Mustang Drive-In
Theatre owner says his business can make adults ‘take leave of their senses’
Things are bad, but they could be worse. Just imagine no drive-ins whatsoever. Fortunately, if you drive on Country Road 1 just outside of Picton, Ont., on a warm late summer night, in this year of 2015, you will come across the Mustang Drive-In, owned and operated by Paul Peterson.
Peterson was chronicled in a book published two years ago titled A Good Day’s Work: In Pursuit of a Disappearing Canada. The idea of the book was that its author, journalist John DeMont, would profile various individuals toiling at honest, oldfashioned jobs, such as milkman or blacksmith. Nothing outsourced to Mumbai.
In the book, DeMont quoted the drive-in operator’s opening night spiel to his customers, as dusk turned into darkness: “While I am ethically challenged, and most people think I’m so crooked I could hide behind a corkscrew, if you have fun tonight, tell someone else,” Peterson would say. “We’ve built this business on word-of-mouth. No one believes anything I say, but if you tell them, they listen. By the way, if you don’t have fun, keep it to yourself. No one likes a whiner.”
Among other things in the book, Peterson revealed trade secrets. “Movies are a popcorn delivery system,” he told DeMont. ‘The markups are so huge.” But it is emotion that draws customers into this particular theatre and keeps it afloat.
“Drive-ins have an ability to make any adults of a certain age take leave of their senses,” DeMont writes. “Something about remembering the subversive pleasure of being up late in your jammies while the other kids are home in bed, the economy of carload nights, the freedom of being able to make jokes at the screen while your parents smoked in the front seat.”
Drive-ins in general, De Mont remarks, appeal to “the desire to recon- nect with the objects of youth.”
It is Peterson’s physical presence that lent an air of distinction to the proceedings, his friendliness and ease with the customers. He has officiated on the premises at the wedding of two regular customers of the drive-in. He is often noticed in public. ‘When he opens his mouth to ask the price of a head of lettuce in a grocery store checkout line,” DeMont observes, “complete strangers turn, stare and ask if he is the ‘drivein movie guy.’ ”
Given the rapid pace of obsolescence, I feared the Mustang might have disappeared in the two-year interim since the publication of A Good Day’s Work, but the institution is still going strong. (There are a few other Mustang Drive-ins in Ontario, remnants of the time when there was a chain of such theatres. The current owners retained the name.)
“We’re digital now,” says Peterson. “That’s changed. That means we’re poor. But really, it’s the same. Lots of fun.” It’s been a good year so far, with such cash cows as Jurassic Worldand Minions.
“Family pictures are our stock in trade,” Peterson comments.
Above all, the neighbourhood atmosphere remains. “It sounds a bit lame, trying to describe it,” Peterson says.
“It’s a community. I have always understood that I am the custodian, in that sense. It’s very rare on a Friday night that somebody doesn’t come up to you and shake your hand and say, ‘Thank you for doing this. This is so cool.’ ” Freelance writer Philip Marchand contributes frequently to Toronto Star Wheels. To reach him, email wheels@thestar.ca and put his name in the subject line.