The Ten Commandments

We sat in the back seat on the way there - not quite out of Dad's reach. When we got there, there were two long lines stretching from the entrance. We fell into the one on the wrong side of the highway, facing east, just off the shoulder of the west bound lane. As we inched forward, great clouds of summer dust rose up on the other side of the big wooden screen. The folks on the other side were doing what they could to get a good spot.

When we finally made it to the marquee, I thought we were getting close, but we weren't. Then I realized that the dust was starting to settle a bit; that dusk was settling in too. And I realized that, although we had been waiting forever, we still might not make it in time. It seems like I stared at that marquee for hours. Cecile B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments was written in brand new letters and the top part of the sign was whiter and brighter than the bottom section – new bulbs.

We bought tickets from one of the ladies walking to and fro along the gravel drive. When she came up to the window I noticed she was wearing a cotton nail apron with Morrison's Lumber Yard printed in bright red across the front. The apron was just like my dad used back in those days – except hers was new and clean and still kind of flat, like it had been pressed with an iron. It may have been the first time I had ever seen a fresh work apron. By the time I would see them, usually sitting in my spot on the vinyl seat next to Dad or piled with his hammers on the floorboard of the Jimmy, Dad's aprons were dirty and worn. By then, the tie string ends and the inside of the pockets would already be stained with all possible combinations of sweat, tar, and nail rust. Her apron was full of cash, coins, and ticket stubs and looked like it had never held a single handful of sixteen penny nails. We finally made it past the actual ticket booth, but it was really starting to get dark and we were still surrounded on all sides by slow moving family cars.

Suddenly, Dad glanced over his right shoulder, said something to Mom about avoiding the deep ruts, and looped wide to the outside of the half-dozen slow pokes still in front of us. He was a full car-width out in the weeds. Once we cleared the edge of the six-foot tall corrugated metal fence we saw that the theater was packed. Cartoons were over; previews were ending -- the movie was starting.

Once we found an open spot – at this point, the choices were always too close or too far back – Dad pulled up, rolled down his window, quickly pulled the speaker through the window and flipped the volume switch – then we moved on to the next spot. After a few tries, we found a working speaker. Dad turned the car around, got out, rolled down the back window, pulled down the tailgate, hung the speaker on the window, and we settled in to watch the movie. Dad took my brother and me with him to the restroom on the dark side of the concession stand – an off-white cinder-block building in the middle of the drive-in. I won’t try to describe the restroom there, but there was a reason Dad kept telling us to go to the restroom before we left the house. Mom wouldn’t go or take my sister there unless it was an absolute emergency. When we came out of the restroom, we immediately got in line for food. It was hard for me to see the screen while in line, but the sound was actually better right there since they had hung extra car speakers on each corner of the building.

It was a great movie even though it was hard for me to understand why God would kill the Egyptian children just because Yule Brynner had a hard heart. When it was over, there was another mass exodus – not between great walls of seawater, but instead around each side of the giant screen. Most folks stayed until the end; the lines were longer and slower. The westbound traffic ran all the way down Fourth Street into downtown Graham where only a few cars at a time were able to make it through the various traffic lights. It seemed like it took forever for us to just make our way onto the highway.

Although exiting traffic was a real mess, people were on their best behavior – there were no teenagers leaning out of their cars yelling obscenities, the locations of lake parties, or the like. It was not as solemn as a funeral progression, but it was close. Reverence seemed appropriate for such an occasion. After all, we had all just seen staffs turn to serpents, seven plagues come and go, and the Angel of Death pass over a family breaking bread under the blood of a lamb. We had seen God part the Red Sea; had seen Glory in Moses’ face as he drew the people out, and had watched the Law burned into stone while God’s chosen people sculpted a calf of gold.

On the way home, we lay in the back of the station-wagon, half-asleep on the clean thin sheets and comfy pillows that Mom always insisted we take on those rare trips to the Graham Drive-In. Behind and in-front of us, an endless caravan of headlights branched, divided, and branched again. Dads went in the houses first and turned on the porch lights. The stars came out and constellations filled up in the sky. We looked out the windows and counted the other shooting stars on the road home to Newcastle.
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March 8, 2014