My Aunt June and Uncle Pete used to have one of these in their cottage in Brewster Park
on Cape Cod. We lived year round on the Cape and thus our house had none of that delightfully
half assed aura (for lack of a better word) that a summer cottage had. A summer home smells
inherently different than and continuously occupied house. There's a funky, earthy smell that
overpowers the cooking/laundry and people smells that dominate an ordinary house. O.K.
so it's probably a cocktail of mold, mouse droppings, mildew and dust mites, but whatever it is
it has a special place in my heart. A key ingredient to that smell is heat, nothing, absolutely
nothing smells better than a summer home in Autumn (Indian Summer Here) on a cold morning
with the heater warming up (be it a Warm Morning as pictured or a Wood/Coal Stove) and
coffee and bacon on the stove. The only thing that might be better than that is listening to the
Red Sox in October on A.M. around a campfire on a transistor radio (borderline reception helps
here) civilisation is at it's sweetest when you have to work for it.
Unfortunately it's now long gone, but I have some extremely fond memories of the Dennis Drive-In. In the early summer, the sun goes down late on the Cape, real late, 9-9:30 late, so a trip to the drive in when we were little almost always involved jammies and sleeping bags. When we had a wagon or truck, we would park facing backwards and open the tailgate. The three of us kids would lie down facing out the back with our pillows on the tailgate. Since the speaker (pictured right) was invariably shitty and hung on one of the front windows, there was considerable debate among us siblings as to what exactly was being said at any one time. This was how I experienced both Jaws and Star Wars, the two seminal movies of my childhood. Needless to say Jaws scared the living crap out of me, to the point where I couldn't go in the water for like a year, I shit you not. Star Wars on the other hand topped up an imagination originally filled with Star Trek and Forbidden Planet. In high school I also saw The World According to Garp while parked with a girlfriend in an adjacent development's cul-de-sac. By that time (~1982) the speakers had been replaced with a system that broadcast radio over FM. One of the things I remember most is the peculiar experience of climbing out of your cozy sleeping bag, putting your sneakers on and walking to the snack bar to get some popcorn or go to the pot (most likely the pot as I am pretty sure we brought our own refreshments), it's a weird feeling walking around in what is essentially a huge dark parking lot in your pajamas trying to watch the screen and where you are going at the same time, stopping from time to time as something exciting happened in the movie. Finding your way back was a bitch, in the dark cars look remarkably alike and it was easy to get turned around, especially when you were focused on the movie. I hope we can find a drive-in this summer, our Van has a bed in the back and rear facing seats, it is the ultimate drive-in mobile
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