My First & Last Night at a New Jersey Drive-in

Sandy and Danny in “Grease,” 1978. What was playing on the screen often mattered less than the company in the car. Image from this LINK.

Drive-in movies, screened out in the fresh air, are enjoying a comeback in the time of COVID-19. I’ve even noticed an impromptu screen hitched up in a town lot by the side of the Garden State Parkway. It makes me happy to think of kids in their PJs, in their cars, with their families. Here’s what I wrote about the last drive-in standing in New Jersey.

Metropolitan Diary, Wednesday, September 18, 1991

DEAR Diary:

Dan and I and his friend Mark drove down to Hazlet the other night to see the last movie at the last drive-in in New Jersey. But we arrived after 8 and the police turned us away. Sold out.

We parked nearby and tried walking in with our root beers. “No walk-ins,” they said. We stood by our Honda and got the soundtrack on our radio and made friends with other crushed people. Two guys shared their microwave popcorn with us. Finally, someone heard about a path along a long sandy ridge, so we took it and sneaked in from the back. As we came around the bend, the 50’s version of “The Fly” loomed before us.

We hurried to the crowded concession stand. I had a steamy cheeseburger wrapped in a little foil bag, dry yellow popcorn and Movie Bites ice cream. (We had the last ice cream served at the last drive-in; they ran out right after we got ours). Then we sat on the…