Drive-In Cannibalism

We live in Louisville, KY. We drive cars and pay our taxes. Generally speaking, a man will only marry his sister here if he already got her pregnant. In other words, we try to maintain a certain appearance of civility.

However, if you were to attend the Kenwood Drive-In Theater, you would see some of the people that time forgot. Most of these folks haven’t quite got the hang of walking erect. They are Cro-magnon movie goers, if you will allow me to coin a phrase.

But, we’re there almost every weekend during the summer. Mostly because we can talk to our friends during the movie if it is boring and not have to worry about bothering anyone else.

Also, the general feel of the drive-in is not stuffy or restrictive. You can go shoe-less. You can go shirtless if you’re male. You can sneak people in. You can drink beer. You can smoke pot or cigarettes, whichever you prefer. Most importantly, teenagers can have pre-marital sex in their cars and use the money they would have otherwise had to spend on a motel room toward their college tuition.

But, like I said before, the crowd can be a little apish and rude. If the movie doesn’t start on time, they will start blowing their horns and bouncing on their cars. This amuses me. What’s the rush? Where are they going when the movies are over at 4 a.m.? For my part, I wish they’d wait until it’s dark to start the film so that we could actually see the first 10 minutes of it and not just guess at which characters the vague shapes represent.

I think the crowd is just looking for a reason to riot and loot. There is always an underlying feel of unrest. I sense that it won’t take much provocation to work them into a frenzy. I fear that, if the concession stand ever runs out of food, there might be wanton destruction and maybe cannibalism.

Speaking of cannibalism, we saw Wrong Turn last weekend. The theme of the movie is hillbilly cannibals who trap and terrorize motorists. It didn’t scare my husband. It bothered me, though. Not because the movie itself was scary, but because I know how relatively close those mutant hillbillies live to us.

Of course the degenerates in the movie were simply actors dressed up and playing their parts, but I have seen the actual degenerates that the characters were based on. Well, ok, I’ve just seen the house. I know they were in there, though. It couldn’t have been anyone else.

My yard needs a lot of work, and I do it until I get bored or tired, then I just put it out of my mind. So, I am by no means snooty about the way people maintain their yards. It’s just when I see gas cans, car parts and dead animals lying about in someone’s front yard that I start to get a little nervous.

I can get lost within two miles of my home, a fact I am not proud of. It was on one of these rather embarrassing occasions when I saw the house that surely must contain this very scary sort of deviant.

I was lost on a dark, winding road, and I pulled into what I assumed to be a deserted lot to turn my car around. It was almost completely bare of grass and had junk all over it. Parts of the area looked like they had been bulldozed. Really.

Then I saw the shack. It was set back off the road. It shocked me when I noticed there was a dim light in the front room, because I would never have imagined that anyone actually lived there. To this day, I can’t be sure this house even exists in daylight hours. It could be some sort of otherworldly trap for all I know.

But, I did not leave the relative safety of my car to investigate the house, nor did I even think to do such a thing. Unlike anyone you have ever seen in a horror movie, I took myself out of danger and into a more lighted area of town.

I used my cell phone to call my husband for help with directions only after I found an area that appeared to be cannibal-free. I think this was a wise decision on my part.

Isn’t there some kind of mora
l here? Like maybe: Don’t ask cannibals if you can borrow their phone. Of course, that will need to be reworded and polished a bit, but I think it is good solid advice.

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