you believe is best you will succeed.  As I go on in running and in life I believe that the lessons and results from this race will help me more than I know.

            What did it feel like to set a PB in a race for you?  What did you do differently in your training?  When you set the PB what did that do for your confidence in running? Did it spill over into the rest of your life?

The First Race

Not long after I had begun running and realized it was not going to destroy my legs like I had always worried my mindset began to change.  I began to think about doing a race.  I knew that it had to be short; half marathons were definitely not in my near future.  I chose a 5K, the CapeAbilities 5K which was set to take place in Hyannis a mere 6 weeks after my first mile run had been undertaken.

Was I ready?  I did my research and found that in order to run a 5K you really only needed to be able to comfortably run 5 miles, which was not too lofty of expectations.  Why did I want to do a race so soon after beginning to run?  I wanted to push myself.  Up until even the week before I did my first mile I thought that running was something ‘other people’ did.  Now that I was becoming one of the ‘others’ I wanted to be out there among them.

I signed up for the race along with my running teacher and good friend Emily; she was a master of the half marathons but made an exception to do a 5K since it was my first ever race.  My Uncle Steve did the same; he was a veteran of a few Boston Marathons so for him a 5K was an off day.  I knew that and was so excited to get to run with the both of them.  The training was nothing different from what I had been doing.  Getting up over 5 miles in a run was not much of a stretch and I knew once I reached that goal I didn’t need to go much further.  I would be in pretty good shape come race day.  I had lost 12 pounds in my first 6 weeks of running and invested in some new ‘race day’ clothes to show what I had lost.  The fact that I was that comfortable with my body was such a great feeling.

On May the 14^th it was cool and misty near the water but I was ready.  I met up with Emily and Uncle Steve and then took the time to soak in the atmosphere of something so foreign to me but seemingly where I was meant to be.  After this race it would become something of a ritual to turn on my music, shut the world out, and engulf myself in the feelings of being there before a race.  

I had a nervous energy that morning.  I was so excited for my first race that I did not know what to do.  Uncle Steve had to remind me to stretch since I was wandering around the grounds like a tourist on vacation in the big city for the first time.  We took some photos but as starting time drew close I finally began to focus.

The route down by the water in Hyannis was very familiar to me; I had driven it hundreds of times.  However, driving and running are two different things.  When I began to run it all of the slightest elevation changes were apparent.  Thankfully my uncle had run the race before and alerted me to what was coming. 

Looking back on that race now nearly a year later I laugh at the fact that I was in such relatively poor aerobic condition that I felt the need to suck down a carb gel pack a mile into a 5K, I probably could have done without it.  It got stuck in my throat and I had to suck down some water from the first station just to get that down.

For the final mile my uncle gave me some advice: ‘Run Like Your Hair’s On Fire!’  Funny thing was that I was tired, never before had I gone all out like I was that day.  I have heard since then that during races sometimes you can get caught up in the emotion and the adrenaline forgoing any sort of plan you might have had.  I basically did that when I heard the starting gun and took off like a shot.

My uncle wanted me to cross the finish line like a champ so he asked me what I had left.  I told him ‘nothing.’  Still I pushed that aside and after dodging a fresh pile of dog poop I hurried toward the finish.  I literally left every ounce of energy out there.  I ended up gassed and lying on my back in the grass.  My sister Kate made it to the finish line with my nieces Kaleigh and Emma and my nephew Landon.  There are a few funny pictures of the kids surrounding me since I was too tired to stand.  I was so happy to be surrounded by friends and family on such a big day, but I was even happier to be finished.

My time of 24:28 – 7:53/mi. was better than I had thought I could do but the numbers were not the most important thing.  What was most important was the fact that I had actually done it.  I had actually completed my first race when only 6 weeks earlier I was dreading doing a 10 minute mile on a treadmill.  I had started to believe that there was nothing that I could not do in life.  I wanted to share this feeling and belief with everyone in my life.  I wasn’t going to become a motivational speaker, but I was definitely getting more into preaching that impossible was nothing.  That frame of mind began to spill over from running into the rest of my life and led to another huge moment in my life: Getting my first book deal.  That’s a story for another day though.  

Impossible Is Nothing

           Impossible Is Nothing by Christopher Setterlund 

            To most people today the CapeAbilities 5K was just another race.  To me it was something much different.  To me this race today was the culmination of a transformation inside myself that I never thought would happen.  Today was never even on my radar as close as two months ago, but here I am after the fact now able to look back at what I have done with pride.  I have tried to make it known just how important personally this entire event and what led up to it has been, but maybe here you will get a better feel for it.  Bear with me as this is going to be an ocean of emotion spilling out in these words.

            For years my Uncle Steve has been telling me how much he wanted me to run races with him and for years I simply said no.  I said no because I believed in my heart that I could not, or to be more correct I did not believe in myself.  It has been something of a theme as time passed that my belief in myself seemed to wane and fade away, don’t know if it was just me or if others have experienced this as well.  You get so stuck in a way of thinking that it becomes reality whether it is true or not.  Sometimes it takes an unexpected voice to break that train of thought.

            I have a friend, she knows who she is and I will spare her the embarrassment of this praise, but I am proud to call her my friend and so blessed that I know her.  She was not born a runner, no she made herself into one through her own hard work and dedication.  The dedication she has is unlike anything I have ever seen in anyone and it is infectious.  For years I had seen her and wondered just how in the world she could do what she does, now I know, now I understand.

            You see people have believed in me, I am not alone in this world, but their voices were drowned out by my own self doubt, it was a powerful enemy I had to fight.  My friend, she ended up being the voice that broke the glass around my mind.  She believed in me because she had been in the same exact position before and had transformed herself into a world class runner.  She said if she could do it I could.  At first I was skeptical, my old beliefs were still holding on, but as time went on I began to see what was happening.

            I knew that I could count on her to be there as motivation for me to keep going.  For the first time in my life I was running and enjoying it and therefore starting to see results in how I looked and felt.  The 5K I did today was meant to prove to myself that I could actually do something I set out to do rather than giving up if it got hard.  I pulled every muscle in both legs at one point or another during my training but never did I lose sight of what I was doing.

            My Uncle Steve signed on for the 5K and was even more excited than I was because he had been pushing for me to run for so long and finally I was going to do it.  He was also not born a runner but transformed himself into one.  I was always inspired by him and so proud of him but I could never pull myself out of my own self doubt and lack of belief to join him.  That was what made today so damn special for me, I was putting those old feeling to bed once and for all.

            My time and pace were good, better than I thought, especially since I had a bit of a lingering injury to my left Achilles tendon, nothing major, just a dull soreness.  My Uncle Steve sacrificed his own time to run with me which made me feel so good, and important as well!  However, the time and pace meant less to me than the actual feeling of passing that clock and seeing my friend standing there with her hand out.  I had done it, I had succeeded in completing something that meant so much to me personally.  I had rediscovered my belief in myself.

            I collapsed with fatigue just after my sister Kate and my nieces Kaleigh and Emma and my nephew Landon gathered around me.  They were so proud of me, I had done something to make people proud of me.  That felt so good.  I wanted Kaleigh, Emma, and Landon to know that they can do anything in life if they put their minds to it.  I hope I was able to show them that through what I did today.   Having my family there to see me and experience it with me meant so much to me.

            As for my friend who I promised I would not embarrass here, I told you face to face what you mean to me.  You changed my life and my way of thinking by simply being who you are, I am so blessed and lucky to know you and hope that I have let you know that through my words and actions.  I hope after reading this you understand why this meant so much to me and why I feel like this day was the beginning of a new chapter of my life.

            So race 1 is in the books, I have 2 more already scheduled and have no intention of stopping whatever ride I am on.  I have had my eyes opened, I have had my mind opened, I have had my heart opened, and I have no plans to close them anytime soon.  I hope that maybe my own story will inspire someone to do something they thought they never could do.  It does not have to be running, that just happened to be my own outlet.  Remember that the term impossible is nothing.  You can do anything if you put your mind to it, I am living proof.  Thank you all for sharing this day, this moment with me.  I will not forget it as it is my own personal finish line and also a starting line for something great that only time can reveal to me.  Cheers!