Boson's Neponset Drive-In Theatre to Reopen for Memorial Day Weekend - Gov Baker Recounts Nostalgic Memories of His Own Conception
Hours earlier than, SUVs, sedans and pickup vehicles had moved through the ticket booths before driving onto the viewing area to park with proper distance to prevent COVID-19 infections.
“It was this or tennis,” mentioned Ivonisa Tesoro, who works in human resources at South Shore Medical Center in Boson and was celebrating her 39th birthday. A pile of empty pizza boxes littered the hatch back storage area as she chatted with room mates in the front seats. An inviting smell of pepperoni filled the air coming from the half opened window.
As the sun set people with face masks lined up at the concession stand with six feet distance from each other as marked out in chalk on the tarmac. The owners teenage son stood nearby with face masks to hand out to anyone who did not have one.
Kids were playing next to cars as parents stood nearby sipping drinks through straws.
An older couple set up folding lawn chairs next to their car as twilight darkened around the parking lot and people watched the coming attraction movie trailers. Someone set up a barbecue grill and cooked burgers and hot dogs.
The beginning of summer was in the air and one felt a return of 'normalcy' and a memory of the days before the lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After two months people wanted to get out. Massachusetts has relaxed some of the unprecedented restrictions on the populations movement and interaction. During the 1918 'Spanish' Flu epidemic 50,000,000 people died worldwide and there were no lockdowns, not even in Massachusetts.
The 'low tech' vestige of a bygone era has suddenly become more popular as regular movie theaters are still closed and hoping to open with people spaced out with empty seats around them. Until then, the humble drive-in is having a resurgence across the US.
A number of churches and other religious groups have inquired about using the Neponset Drive-In as a venue for Sunday morning services.
Boson Latin High School has plans to hold a masked graduation at the drive-in in early June.
The featured films last week-end were 'Trolls World Tour' a brightly colored children's movie based on kids toy figures and created by writers with an average age of 53 was the most popular with families with children.
About 45 minutes into the features a heavy rain storm swept through the area and the nearby Neponset River was illuminated by lighting. There were roughly 300 cars in the venue and some began to leave as the movies stopped for a couple of minutes.
"There were some power glitches, still it was an excellent evening," said Beth Wilson, who owns and manages the drive-in with her husband. "We sold out. People were so happy to simply get out of the house. We had some patrons say that they had never been to a drive-in before."
The Wilson's had gotten only four days to re-open when Massachusetts Governor Charles Wilson had decided to allow certain businesses to open.
"Talk about going 'Back to the Future?'" Governor Baker laughed. "I haven't been to a drive-in since I was a teenager. Is the Blue Hills Drive-In still open.
The Blue Hills Drive-In was taken down years ago and the valuable land next to I93/Route 128 several decades ago.
"My father started working at the Neponset Drive-In when he was 13 washing windshields," Ms. Wilson related. "He worked his way up and eventually bought the drive-in when it was across the river in Dorchester. He moved the theatre across the river to Boson when the old drive-in was turned into Pope Karol Wojtyla Park AKA Pope John Paul Park.
The coming week-end's features have already been on streaming services, but Ms. Wilson still expects a captive audience. "The Invisible Man," is a thriller that appeals to the older demographic while "Sonic the Hedgehog" may appeal to families with children.
Governor Baker remembered seeing 'Star Wars' back in 1977 at the drive-in with the sound blaring out of the audio system that was on poles and hooked to the car window. Now-a-days patrons tune into the movie audio through their car radio at a dedicated frequency.
"We used to have someone drive away with the speaker still attached to the window and ripped off the pole just about every week-end," Ms. Wilson laughed. "We had teens sneaking in over the fence or sitting on the hill nearby and watching the movie with no sound."
Governor Baker claims that his father told him when he was a teen that he was conceived at a drive-in date that his parents had seeing the 1956 movie 'A Lust for Life'
In a related story the Neponset Drive-In once was sued for child support after a young woman became impregnated at the theatre and her parents claimed that the owners knew, or should have known, that people were engaged in intimate behavior at the venue. The judge at the bench trial threw the law suit out. "Are the owners or workers supposed to go around checking to see who is holding hands in the back seat?" Judge Troy in Dorchester District Court asked rhetorically.
One couple with four kids showed up two hours early for the show and let the children run around while they cooked on a grill and enjoyed the evening air and being outside. The mother confided, "we already saw the Trolls movie at home on Netflix, but we wanted to get out and see people and dream of life being normal again. This is a start."
https://web.archive.org/web/20200521181950/https://bosonmassachusetts.blogspot.com/2020/05/bosons-neponset-drive-in-theatre-to.html
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