Dining Duhs

[DisneyMom]

:dropmouth :dropmouth :dropmouth :dropmouth DisneyMom!!! :dropmouth :dropmouth :dropmouth :dropmouth

hehehehe......... :twisted:

[I am Sam]

I have tales from the Paint your own pottery studio. I owned one between 2003-2005. Unfinished bisque absorbs everything. The paint, water, oils from your hands, and food oils. We always went threw the rules wash your hands, pick out a piece, how to use our paint (lightest color first, only put a dot of your first color in your tray since they dry fast, dry paint w/ hair dryer in between coats, do at least 2 coats of each color no more than 3) and if you eat (you could get a discount at the pizza place next door if you are painting a piece) wash your hands, with each customer.
The kids usually followed the rules to a tee. Every Saturday there was at least one child telling a parent that they were wrong. Adults often screwed up the rules. One child's birthday party was completely destroyed because the parents all touched their kids' pieces after eating pizza without washing their hands. When it's glazed and fired oils and grease make a bubble that pops during the firing process. We also ran into a lot of parents bringing in toddlers to paint a present for Granny and Grampy for Christmas, birthday etc. But not let the child paint anything on it, like Granny is gonna think 2 year old Jacob can paint his name perfectly, stay in the lines, and make the paint layers perfectly even. These were also the parents that brought the child nothing to keep them occupied. The worst was a woman who sat and painted for 4 hours without anything for her 2 year old including no snacks, drinks, change of clothes (he had just been potty trained), toys, books etc. Thank goodness we had snacks like gold fish and Capri suns for my sisters and crayons and clothing pages printed off the computer. He did about fifty dollars of damage to pottery pieces and yes I charged his mother for them. We had large signs everywhere "I break it, I cry, you break it, you buy". I always brought out snacks and coloring stuff in these situations because the kid was the one who got blamed if something happened. We had one parent loudly bad mouth her son's father on her cell no more than two feet from him. I told her she had to stop or leave. Well she left her 4 year old in our shop to bad mouth him outside. He was left painting with the only poisonous paint in our store. I had three customers call to ask us to replace their piece because they dropped it in their kitchen and it broke.

[WEDFan]

Drive-In tales continued… and as you’ll see, GP and hobie have anticipated some parts of this final installment. :D:

Tales from the ramp – For those of you unfamiliar with drive-in setups, the ramp is a fan-shaped parking area arrayed in front of the screen. Cars are parked in curving rows facing the screen with their front tires raised up on a ridge so people in the car can see the whole screen. There were posts with speakers attached spaced along the ridge so that you always had access to a speaker on either the right or left. You would take a speaker and hang it on your window in order to get the sound. I always thought drive-ins were cool because you had the collective experience of movie going, while being isolated (to a degree) in your own car. Good times! SGs had a variety of tricks. Driving off with the speaker in the window as GP said. (Our wires weren’t as tough though, we were more likely to lose the speaker.) Leaving early and putting on your headlights to drive out. Annoying people in adjacent cars. Hitting posts. Hitting other cars. I’m sure you can imagine it all. Some of the most interesting ones came when the ramp man walked the ramp after the movie, though. Things left behind ranged from the expected (trash) to the unusual (small kitchen appliance) to the just plain gross (used condoms and the bitten-off end of a rubber sex toy). :bugeyes: Gloves were a must. But then there were the SGs that wouldn’t leave. The ramp man would always try to be subtle. Run the flashlight beam across the windshield from a distance. Most got the hint. If not, move a little closer. Maybe yell. This one time there was a van with no sign of life at all. The ramp man eventually had to walk up and knock. Clothes, limbs and large swaths of pale flesh were flying everywhere. While the girl tried to cover up, the guy jumped into the driver’s seat wearing nothing but his underwear and took off. With the speaker, I might add. They didn’t call it the passion pit for nothing.

Finally, my favorite drive-in story. When we opened the drive-in in the spring, there was always a work day where everyone who could do basic wiring would go out and check/fix all the speakers on the ramp. We would make some repairs throughout the season, but the spring was the time we really tried to get every single stand working. There were actually two drive-ins run by the same company, and I was helping out with the theater that wasn’t my usual haunt. This theater specialized in R-rated movies. At any rate, one of the people checking speakers calls for all of us to come see what he found. He has the head off the last post on the end and in the back. Inside there’s the feeders and 3 sets of speaker wires. For those paying attention, you may recall that there are two speakers on a post. One set isn’t our usual wire, either. We track it down, and at the base of the post there’s a hole. The wires come out, go underground and cross the border avenue, go under the fence and into the bordering woods. A short way in, they go up to a tree house. Local kids had built the tree house, liberated a speaker, and created their own viewing area. What do you think, hobie, better than the hay bales? It was so clever and had taken so much work none of us had the heart to take it out. We made sure their speaker was working and let it be. ;)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane. I have. lol

[hobie16]

Definitely better than the hay bales. I would have spliced into the wire so I could mix in my own sound rack. Say when a horror film is showing some extra groans or a few, "Let's get those kids in the tree house." kinda stuff. Maybe some target advertising. "Up in a tree house and have a powerful thirst? Jump the fence and head to the snack bar for a Coke."

[BRWombat]

Believe it or not, there's a fully-functioning drive-in theater about 30 minutes south of Dallas. Four screens, double feature for about the same price you'd pay for a single matinee ticket in a regular theater, and a concession stand with a wide variety and reasonable prices. It's a great experience -- if it weren't an hour+ from my home I'd go there more.

When I was little and my parents would take my brothers and me to our local drive-in, I remember hearing stories about some of the tricks they'd heard of where people would try to get in without paying. Unfortunately, some teens in our area had tried the putting-people-in-the-trunk trick once too often. They were rear-ended on the way to the theater. Suffice to say it didn't end well.

[WEDFan]

Believe it or not, there's a fully-functioning drive-in theater about 30 minutes south of Dallas. Four screens, double feature for about the same price you'd pay for a single matinee ticket in a regular theater, and a concession stand with a wide variety and reasonable prices. It's a great experience -- if it weren't an hour+ from my home I'd go there more.

When I was little and my parents would take my brothers and me to our local drive-in, I remember hearing stories about some of the tricks they'd heard of where people would try to get in without paying. Unfortunately, some teens in our area had tried the putting-people-in-the-trunk trick once too often. They were rear-ended on the way to the theater. Suffice to say it didn't end well.

You can still find drive-ins around this neck of the woods, but they are usually second-run houses and pretty run down to boot. That's sad about the trunk incident. Thankfully we didn't seem to get too many of those. The back path was much more appealing. There was a 7-11 type place in the strip mall, so they would unload all the kids but the driver, pick up snacks and walk in. At least it wasn't dangerous. Just not usually successful. :D:

[Zazu]

Great Drive-in Stories! Hopefully that gal got a guy who at least had a bigger trunk :twisted:

:dropmouth :dropmouth :dropmouth :dropmouth DisneyMom!!! :dropmouth :dropmouth :dropmouth :dropmouth

Wait, was that another elephant joke? :elephant2

[Mayonnaise]

Still a few drive ins up here too. There's one out on Cape Cod we love, and there's one nearby in Malta, that I've honestly never been to. It was always more of a vacation in Cape Cod activity.

At the Welfleet in Cape Cod they do First Run Double Features, so it's really great bang for your buck. When I was a kid we'd go in our pajamas, and my parents would put us to sleep in the back after the first movie, and then watch the second movie, which they always put the higher rating movie second. Kids flick first, then something a little harder.

8^)

[WEDFan]

Still a few drive ins up here too. There's one out on Cape Cod we love, and there's one nearby in Malta, that I've honestly never been to.

Technically, that's not "too". We're talking about the same area. ;)

[Mayonnaise]

*Checks location.*

So we are!!!! Howdy!!!!

8^)