Double Date, Double Trouble

A lovers’ moon hung low and stars shimmered between the Appalachian crests. But for us, the ambience was wasted. 

Her father sat behind the wheel, with her 12-year-old sister on the passenger side. In the back seat she sat in the middle, with me on the left and her other boyfriend on the right.

We were at the Park Drive-in Theater in Marion, Virginia. This was my first car date and—as one might surmise from the guest list—not only was it a disaster, it was war.

I’d known Peggy all my life. We’d shared most of the same classrooms from first grade well into high school. We also lived in the same neighborhood, so I’d seen her knee-skinned and muddy and rained on and all the other ways kids grow up.

But lately I’d begun to see her differently. She was getting pretty and I was getting interested. We’d been out twice before, both times to the only walk-in movie in town. My father had driven us.

Enter Charles, who was a year older and already had his driver’s license. So when Peggy got her license a few months before me, I tried to counter his advantage and escape the parent-mobile by suggesting that she and I go to a drive-in movie.

The next morning before school, she told me her father wasn’t ready to turn her loose with the car, but he would be glad to take us that Saturday night. Unsure quite what to say—at least my dad dropped us at the door—I stupidly put off giving her an answer.

Then a few minutes later I saw her talking to Charles. Not to be out-maneuvered, I puffed up my scrawny carcass as best I could, square-shouldered over to the two of them, and told her I’d be glad to go.

She said, “Great,” then invited him, too.

When they picked me up on Saturday, Peggy was driving and Charles was in the front seat. I climbed into the back with her dad and little sister. Advantage Charles.

At the drive-in we pulled up beside a speaker and everyone but me changed places, with Peggy coquettishly positioning herself to keep Charles and me equally close and distant. Advantage Peggy.

The movie was Father Goose, a wartime comedy about an unlikely romance. It was also our situation precisely because war was imminent, given the proximity of the combatants, and romance unlikely, given the presence of forward observers.

Nevertheless, Charles and I quickly began jousting for her affection. At first we each held a hand, unless she wanted a sip of her drink or some popcorn. 

As we became more bold, one of us would put his arm around her on the back of the seat, which would last until numbness set in. Then it was the other’s turn. 

I must confess that after one’s arm has turned into a dish rag, retrieving it does not demonstrate much manliness or stamina or whatever it is 15-year-old women are looking for. I was just glad her daddy could afford a car wide enough that I could lean to the side, slide my arm away, and catch it without slapping her in back of the head.

Of course, if either of us thought the other’s arm had overstayed its welcome, we would exchange glares over the package rack.

The movie was funny and we all laughed a lot. But as I sat there beside Peggy with Charles’ arm around her, I would have run screaming off into the night could I have done so without leaving her alone with him.

Her dad drove us home, me first. I issued a polite “Had a good time” and “See you Monday,” then beat a welcome retreat. She and Charles soon became an item and I practiced making a fool of myself with other girls.

A few years later, Charles and I found ourselves at the same college, where he majored in industrial arts and had access to the auto shop. So to keep our respective clunk-mobiles on the road, we became buddies and got greasy together a lot.

Peggy went to school somewhere else and became a lawyer. She and Charles got married and moved to Florida, where she set up a bankruptcy practice and he restored vintage automobiles.

Years passed. The Park Drive-in fell dark as the low-tech allure of automobile theaters slowly succumbed to cable TV and video games. For much too long, its monolithic wooden screen towered rather pathetically over the tents and tables of a weekend flea market.

But out goes the bad air.

In 2000, the renamed and rebuilt Park Place Drive-in recaptured its theater roots, incorporating an ice cream parlor and miniature golf. 

Likewise, decades after our date, I reconnected with Charles and Peggy. No sooner had we said our hellos than—to the delight of their children—we began belly-laughing through the tale of our zany love triangle and the war we waged in a single foxhole dug into the upholstery of her daddy’s backseat.

Charles and I decided that ours was the only skirmish in history whose combatants suffered from dish-rag arm.

Lewis Garnett was raised in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, where he was weaned on pinto beans, molasses, and a small town full of colorful personalities. Nowadays, when not driving charter buses, he writes and tells stories about these eclectic influences. Some of his stories have been featured on National Public Radio. Find him at www.storiesbylew.com.