The old songs suddenly need appropriate alteration: “Some enchanted evening, you will see a stranger across a crowded room. Make sure he stays there.” Or, “Wise men say, ‘Why do fools rush in?’ You got THAT right, wise men!” How about Unchained Melody? “Oh, my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch. But not as much as I thought.” So much for Romance.
Unless, of course, you are a member of an upstart tribe called “The Resistance,” which equates Science with Folly. “Resisters” are like the guy trapped in a room full of snarling tigers---his answer to the problem is to shut off the lights. The tribal mascot is the lemming and their anthem is “Blinded By The Light.” Oddly, there aren’t as many of them as there used to be.
Summer, hot under the collar to begin with, is outraged by this twist of Fate. Summer is the season of giant weddings, family reunion barbecues, beach blanket bingo, crammed airports and bustling dive bars. Summer is baseball at SRO Fenway, cheesy eating marathons on Coney Island, the Burning Man extravaganza in the Black Rock Desert of Northwestern Nevada. Is the Silly Season to be replaced by masked campers toasting virtual marshmallows? Is there any hope for a well-placed lightning bolt of salvation, a Frank Merriwell Finish? Is it all a wash? The Flying Pie considers the possibilities.
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| From the ridiculous.... |
Summer is vacation time, a general melee featuring planes, trains and automobiles, but not so much this year. The planes are full of Covid fumes, the trains are slow and full of covid fumes and the automobiles have to stop at suspect hotels. Ah, but there is a remedy for all this if a man has the means to harness it. The glorious Recreational Vehicle is out there waiting in all its glory. Just think of it—no lingering clouds of airliner virus, no need to spend the night in murky motels, just you and the open road. The Smoky Mountains are waiting, Yosemite is batting its eyelashes in your direction, there’s plenty of room for proper spacing at the Grand Canyon.
“The train is off the rails!” announces jolly Craig Smith at Santa Rosa RV in California. “When the virus hit, I thought I would be sitting at home playing tiddlywinks but just the opposite is happening. In a typical week, the dealership might sell six RVs. “Last week we sold 22 of them,” Smith said. Most dealers agree that sales have at least doubled. It’s a sellers’ market, driven by a shortage of units after Covid-19 closed the RV factories. “We’re going to be running shy by the middle of Summer,” Smith said. “It will be Fall before we get restocked. Wish we had more.”
For those with insufficient funds to buy, there’s always leasing if you’re fortunate enough to track down a source. Grandpa Jones and his wife Tillie of Keokuk, Iowa will rent you their 19-year-old old Winnebago for a mere $100 a day or what the traffic will bear. “It’s up for bids,” said Jones. “Grandma just installed one a them fancy bidets---just slightly pre-owned but in mint condition---like they have in Paris, France, in the bathroom. The AC will get you down to 80 degrees and there’s plenty of liverwurst in the refrigerator.” The bidding seems to have topped out at $2500 a month, but Grandpa is hopeful.
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| ....to the sublime. |
How many times have you skipped right past your Aunt Bessie’s place in Savannah on the way to Orlando? You don’t remember, but it’s in the ‘teens? Old Aunt B.’s digs are looking pretty good right now, though. A germ hasn’t passed through her door in twenty years and terrified viruses stay well clear of her dynamic cleaning program. Long unvisited relatives like Bessie are in the midst of a visitor boom the likes of which they’ve never seen. “If this keeps up, I’m going to have to take reservations,” she smiles. “I had the grandkids last week and some third cousins from Bartlesville are showing up tomorrow. I don’t know who the hell half of them are but you have to take in family.”
Eschewing airline travel improves your chances of escaping vacation unscathed. Camping out or visiting relatives enhances the odds even more. But the savvy road-tripper still has pitfalls to avoid. Even if food is prepared in advance and restaurants are no longer an issue, there is an even scarier bugbear lurking in the bushes: the dreaded highway bathroom monster, a worry even in the best of times.
What to do? You can feel the awful vibes, smell the acrid fumes, imagine the waiting Covid-droplets from twenty yards away. The wife has clasped her terrified children to her breast in horror, crying “No, George! We can’t go in THERE!” It might be time to consider the suggestion of the ancient road-trippers---incorporate nature into the solution. If so, propriety is a must. While a little bit of friendly urine is an acceptable gift to the flora and fauna, anything else is unconscionable. Proper citizens should always utilize The Code of the Trail---what you carry in, you must take out. That’s what plastic baggies are for. Your dog requires this attendance, are you any better? Does a wild bear defecate in the woods? Absolutely! Should an American tourist? Perhaps, but only with the greatest of civility. Behave yourselves. Your sainted mother in heaven is looking down on you. What would she think?
People To See, Places To Go
As the grisly images on television will advise, places like Miami Beach, Ocean City and most of the Jersey shore are to be avoided like so many T.
Rex petting zoos. Any body of water into which you must be squeezed with a spoon (like Redneck-O-Rama in the Lake of the Ozarks) is probably not a good idea. But there are broad stretches of both oceans and many lakes and ponds in relatively unpopulated areas that would open up their lonely arms to a few customers. You just have be tolerant of the lack of cotton candy shops, trinket stores and semi-naked women in transparent bathing suits, a tough nut to swallow.
The National Parks are always a healthy choice. All of them have lesser-used trails which keep you away from the teeming masses and even the more populated trails decrease in hikers the further you go. Acadia, in Bar Harbor, Maine, is the perfect spot for New Englanders, and southerners can scurry over to Smoky Mountain N.P. or slush around the Everglades (watch those giant pythons, they eat small children and yappy dogs). Texas has Big Bend, Colorado the zippity-doo-dah Rocky Mountain National Park and the Far West has more places than you can shake a Leki walking stick at.
One small caution. The National Parks are not Disneyland, where the protective eye of Mickey and company watches over the proceedings. Silly optimists get bumped into the middle of next week by moody bison who are insulted by heavy petting. Perfectionist photographers are prone to lose their subjects when they ask them to move one teeny extra step back, where awaits the abyss. Unfortunates whose knees go out halfway down the Zion Narrows are caught between the rocks and a hard place, as there is no likely rescue. Climbers who get halfway up Half Dome and decide it’s a bad idea cannot call the Yosemite Fire Department and request a few boys with a net. There are no handicap ramps on the glacier. All this was reinforced to Siobhan and I when we descended on a five-hour mule trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 104-degree temperatures and asked for the escalator back. Take plenty of water and a couple of signal flares.
One Pepperoni Pizza, Four R.C. Colas And Some Mosquito Spray, Please
So when is the last time you motored on down to your local drive-in theater? How many decades? Well, assuming it’s still extant, you might want to truck on over for a visit. The place is hopping with frustrated movie-goers locked out of Regal Cinemas, large families with a heavy dose of Cabin Fever and typical citizens with eating disorders. If you think carnivals are the junk food capitals of the world, you haven’t been to the drive-in lately. We got the Slushies, the Monster Energy Drinks, Grande Nachos with Cheese, Soft Pretzels, our own special Salsa Cup. We got Freeze Pops, Assorted Ice Cream Bars, Sno Cones and the ever-popular Cotton Candy Fluff. We got Chili Dogs and Giant Baconburgers, we got Chicken Tenders with Special Sauce, and if all that gives you a big headache or stomach issues, we got Tylenol, Advil and Tums. The Buggables Mosquito Repellent Wristbands are a measly $1.50, get your six-pack for the whole family. There are benches at many of the drive-ins and you’re invited to bring your own chairs for proper spacing. Leashes are available for dogs and errant children.
It’s not just the conventional drive-ins which are prospering. A few clever entrepreneurs have taken to the medium in desperate times. Miami business honcho Eddie Bernal, 32, recently launched his own temporary drive-in theater operation called Carflix Cinemas after local government orders led to clients canceling bookings with his live event company, Aver Productions. Bernal’s business, which has its own 36-foot LED movie screen, partnered with owners of the local Dezerland Park indoor recreational complex to set up a drive-in at the massive parking lot outside Dezerland’s facility in North Miami.
“As soon as the whole pandemic news started, we began trying to figure out what the future held for us,” Bernal told CNN Business. As we saw business declining, we started coming up with more ideas to generate revenue. This was one of the ideas presented by our staff and we pursued it.”
Bernal has exhibited such films as Sonic the Hedgehog for his early show at 5 p.m., following up with the original Jurassic Park three hours later. He’s getting sold-out crowds on weekends for a parking lot which holds 175 vehicles at $30 a carload. Food truck vendors selling hot dogs, burgers and sushi have been recruited to feed the masses.
In Queens, New York, Kal Dellaportas, the operations manager at the Bel-Air Diner, had a positive experience after starting up the restaurant’s own drive-in on May 6th. “The first time we put tickets up for a movie called ‘The Sandlot,’ tickets sold out in three minutes and there were over 500 attempts in that time to buy online,” Dellaportas reported. Since then, his outfit has shown audiences classic films like Grease and Dirty Dancing. Dellaportas said the Bel-Air Drive-In has been so popular it has allowed him to rehire staff members furloughed after the shelter-in-place orders were enacted in March, decimating foot-traffic at restaurants throughout New York City.
Bernal says he doesn’t see drive-ins being a long-term viable business opportunity because movie studios don’t particularly care for them. “But in the mean time….in between time….ain’t we got fun!”
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
