the best job for a poet

it's very spring-like here.  that's not unusual for february in these parts of the woods.  but when the days lengthen, the average daily temperature rises, & the local critters come scampering about like love is for sale, my thoughts & heart always, without fail, turn to the drive-ins.  the pandemic is hell on earth for a great many people & businesses but the drive-in theaters have seen a kind of small renaissance this past year because you can go out to the movies & maintain the required social distancing.  our local sac 6 drive-in theater was thriving before the pandemic.  it is doing very well now.  but as much as i love drive-in theaters & the culture of drive-in movies i've not been to the sac 6 drive-ins for a couple years now.  during the pandemic i've made do with staying at home with anna & nick & getting my drive-in fix via my memories, dvds, nostalgia websites, & youtube videos.  even with the sac 6 drive-ins open the culture of drive-ins have changed so much.  the eras of the car & car culture are over.  i mean over for the large portion of our society.  there will always be aficionados of gearheads to make the whole vibe still thrive.  & yet, i recall the mather auto movies where i saw flicks as varied as american graffitti [1973], sinbad movies with ray harryhausen fx, & bruce lee flicks etc etc.  mather auto movies shuttered in 1976 & the property was converted into tract houses.  i remember the single screen.  the playground [which is standard for drive-in theaters] was situated right below the screen.  i guess it was placed there so parents can both keep on eye on the kids & watch the movie.  the snack bar was in the middle of the lot so it was possible that if you were late the available parking spaces left were directly behind the snack bar building thus blocking your view of the screen.  the projection booth was another little building, a shack really, about 200 ft in front of the snack bar.  oh man, one of the greatest thrills for me was going to the snack bar.  not because the food was good.  snack bar burgers & pizza tasted gamey.  think of the swill you can buy at a gas station today.  now treble its oddity of flavors in a burger purchased at the mather auto movies circa 1973.  the food was, let's say, an acquired taste.  that didn't matter to me.  the snack bar was where the real drive-in experience was at.  for here you can find the coolest movie posters of recent & coming attractions.  you can smell the popcorn.  you can people watch the patrons of the drive-in.  you can hear the sounds of engines, music playing from car radios, the gabble of talk, the doppler effect of hundreds of staticky drive-in speakers, & the crunch of car tires over gravel.  but it was when my father & i walked back from the snack bar to our own family station wagon.  it was a sweltering sacramento summer night.  we approached the little shack of the projection booth.  the back lot lights were lit to allow for cars to drive away & out of the theater at intermission.  those back lot lights kept the drive-in theater in shadows but allowed for enough illumination to watch out for families spread out on the gravel on blankets.  drive-in intermission shorts - commercials that enticed you to go to the lobby to get yourself a treat - always played during intermission.  this hot summer night was no different.  i delighted in the light from the projector as it shined in the night air.  a steady bolt of lightning that attracted a halo of flying summer insects.  the door to the projection booth was open.  i peered inside.  the projectionist, a middle aged man, was sat in a ratty green la z boy recliner reading a thick paperback as the drive-in intermission shorts reeled thru their run upon the movie screen.  that sight thrilled me.  it still does.  for i believe any job is fit for a writer as long as it is honest & keeps the writer in what i call the three b's: beer, burritos & books [extrapolate your own needs accordingly].  but man, a drive-in theater projectionist!  read on the job.  write when you want.  & watch movies!  of course there are no more projectionists.  all theaters, or almost all theaters, have gone digital.  when nick & i were given a tour of the projection booth at the sac 6 some years ago - a real bucket list item for me - the manager pointed out that the movies were projected from digital arrays using either hard drives or internet streaming controlled by a central hub.  gone is the freewheeling projectionist & the art of threading 35 mm film reels into very hot projectors.  a lot of the old equipment was still in the projection booth, including an editing desk so the projectionist could splice together frames of the film stock.  when i asked why there was a toilet, just a toilet, no walls around it, the manager said that in the older days the projectionist could not leave the booth at all in case the film burnt or broke.  & yet, i think, if that old job of drive-in theater projectionist was still around, like i saw it on that blistering summer night, that would be the perfect job for the poet.  thick in the throng of drive-in life.  the hum of the reels as the film is fed thru the projector is a rhythm you can compose to.  of course i date myself, & dare risk nostalgia too.  we live in a digital age & the job & art of the projectionist is lost.  & yet still, i think of that dude sitting on his ratty recliner reading a thick russian novel - why not - & writing his jewel-like poems.  because that is what i'd do should i have been in his place.  why not, indeed.