The day had been hot and the lot was still warm and the smell of warm asphalt mixed with the fragrance of popping corn and frying burgers. We placed a speaker in the car window as the pre-movie music was finishing and Ben Parsons announced that it was, "Show time!"
Reflections After Dark, Memories of the Drive-In by John Gilbert
Chapter 3
Daddy turned in his notice at Penney's and the two weeks came and went. I could hardly contain my excitement the first Friday night daddy was the manager. It was almost dark as we drove down Macon Rd. The marque was glowing in all its brilliance. It was a green building with neon letters of every color down the front spelling out "Edgewood." As we turned down the entrance our eyes were treated to beautiful colored lights everywhere. The back side of the screen also had Edgewood in script running from the bottom left corner to the top right.
 Colored floodlights shown from under an awning and splashed up the back of the screen. The fence leading to the box-office was a kaleidoscope of color. Each fence post had a different colored neon tube that illuminated its fence panel. The effect was a beautiful multicolored fence dividing the entrance from the lot. The driveway turned right and the box-office came into view. It was a small building with overhanging roof on either side to keep the rain off the cars and the ticket taker dry during showers. It too was awash in color. Beneath the window glass and counter was glass brick through which shown neon lights. Colored floodlights shown from flower boxes on either side of the awning lighting the underside of the overhanging roof. To this day I love the sight of colored lights in the night.
We stopped at the box-office and mother informed the carhop that she was the managers wife. He told her to go on through. We drove past the box-office and turned left and onto the lot. We were greeted by rows and rows of speaker posts and in the middle of the lot sat the concession stand. It was a low, squatty building on which sat the projection booth. The building was painted white with green trim. Behind the concession was a tall utility pole topped with more floodlights. These were white and illuminated the lot during intermission. During the show the floods were turned off and blue and green lights shown down offering just a bit of light for those making their way to the concession. We parked to the right side of the building facing the screen. When we were younger we would dash to the front of the screen where there was a playground. The equipment was now gone. These were the days when people were beginning to realize that you didn't have to take responsibility for your own actions. Some child had gotten hurt and the parents threatened to sue so the playground equipment had been removed.
The day had been hot and the lot was still warm and the smell of warm asphalt mixed with the fragrance of popping corn and frying burgers. We placed a speaker in the car window as the pre-movie music was finishing and Ben Parsons announced that it was, "Show time!" The spotlights turned off, the screen filled with color, and music poured from the tinny speaker. I don't remember the feature but that wasn't important. What was important was to let the employees know that Mr. Gilbert was my dad. It wasn't long before a dimly lit figure could be seen moving in the direction of the concession. It was daddy. It was easy to tell it was him. As a boy his right foot had been crushed when it was run over by a truck In those days little could be done except wrap the foot and hope for the best. Consequently, daddy always walked with a bit of a limp and it was easy to spot him. My three sisters and I piled out of the car and into the concession. We surrounded him as he came in asking silly questions, each question starting with, "Daddy." That was to let the concession personnel know who we were. They seemed less than impressed but we were now established as the managers children. Soon we came to know all of the staff.
As always, I wanted to hang around the projection booth. The operator was a man named Red Teal. He was very old and I couldn't understand a word he said. He was also very frail. He used a hammer to close the film cans and on film shipping night I would help him open and close the cans so he wouldn't beat them to pieces. I would also help him with some odds and ends in the booth. He would point at something and make some guttural sound and I would usually figure out what he meant.
 Theaters are notoriously cheep when it comes to salary. Staff would come and go on a regular basis and daddy was always hiring people. His latest concession manager was a Mrs. Massey. She was a rather plain, overweight woman, with unkempt hair. She always had a trail of snuff that ran from the corner of her mouth to her chin. The problem with being the concession manager was that if you wanted help, it came out of your salary. For several weeks Mrs. Massey tried to run the concession by herself. This might work during the week but the weekends were another story. Lines backed out the door as she tried to pop the corn, fry the burgers and french fries, pour the cokes, and run the cash register all by herself. The complaints came pouring in and daddy would try to help out as best he could. But while he was helping in the concession the box-office lady would call and need change or someone would need to see the manager. Daddy informed Mrs. Massey that she was going to have to come off her pocketbook and hire some weekend help. "How about your son?" she asked. With those four words I had a job. I would work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights for two dollars a night. That worked out to be about 40¢ an hour at a time when minimum wage was $1.10 but I was only 14 and $6.00 was a lot of money to me. I would start the next Friday.
The Edgewood was huge. Its lot would hold 600 cars. That meant 1200 speakers. There always seemed to be a breeze blowing across the lot on hot summer days. Unlike the Rexview there were no seating areas. There was a large patio in front the concession. I always thought umbrella tables would look nice on the patio but that never happened. The screen tower was a wonderful place for a 14 year old boy to explore. During the week before I went to work daddy had occasion to go into the screen tower. The face of the screen was of course painted white but the area below the screen area was painted flat black. Three black doors faced the lot. There was a door of average size in the center and some feet away were larger doors to the right and to the left. The center door opened into what at one time had been the office. It now had long easels hanging from the walls at an angle and was now used as an art shop. There was a musty smell which was mixed with the smell of paints and rolls of vinyl poster material. There were shelves filled with an assortment of paint cans, brushes, rollers, spray paints, and all manner of art supplies. Reusable signs such as "Coming Soon" and "Starts Friday" hung from nails on the walls. Rolls of old movie posters filled the corners and advertising sketches were thumb tacked to the wall. On the opposite end of the room was another door that lead to the street side of the screen. There was a covered porch with flower boxes to the right and left sides of the porch. There also were colored floodlights that lit up the underside of the covering at night. To the right and left of the art shop were huge storage rooms. The room to the right was my favorite. Over the years projection equipment from closed theaters had been deposited in ths room. There were hundreds of projectors, many in pieces and some complete lying about the room. I spent countless hours playing with the abandoned equipment, taking it apart and putting it back together again.
On my first night on the job I was shown how to pop the corn, fry the burgers, and deep fry the french fries. It didn't take much training. I had been around the concession most of my life but this was my first experience waiting on the public. Between costumers I popped more corn, fried more burgers, baked pizzas, restocked the candy counter and generally ran the concession. Mrs. Massey sat at the cash register, never leaving her stool. The first night was busy and I was tired and wanted to go home. Mrs. Massey informed me we had to clean up before that could happen. The work had had its element of fun but now it was time to clean and clean up is always clean up no matter what the job is. No fun there. With the lights off Mrs. Massey pulled a change purse from her pocket. I could almost discern a tremble in her fingers as she unsnapped it. Her lips tightened as she pulled two, one dollar bills from the purse. Holding the money so tightly her fingers were turning white she cautiously withdrew the bills and slowly handed them to me. As I took the cash she seemed hesitant to let go. Reluctantly, she relaxed her grip and the money was mine. For a moment she looked like she had lost her best friend but she turned and said that she'd see me tomorrow night. I then put the two dollars into my new billfold. I'd heard she was tight with her money but I did a lot of work for those two dollars. By Sunday night I had amassed six dollars. That was big money for me.
I worked weekends in the concession until school started in September. Mrs. Massey lasted only a few more weeks. She couldn't find help for what she'd been paying me. One night someone knocked on daddy's office door and told him he needed to check on his concession lady. Daddy went straight to the concession to find Mrs. Massey sitting on her stool, snuff juice running down her chin, staring at several angry customers. The work had finally overwhelmed her and she had simply stopped working. Daddy said that he would help her out if she would run the cash register. He jumped in and got the situation straightened out and got the crowd on its way. He then told her that the job seemed to be too much for her and that she would probably need to find employment elsewhere. He put it that way to give her the opportunity to explain herself. She offered no explanation and her only reply was to ask him if he would write her a letter of recommendation. Mother and I ran the concession for a few days until daddy hired a new concession manager.
 My father was a promoter. He would have handbills of coming attractions printed up and send my sisters and me to the mall to stick them on the windshields of cars. He would place huge posters on the marquee. He would book dusk to dawn horror shows on the weekends with a live radio remote on WDAK Radio. I would fill in at the box-office on the really busy nights as a carhop, a ticket taker that is. On the live remote night the entrance drive would be backed up to the street. In only a few months under daddy's management, the theaters attendance was rising. By his first anniversary the box-office was $10,000 up over the previous year.
During that first year Red Teal, the projectionist, retired. His replacement was a Harold Bishop. Mr. Bishop was cool. He drove a pickup truck that he had run the exhaust pipes from under the truck and up the back of the cab. That made it looked like a diesel rig. He quickly discovered that I loved to be around the projectors and I was always welcome in his booth. He could always tell some tall tales. I never knew when to believe him but I still remember many of his stories like the one where he was riding on a train. The train rounded a curve and began to shake wildly. He started forward to ask the engineer what the problem was. Before he reached the engine the train rounded another curve and began to run smoothly so he returned to his seat. When he arrived at his destination, there on the news stand was a newspaper with a headline reading, "Passenger train jumps track, runs two miles and jumps back on track." Now whether that actually happened I'll probably never know but it was a good story.
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