The Drive-In Banshees

One family, seven boys – no wonder James Fox’s Irish grandmother had nicknamed the kids the “Banshees.” The description was never more apt than the night of “The House of Usher” at the drive-in movie theater.

The drive-in movie theater was gone. In its place stood a three-story shopping mall. One Saturday I could see that mall in my hometown as I was stuck in traffic atop a highway off-ramp. I had come back to visit Mom at “the old homestead.”

My dad is gone now, and basically so is the town where our family grew up. Oh, it’s still on the map, but it’s not my dad’s town; it’s not even my town anymore. The orchard that used to be across the street from our house is now a subdivision, seven miles inside the city limits.

There are other changes too, such as that shopping mall where the drive-in movie theater used to be. That theater had sometimes screened horror movies on Saturday nights.

Overlooking that dramatic change, I thought back to that time of innocence in our recent history when so many soldiers returned from war to build the peacetime prosperity my generation enjoyed.

The beginnings of the family of the ‘Banshees’

So many, like my dad, had put away the sabers of war to quietly take on those mundane duties required of the generation that populated the growing suburbs of the late ’50s and early ’60s.

For many of these men and women, mission planning was replaced with household budgeting. And the only operational logistics they now faced were the competing demands on their time from Little League, swim meets, Scouts, and neighborhood barbecues – all the typical demands of raising children.

This was to be a daunting task for so many whose own childhood had been stolen by the Great Depression and the war years. But with the courage born of their baptism by war, that generation set out to conquer these new demands with hard work and an undying faith in the future. And they were heroes, all.

Dad flew many different aircraft as a Navy Aviator during World War Two and had been transferred into the U.S. Marines. Subsequently, he was called back into service to pilot a Corsair providing close air to ground support in the Korean War.

A summertime ritual

There were medals with ribbons in his sock drawer, so we kids figured Dad was a hero. But our neighbors knew Dad was a hero whenever the first warm Saturday night rolled around after school was out for the summer and the “drive-in run” was coming.

After an early supper, Dad would hose off the station wagon, wash the windshield, fold down the back seat and load in some sleeping bags. Then he’d round up us “Banshees” for the trek to the horror show at the drive-in movie.

Banshees, those wailing harbingers of doom, was the nickname our Irish grandmother had given us kids. Just perhaps it was quite fitting; “Ben and Betty Jean have seven kids,” the neighbors marveled, “All boys, and Ben’s going to make the drive-in run tonight!”

The drive-in movie routine never varied. Mom would get out the stove-top popcorn popper and draft one of the taller boys to keep shaking the handle until a huge aluminum ice bucket would be brimming over with popped corn. Dad used to look at that bucket, wink at Mom, and sigh.

I once heard him tell a visiting friend that back when there were dinner parties and Saturday night card games, that bucket used to chill martini shakers, and something called “French 75’s.” Then Dad had given that sigh and said, “Of course that had been when there were only two or three kids in the family.” But now the ice bucket was reserved for this summertime popcorn ritual.

Once the bucket was full, we’d pile into the station wagon, and Dad would back it down the driveway. I used to think Mom wished she could come too, because she’d stand on the porch waving, a brave smile on her face as the tears welled up in her eyes.

Years later I would recognize those same teary-eyed smiles on my wife’s face whenever I volunteered to take our children away on some “just Dad-and-kids” outing.

Dad’s station wagon didn’t have air-conditioning, so we’d roar off with the windows cranked down, the road noise drowning out the bickering for seating positions. The next stop was the root beer stand, the one with the big root beer mug rotating on the roof.

Dad always insisted that the root beer was “fresh-brewed in that mug,” but even the youngest of us recognized that it was just a painted sheet-metal tank with a stove-pipe handle. Dad would buy one of those big “family-size” jugs of root beer so we could head off on the final run, trying to get to the drive-in before sundown so we could play on the swing set and giant slide up near the screen until the show started, or until the bullies and mosquitoes ran us off.

The Banshees go to ‘The House of Usher’

One summer night, the newspaper noted that Edgar Allen Poe’s “The House of Usher,” starring Vincent Price, was playing. Dad was a former Marine – he wouldn’t be afraid – so we talked him into making the drive-in trek.

The night was sweltering. Heat radiated from the gravel hillocks of the drive-in. Most of us got out of the station wagon to sit on the front bumper. We couldn’t really hear the window speaker, so the sound coming from the bullhorns below the movie screen added an eerie echo to the show.

As we huddled together on the bumper, the coffin lid up on the screen began to shudder and strain against the clinking chains wrapped around it. Our youngest brother had stayed in the car on the sleeping bags spread across the folded down back seat. But now he scrambled forward into Dad’s lap for safety.

The bullhorns magnified the coffin lid’s creak as it slowly lifted an inch. Suddenly bloody fingers clawed through that opening! On the bumper we gasped and huddled closer together. In the car our youngest brother must have pushed away from the steering wheel in fright.

When someone sits on a car bumper watching a horror movie, they are only inches away from a horn that is activated by someone pushing the steering wheel hub … our feet didn’t wait to find the source of that sudden blaring sound – they just started running!

In my hometown, the debate lingered long over who had been the most frightened: the boys sitting on the station wagon bumper, or the people in the rows of cars up front. Those folks had first been startled by some idiot honking … then once more, by a flock of screaming banshees running past.

I was in my early thirties with a son of my own before I realized … Dad probably honked that horn!

Originally published in The Front Porch periodical.

Read more childhood memories and other contributions from Boomer readers in our From the Reader department.

Have your own childhood memories or other stories you’d like to share with our baby boomer audience? View our writers’ guidelines and e-mail our editor at Annie@BoomerMagazine.com with the subject line “‘From Our Readers’ inquiry.”