Community, part 3

This is a comment by Land of Shimp, left on a post of mine last week about drive-ins. Such a wonderful, self contained narrative, and such a startling final image, I just had to post it. Thanks, Shimp. Now it's a memory of mine.

My grandmother, long gone now, told me a story about the first drive-in she ever went to, many years previously, in the forties. She and my grandfather were in Oklahoma, as my grandfather was covering another teacher's year long leave.

There had been a terrible drought in the area, and the entire community feared for the growing season. A new drive-in opened in town, and as happens with new attractions, just about everyone for miles showed up, ready for the feature when...and you knew this was coming...it began to bucket down rain.

Everyone got out of their cars, and danced around in the rain, cheering, clapping as Joan Crawford towered overhead.

That was long before I was born, and I never even met my grandfather, but it's the strangest thing, that's my most powerful memory of a drive-in. One I wasn't even witness to.

Community reaching across time, eh? I can see it in my mind, Crawford's rather severe face, obscured by long prayed for rain.

Crawford's stern face hanging in the air like a disapproving God, as the community celebrates below. Lovely.