We piled into the car, my step-sister Edna, and my dad John and his new Canadian wife. The drive in was a free-for all eating situation too. You could bring anything you wanted. Not just sneak in a candy bar or sandwich like today at the theater, but rather sodas and fried chicken, liquorice twists both red and black, and popcorn fresh and hot from the concession stand drowned in oceans of butter. Kids my age would wear their pajamas and bring their favorite pillow. The South Bay Drive-in was showing a double feature, The Curse of Frankenstein, and a black and white B picture, X the Unknown. It would stay unknown too, due to my stomach and scare-factor, but more of that later.
The real X-the Unknown wasn’t on the screen, it was out in the audience. It was me in their family, the odd chipped piece, the one that didn’t match, and the one you hid in the back. The tag along, week-ender.
I know it seems harsh, but that’s how I felt. Kinda second-rate, kinda outsider-like, kinda not quite right.
But there I was in my PJs, trying to fit in, doing my best, pillow in hand, jolly good show, stiff upper lip, doing my best to glean what was expected.
I had no pre-conceptions, and hadn’t seen the original Frankenstein. So here’s this Hammer film, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and Cushing’s a doctor, and it’s supposed to be a long time ago, and certainly not in San Diego, I can tell by the way they’re dressed. It’s not as long ago as Robin Hood, but they talk much the same, so I figure they’re in England. But now it’s getting scary! Oh my goodness, real scary, and I stop biting my chicken leg just long enough to watch Frankenstein unfold a cloth on the laboratory table, and what’s those two squishy things there, see em’?
It’s a pair of eyeballs the crazy doctor stole somewhere!
His helper doctor dude is shocked! I am too, and a mouthful of fried chicken bites the rubber floor mat in the back seat, as my jaw falls uncontrollably open in awe.
Oh, now I’m primed and as on edge and any razor by Somerset Maugham.
Now the crazy doctor is robbing a brain and after he plunks it into a jar he drops the jar and glass splinters go into the squishy-soft tissue. It reminds me of liver and onions, which reminds me of my mother at home, and how far away that is, and how I can’t wait for Sunday afternoon when I get to go home, even though it’s Saturday night, and that snaps my elastic brain of consciousness back to the present, and my eyes back to the screen. Now there’s a body all bandaged up, with all sorts of tubes attached, floating in a gigantic aquarium. It’s like a mummy floating in a glass sarcophagus. I didn’t care much for mummies; they didn’t talk enough and made me nervous. When we watched Boris Karloff in the Mummy two weekends ago on Shock Theater, I had nightmares for weeks.
I’ll say right now that was the usual pattern. I led a sheltered life, but only on Arizona St. where I grew up under my mom’s care. In National City I was subjected to good times and bad, and whatever the outcome, would take it home with me to my mother. The repercussions went with me wherever I wandered, and trailed far behind, except the ones that stuck with me, which I’m still ungluing today. I shook free of as many bad repercussions as I could, but a man has only so much energy, and uses most of it up on everyday battles. Life is a constant struggle to attain and break free. Our egos suppose we choose what we like, but life is more simple and sometimes gives you no choices, no good ones anyway.
http://youtu.be/WMLOB493hy4
to be continued….
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