Stay gold Council Bluffs drive-in (CB drive-in) 8.6.02

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost

I would like to be able to say the first time I heard these words it was in an English class, but the truth is I first heard them in "The Outsiders" at the Council Bluffs Drive-In.
I'm just a small town boy living in a lonely world who took the midnight train going anywhere and I am as sentimental as the next guy. Our drive-in theater is one of the few remaining in the United States and. You would be hard pressed to find a true C.B.-er who had not spent a night or 20 in the haze of youth watching dimly lit movies in the fresh summer air with the scent of Lake Manawa wafting from behind the screen carrying with it the promise of young love and the distinct odeur of corn dogs. To this day, I get a completely non-Platonic feeling when I smell frying cornmeal.
Yes, the drive-in theater is a true American classic, a marriage of our love for movies and our love for cars. What could be better than those nights? My buddies and I would trip on out to the theater with a 12-pack of tall boys on ice in a five-gallon pickle bucket from Sam's Hamburgers and a box of Little Debbies Star Crunches to watch "Big Trouble in Little China," "The Goonies" and "Friday the 13th Part Who Cares."
I saw "Batman Returns" at that theater with my nephew when he was 3-months old, not that he recalls it. I spent many a Fourth of July there eating hot dogs and watching the fireworks. I saw my first R-rated film, "The Screaming Cheerleaders," at the drive-in when I was a wee lad. For some odd reason, my parents thought I would sleep through all the screaming and jiggling. Doesn't happen now and it didn't happen then.
"Love Story," "Smokey and the Bandit," "The Apple Dumpling Gang," "The Strongest Man on Earth," "Smokey and the Bandit II," "The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again," "Smokey and the Bandit III," "Smokey and the Apple Dumpling Gang Hook Up with the Screaming Cheerleaders" ... the list goes on.
In retrospect, the movies never mattered as much as the company and occasion, because it was always a special occasion when you stayed out until 3 a.m. watching that real clinker at the end.
Unfortunately, our drive-in theater might not be with us much longer and that is sad. Nothing gold can stay, I reckon. The land the theater sits on is up for sale and since it has a much greater value as a parking lot or strip mall than as a movie theater we all used to go to as kids, chances are pretty good that by this time next summer there will be one less thing to make Council Bluffs unique.
Maybe there is something we can do, but I doubt it. This is just one of those times when you have to sit back and accept the inevitable. If the Council Bluffs Drive-In were a thriving concern, if it were packed each and every night with people buying popcorn by the ton and pop by the gallon, maybe it wouldn't need to close. But this is social Darwinism for you. The weak die while the strong plow them under for another car lot.
Granted, I've been away for years, but the last movie I saw at the drive-in was "Batman Returns." Not "Batman & Robin," not "Batman Forever," "Batman Returns." That's about 10 years ago. So for my part, I haven't exactly kept the deep fat fryers of the drive-in filled with canola oil and the projectors filled with celluloid.
Everything changes, that is inevitable. Sometimes things fall apart because the universe is an unstable place. Trees, people and suns die. That's entropy. Sometimes tastes change. That's why you can't hardly find sasparilla any more. And sometimes things fade out because they just don't make as much sense as they used to. Drive-ins were cool when air conditioning was rare. They were great social gatherings when we all felt much safer being out late at night. Drive-ins were the place to see movies when quality new movies came out less often, when people didn't have 300 channels, VCRs and DVDs at home.
The day of the drive-in is drawing to a close and while I hope the Council Bluffs Drive-In somehow makes it to 2003, I will have to catch whatever is playing out there this summer just in case it doesn't. It doesn't really matter what, just one last memory to add to the stack.
Nothing gold can stay, but we can always remember that for far longer than most, we had a piece of living breathing pop culture history right here in our midst.
- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. His column runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He may be contacted at 328-1811, Ext. 279, or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.