A Good Day's Work (32 page)

It's the smell that really transports: frying fat, grease, cheese, onions and butter, or at least, something butter-like. The feeling it conjures is the bovine thrill that goes with the knowledge that when these smells waft through my nasal passages, something absolutely wonderful will follow. Somewhere in a back copy of the
New England Journal
of Medicine
there could be a study concluding that people like to eat food laden with enough trans fats to stop a bull moose because it stimulates something deep in the brain stem. I just don't want to know. Examining some things too closely plain drains the fun right out of them.

There are two intermissions—one for each screen—at the Mustang. Back in the early days the teens would come staggering from their cars, looking for something, anything, to absorb the booze. Tonight kids in pyjamas and carrying blankets line up behind teenagers, all flushed and glassy eyed from a couple of hours pressed together in an airless vehicle. Paul doesn't judge. He just stands in the doorway, working the room without actually moving, the trace of a grin on his face even when he's not actually smiling.

Often it's the sight of a familiar face. Like a black-shirted Crown attorney from a nearby town named Paul who saunters over along with his wife, a photographer named Anita. A woman named Amanda waves. A guy who summers in the area—and who once sought out Paul's advice on his marital woes—tells him confidentially that the union is back on the rails. A Celt named Angus, hands full of canteen fare, makes
a detour to pay his respects. A couple of college students from Ottawa, there in a Smart car, want to know if they can sleep under a picnic table if they're too tired to make the two-hundred-kilometre drive home.

Paul speaks to everyone like they went to kindergarten together. “People just like to check in,” he says. “Sometimes I feel like a Wal-Mart greeter. But I've made some terrific friends.” The repeat business—the vacationers who summer in the Picton area and the locals coming since they were little shavers—speaks to that. Tammy, who has been working at the Mustang for twenty-one years, and Grace, with fifteen years of service, are more friends than paid employees. Some of his pals just show up and work free: Paul, the aforementioned lawyer, has been helping out since having to run interference for his namesake with angry patrons complaining about the lousy sound quality. His wife, who almost always ends up helping in the kitchen, has seen more customers than movies.

To some, the owner seems to enjoy a status far more rarefied than that of a humble movie projectionist. Five years ago, when a couple of regulars named Dale and Darla got hitched at the Mustang, Paul officiated. One Halloween he did the honours at another on-site wedding as a personal favour to another regular—a high school adolescent-care worker as well as one of the stars of a reality TV show called
Outlaw Bikers
.

Before visiting the Mustang, I went online and clicked on the guest book to try to get a sense of what it is that people like so much about the experience. For some it was predictably the bittersweet journey to a nicer, better time: “Our 39
^th
Anniversary is Jan. 30, 2010,” writes Susie, “and when we were younger with 3 boys we used to pack them up and put
them in our 1966 Oldsmobile and bring them here to watch the movies.”

“Some of my fondest memories are from my first summer job working at the drive-in, 1971 when i stayed with my aunt and uncle who ran it then,” writes Dogbytes. “Along with my cousins, I was part of the grounds and snack bar crew, and I learned to splice film, run the projector and re-wire torn off speakers … all great fun for a lad of 12.”

Tidrock1 just wanted to thank Paul “for bringing back all those warm, childlike feelings that i have not felt in so many years! If it was not for people like you an era gone long ago, an era of fun and youthfulness would be lost forever, please keep up the outstanding work, and let's keep this ultimate form of movie going alive!!!!”

Some people dig the tunes (“Thanks for playing Bruce Springsteen all the time.”) and the grub (“Every weekend we are there watching movies in the middle row with my buttered popcorn and her French Fries. I don't know what I would do with my summers if something happened to this place.”). Some seem to be actually there for the movies. (“During the winter months, we watch vintage drive-in intermission videos and count the days to spring and more Mustang memories,” one couple wrote.)

Paul is mighty grateful for everyone's support. He gives shout-outs over the loudspeaker to birthday celebrants. He happily shares the nuances of the projectionist's trade with anyone who walks in the door. He answers emails. He writes a semi-regular blog about his movie likes and hates—a spinoff from the movie reviews he does for a trio of Ontario newspapers. (FYI: his all-time favourite flick is
American Beauty
, with
The Verdict, Three Days of the Condor
, the
Godfather
trilogy and
Apocalypse Now
close behind.)

At one point during my visit Paul indicated two trees at the front of the property. One is dedicated to the late Katie Graszat, a teacher who volunteered at the Mustang more than she ever watched movies. The other tree is in memory of a young man named Jay Hoskins, another volunteer, who died in a car accident. He and his girlfriend used to come to the Mustang three or four times a week. Eventually Paul just said the hell with it and gave them a permanent free pass.

Paul, it must be said, seems to genuinely like the human race. Which may explain why he hasn't entirely left his past life as a youth crisis worker behind. He's written a book—and an accompanying interactive application—that follows four survivors of near-fatal suicide and asks the question: what if those who succeeded in taking their own lives had waited a day? He still gets calls from old clients. One is a woman in her early thirties who was horribly abused from the ages of four to seventeen. Somewhere along the line she was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, an ailment that many specialists think is bogus. “My attitude is: whatever it takes you get through your pain,” Paul says.

Thirteen years ago she showed up at the drive-in and told him that she was going to kill herself. The two of them walked around the drive-in grounds for hours. Throughout, several different personalities surfaced. Paul talked to all of them before finally convincing her to check into a hospital. Today she's a happy mother of five. Sometimes she takes her kids to the Mustang to watch the movies and catch up with her old counsellor.

The drive-in business, Paul likes to say, has turned out to be a really good way to make hours and entire days disappear. Running a drive-in may sound pretty idyllic to a sixteen-hour-a-day dairy farmer or an eighty-hour-a-week downtown lawyer. But the past five years he and Nancy have cancelled exactly two shows during their eighteen-week season—because of weather. They run four movies on All-Nighter Night. On P.J. Night, when every kid wearing jammies gets in free, the gate can swell to 550 paying customers. Usually Paul turns out the lights by 1:15. On Saturday evenings—Triple Feature Night—the last person doesn't leave until 4 a.m.

No wonder, during drive-in season, Paul and Nancy forgo their farmhouse for the apartment over the projection room. During the day there are toilets to unclog, speakers to rewire and popcorn machines to fix. (“I didn't start out doing stuff,” Paul says, “but picked it up as I went along because I had to. My job is a little bit of everything, whatever it takes.”) Whatever else is going on, come 6 p.m. Paul has to start rewinding the previous day's movies. He threads the film through the projector, He looks outside to see how many cars have arrived. Because, baby, it's showtime.

PAUL may move slowly around his domain, but after a while you notice that he is seldom at rest. He makes his rounds: sticking his head inside the none-too-pretty bathroom, checking on the projectors, strolling around the grounds. Come daylight he might find wallets, the occasional hooch bottle, even an iPod or two lying in the grass. “I find lots of
unpleasant things too,” he says, then adds, “It's good that people are doing things safely.” Sometimes he wakes people up in various states of undress. Last season, as he approached a car, he was startled to see two naked females exit, open the back seats and then sprint the two feet to the front seat, slamming the doors behind them.

Generally, though, things are tame. It's been years since he's slapped a hammerlock on a high school senior crazy on Canadian Club. When he's satisfied that everything's under control, he takes Anna by the hand and they head up the stairs to watch some
Shrek 2
from the back-screen projection booth. At 11:50 p.m., when the first cars are starting up their engines, Paul is already in the kitchen, helping Nancy clean up. By his estimation, the rain cost him about three thousand dollars at the gate and canteen tonight.

He can't afford too many more nights like that. Margins are thin in this business. A few days of rain is a drag. A week is a catastrophe. But time moves slowly at this point in the evening. Paul is fifty-four years old; after a full day in a long week the bedroll beckons. He daydreams about getting out on his motorbike on the highway, and about what the season ahead will hold for his beloved New England Patriots. Sometimes he thinks about the moment he and Nancy shut the theatre for the winter, hop in their RV and join the caravan to Florida.

At 12:45 the credits roll down the big screen and Paul flips on the transmitter:

Then, as the credits continue, he cranks the AC-DC, has a seat and waits. Some people return their radios. A sheepish-looking father, son in tow, appears at the door of the projectionist's room and asks if Paul has some jumper cables. Paul tells him not to sweat it. He just smiles, hoists his gear up and follows them to their car. It happens three more times, which is about par for the course. At least every engine turns over. No one has to be driven home.

By now all the cars are gone. Stars crowd the country sky. The air has a crunch like a Granny Smith. From where I stand, I can see the headlights disappearing into the night. It's a lonely image, really.

God knows where exactly they are going. And what precisely waits for them there. It's all out of Paul's hands. All he does is his thing: Show a few movies. Try to bring some people together to take their pleasure the old-fashioned way. It's a small dream, he knows. He'll tell you this too: we'll only miss it when it's gone.

CHAPTER
TEN