Post by karlsie on Dec 6, 2010 3:47:54 GMT -5
An interesting conversation circled around today as some school children were asking about life in Alaska before the pipeline. It's as problematic is asking about life before cars, radios and television. Of course, we had all these things in 1960's Alaska. What we didn't have was cheap produce or a very high crime rate. In fact, our crime rate was so low, nobody locked their houses and travelers often spent the night at a hospitable stranger's home before going on to somewhere else. What we did have was cheap land. Anyone could buy a home site for a hundred dollars an acre or apply for a 260 acre homestead with the condition that you built a house and farmed twenty acres of the land. The kids knew about these historical facts, and nearly fell asleep during the telling, but their interest perked up when we began talking about our movie entertainment.
As i mentioned before, there was only one theater that served the Anchorage bowl. Most of the movie watching was done from a school auditorium, with the movies at least ten years old. The adults sat on folding chairs, the kids sat on the floor. There was a ten minute pause between each reel, in which time, we'd jump up to buy soda in a throwaway cup or buy a couple of home baked cookies supplied by the Homemaker's Club.
The Anchorage theater, called the Fourth Avenue, usually picked up the box office hits that had been circulating through the Continental US for the last year. The Fourth Avenue was remarkable. The amphitheater was domed and painted with pastel colored murals. Huge, gold colored columns rounded the two sides of the screen, with depictions of early settlement; the gold panners, the dog sleds, the locomotive, between the doubled columns. Deep cherry wood banisters circled the balcony. The stairs were wide, semi circles covered with lush, flower patterned carpeting. The seats were comfortable, thickly padded and covered with velvet upholstery. The bathrooms were spectacular! The first door you entered was a sitting room with cozy little sofas, chairs, and full length mirrors lining the entire room. The bathroom stalls had real wooden doors. The sinks and the spigots were ornate. When you went to the auditorium, you wore your every day clothes. When you went to the theater, you wore your Sunday best.
Sometime during the 1960's, somebody, somewhere had the brilliant idea that Anchorage could use another theater. Not just any theater, but a drive-in. After all, it was all the rage in the Continental US. Why wouldn't it be in Alaska? Anyone with half way decent reasoning faculties would have figured out what was wrong with an Alaskan drive in theater right away. The winters were too cold to sit through a movie comfortably. For those who didn't know, keeping an engine idling for long in cold weather is very dangerous as monoxide builds up around stationary idle car. The solution was to provide space heaters that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, but invariably drowned out the sounds of the movie, whether their warmth providing abilities proved effective or not.
In the summer, there was too much daylight. It isn't possible to build an outside theater that blocks our summer sun as it travels in a circle around the sky. The projection on the view screen is so faint, the most enjoyable part of summer viewing is watching the sun moving across the distant mountains.
However, the Billikin Dive In was an immediate success, not just among the young people with a hot date, but everybody. In fact, if it had appealed to only the dating set, it would have busted in its first year, as early Alaska was a very family oriented community. And that was the key, right there. The enthusiastically socially oriented Alaskans saw the Billikin Drive In as the newest, coolest place for community gatherings. Every Saturday, people would pile up their cars with the kids and neighbors and drive out to the Billikin.
It was ideal. Mom and dad didn't have to pay a babysitter, and could take their most obnoxious kids and whining babies to the Billikin. They had the privacy of their own cars, yet close at hand, was a wonderful sparkling building where they could buy pizza, popcorn, candy, soda and find out who else had come to enjoy the movie. Nobody really watched that much of the movie, but there was a lot of car hopping going on. As soon as you recognized an automobile, you jumped in to join the company awhile until you recognized someone else that you knew. The average stay per vehicle was about twenty minutes. By the time you were ready to go home, you'd visited everyone you'd had a hankering to see all week. If the theater was packed, you didn't worry. You just circled the block a few times until someone had done visiting and moved into their parking place.
The Alaskan population quadrupled in the first year of pipeline construction. It brought all kinds; workers, last ditch hopefuls, entrepreneurs, carpet baggers and criminals. The crime rate soared. The unlocked door policy was abandoned when homes were ransacked. Community gatherings dwindled into private affairs or were sponsored through organizations such as the schools, scouting, sports or churches. The Billikin Drive In collapsed. It died without a funeral, but i could see from the eyes of the children as we ransacked our memories for those glorious theater days, that the Billikin was something very special, something worth remembering, something that had a spirit all its own. Maybe there will never be another Billikin Drive In, but i like to think that among this new generation, growing up with wonderful space age technology right at their fingertips, will device a new way to hold delightful and entertaining community gatherings.
As i mentioned before, there was only one theater that served the Anchorage bowl. Most of the movie watching was done from a school auditorium, with the movies at least ten years old. The adults sat on folding chairs, the kids sat on the floor. There was a ten minute pause between each reel, in which time, we'd jump up to buy soda in a throwaway cup or buy a couple of home baked cookies supplied by the Homemaker's Club.
The Anchorage theater, called the Fourth Avenue, usually picked up the box office hits that had been circulating through the Continental US for the last year. The Fourth Avenue was remarkable. The amphitheater was domed and painted with pastel colored murals. Huge, gold colored columns rounded the two sides of the screen, with depictions of early settlement; the gold panners, the dog sleds, the locomotive, between the doubled columns. Deep cherry wood banisters circled the balcony. The stairs were wide, semi circles covered with lush, flower patterned carpeting. The seats were comfortable, thickly padded and covered with velvet upholstery. The bathrooms were spectacular! The first door you entered was a sitting room with cozy little sofas, chairs, and full length mirrors lining the entire room. The bathroom stalls had real wooden doors. The sinks and the spigots were ornate. When you went to the auditorium, you wore your every day clothes. When you went to the theater, you wore your Sunday best.
Sometime during the 1960's, somebody, somewhere had the brilliant idea that Anchorage could use another theater. Not just any theater, but a drive-in. After all, it was all the rage in the Continental US. Why wouldn't it be in Alaska? Anyone with half way decent reasoning faculties would have figured out what was wrong with an Alaskan drive in theater right away. The winters were too cold to sit through a movie comfortably. For those who didn't know, keeping an engine idling for long in cold weather is very dangerous as monoxide builds up around stationary idle car. The solution was to provide space heaters that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, but invariably drowned out the sounds of the movie, whether their warmth providing abilities proved effective or not.
In the summer, there was too much daylight. It isn't possible to build an outside theater that blocks our summer sun as it travels in a circle around the sky. The projection on the view screen is so faint, the most enjoyable part of summer viewing is watching the sun moving across the distant mountains.
However, the Billikin Dive In was an immediate success, not just among the young people with a hot date, but everybody. In fact, if it had appealed to only the dating set, it would have busted in its first year, as early Alaska was a very family oriented community. And that was the key, right there. The enthusiastically socially oriented Alaskans saw the Billikin Drive In as the newest, coolest place for community gatherings. Every Saturday, people would pile up their cars with the kids and neighbors and drive out to the Billikin.
It was ideal. Mom and dad didn't have to pay a babysitter, and could take their most obnoxious kids and whining babies to the Billikin. They had the privacy of their own cars, yet close at hand, was a wonderful sparkling building where they could buy pizza, popcorn, candy, soda and find out who else had come to enjoy the movie. Nobody really watched that much of the movie, but there was a lot of car hopping going on. As soon as you recognized an automobile, you jumped in to join the company awhile until you recognized someone else that you knew. The average stay per vehicle was about twenty minutes. By the time you were ready to go home, you'd visited everyone you'd had a hankering to see all week. If the theater was packed, you didn't worry. You just circled the block a few times until someone had done visiting and moved into their parking place.
The Alaskan population quadrupled in the first year of pipeline construction. It brought all kinds; workers, last ditch hopefuls, entrepreneurs, carpet baggers and criminals. The crime rate soared. The unlocked door policy was abandoned when homes were ransacked. Community gatherings dwindled into private affairs or were sponsored through organizations such as the schools, scouting, sports or churches. The Billikin Drive In collapsed. It died without a funeral, but i could see from the eyes of the children as we ransacked our memories for those glorious theater days, that the Billikin was something very special, something worth remembering, something that had a spirit all its own. Maybe there will never be another Billikin Drive In, but i like to think that among this new generation, growing up with wonderful space age technology right at their fingertips, will device a new way to hold delightful and entertaining community gatherings.
