Just beyond the windscreen, Rocket Man was hovering above some bad guys trying to destroy America. I was four, eating hot chips squirted with tomato sauce in the back seat with my ten year-old brother. Dad was eating a pie. Donald had, I had not, tasted Coca Cola. I can’t remember what I enjoyed the most; the vengeance or the chips drenched red.
After interval, I held my breath as the King of the Wild Frontier died at Alamo.
I was given a replica raccoon cap and rifle for Christmas. By then I’d tasted Coca Cola.
Suburban Melbourne, 1955 / Bruce Graham Fell
Bring back the drive-in / Bring back my youth / The girl I made love with on Saturday night / We’d back-up, plug in the speaker, open the tailgate and watch a movie / a rug in the back, some had a mattress / a packed of Frenchy’s, twenty Peter Stuyvesant and a big bottle of Tarax / If me wife was reading this, she’d say: bring back the boy from Saturday night, cause he’s turned into a podgy codger watch’n Fox Sports.
I was sitting in the back seat when I noticed in the distance a bright screen. I think it was Fantasia, but it could have been Gone With The Wind. As we drove down the road we got closer: it was giant. There was no sound, but I sort of heard it. Mum was watching too and so was dad as he drove towards it. The enormous screen illuminated the world, like suburbs do today. And then one night we went. Me in my pyjamas and pink dressing gown and my brother, Tim, in his basinet.