When I got my senior driver’s license at 17, which permitted me to drive at night, I was able to start dating. I was a senior in high school, but I had limited use of our family car, a new 1954 Cadillac. I prevailed upon my father to buy me a car of my own. Although I wanted a “hot” car, such as a Ford V-8 that was good for drag racing, he bought me a stodgy 1949 DeSoto 2-door sedan. Automobiles then didn’t have center consoles or power steering, and I, like most of the guys of my era, put a “knuckle buster” knob on the steering wheel so that I could steer the car with my left hand while my date could snuggle up with my right arm around her.
Alice was 15 or 16 when I started dating her. She lived with her parents and an older brother in a nice home in the Nassau area. Her father, a professional engineer, and her mother (who claimed some distant English heritage – my mother referred to her as “the Duchess”) frequented my father’s tavern on some weekend evenings.
Although we had never previously had any conversations other than to say hello in the Columbia High School hallways, I decided to ask her for a date to the Auto Vision Drive-In theatre in East Greenbush. Alice was a sophomore at the time. My first date to the Auto Vision with one of her classmates didn’t go well because the girl’s father was incensed that I took his daughter to the drive-in instead of a regular movie theatre in Albany. The Auto-Vision was jokingly referred to as “the passion pit” and sometimes crudely as “the finger bowl.”
From our first date, Alice was passionate. She immediately responded to my first awkward kiss, and our movie-watching was interrupted by frequent long kisses, which everyone called “necking .”Sometimes, after a very passionate kiss, Alice would stop and smoke a cigarette.
Our drive-in dates became frequent, although she also started dating one of my classmates, Norman. I didn’t invite her to the Junior Prom and instead invited her classmate, whose father agreed to my taking his daughter to a chaperoned dance. Norman took Alice to both the Junior Prom and the Senior Prom (I took Ann, a new girl who had recently moved to the area, but that date didn’t go well). The Duchess was peeved because I had taken Alice to the Drive-In the weekend before the prom, and Alice, unfortunately, displayed a large hickey on her neck on the night of the Senior Prom.
To my delight, Alice became more passionate over the following months, and we went to the Drive Inn frequently during the summer vacation. Necking eventually turned into petting, and I became skillful in unhooking Alice’s bra strap with my thumb and two fingers. Alice always maintained a “no touching below the waist” rule.
Alice had a curfew, and she was the timekeeper. She would tell me when it was time to leave the Drive-In to get her home in time, so I was always home at a reasonable hour, usually before my father closed his tavern. There was one date that turned out to be very embarrassing. Alice’s parents had gone away for a weekend, leaving her under her older brother’s charge. Her brother did not impose a curfew, and she never told me when it was time to take her home. Consequently, we stayed until the movies ended, well after midnight. When we drove into the Village of Nassau on the way back to Alice’s home, we encountered my parents, who had been driving around looking for me. They followed us to Alice’s house, and I received a severe reprimand when we got home.
When I went to college, I would date Alice during vacations. During the cooler months, when the Drive-In was closed, we went to the Palace Theatre in Albany, where we could neck and smoke on the balcony. Alice had other boyfriends, but we still managed to get together, although less frequently. The last time I dated Alice was in late August of 1958. The summer following my junior year of college, I spent six weeks at ROTC summer camp in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. When I returned home, the first thing I did was to call Alice and arrange a date for the Drive-In that week.
After that summer, I never called Alice again because I had met Nedda, who later became my wife, and I never dated Alice or (anyone else) again.
Alice married, had a daughter, eventually divorcing her husband, and never remarried. Many years later, she brought her daughter to my law office to have a will drafted. That was the last time that I saw her, decades ago.
No trace of the Auto Vision Drive-In remains, and the space is now occupied by a loveless commercial building. Still, some fellow octogenarians and I sometimes reminisce about the East Greenbush passion pit.
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