When the latest popular movie came out you, if you wanted to see it you went to the theater. Otherwise, you would wait a long time before it would be shown on tv - and not every movie would make it on tv.
And on a related topic - drive in movies were EVERYWHERE. A fixed cost for the car, no matter how many people were in it. My parents would take my sister and I and we could each bring a friend in the family station wagon. The kids would wear our pjs and bring sleeping bags and pillows and take positions on the roof (laying on our bellies or my mother would shame us for blocking the view of the cars behind) or on the hood with our backs against the windshield while my parents sat in the woven mesh lawn chairs in front of the car. Most of the time there was a cooler with Shasta soda of various flavors - orange, grape, strawberry, lemon lime, black cherry, root beer. We would go to 7-11 before the movie. My parents would give my sister and I a dollar each to get a bag of penny candy - Jolly Rancher fire, watermelon, cherry and sour apple stix, pixie stix, tootsie rolls, milk duds and we would share it with our friends. We would come away with a full bag because, like someone else said penny candy really did cost a penny. Usually got to buy a box of popcorn at the concession stand to share among the kids - there was only one size in those days. On rare occasions, we would skip dinner before and get to buy a hot dog at the concession stand - now THAT was special! We would get there at least a half hour before sunset to get a parking spot in dead center - always a few rows in front of the concession stand, and then play on the play ground in front of the screen - yes, in our pajamas like every other kid there. Then, the playground lights would flash and a countdown would show on the screen. We would trek back to the car weaving between cars and over the mounds of parking spots. The speaker would be affixed to the partially rolled down window, pointing out like every other family there so everyone outside could hear the movie. Except...there were always a couple of cars that, after dark, seemed to have no one in them, the windows were rolled up with the speaker on the post and depending on the temperature - a bit steamed up. (Never understood the meaning of that at the age I was). Always a cartoon before the first G rated feature film, typically a Disney movie, cartoon usually Woody Woodpecker. Then, after the family movie was over, the dancing hotdogs, sodas and popcorn boxes would dance to the "Let's go out to the lobby and have ourselves a snack" jingle - which always made me laugh because there WAS NO lobby! Always took a trip to the bathroom between the first and second feature. By that time it was getting cooler, so us kids would retreat to the car and wrap ourselves in our sleeping bags - two in the back seat, two in the "back to back" seat. Much as we tried, we rarely made it past the first 10 minutes of the R rated "parents" movie and fell fast asleep. Usually, would wake up when we got home and then our friends would sleep over.
Man, that was a fun trip down memory lane!
