The Last Drive-In

(Album: Western Underground - 1991)

Caravan of yellow wire and crawling across the plains
Rolling along in a single file like a slow moving train
It rumbled down out of the mist into the early morning light
Said they stay till the job was finished if it took them till midnight
There were cats and scrapers all caterpillars packed up by mile high crane
And it looked like monsters from the old b movies the drive-ins use to play
And we'd sang goodbye Saturday under the stars
Wake up little Suzy in my daddy's car
So many memories got lost and found
When a piece of history hit the ground
The day they tore the last drive-in down

Memories thick as the smoke clouds they made man and machine became one
Boards snapped like toothpicks on their blades but to us it sounded like guns
Cowboys soldiers gangsters and thieves James Bond and his golden girls
Well you could sit in your car and never turn the key and go half way around the world
And it stood like a landmark for forty years we never thought we'd live to see
It fall it to the ground and then just disappear like so many childhood dreams
And we'd sang goodbye...

A lot of the drivers had tears in their eyes but I don't think it was just the dust
See I still believe there's a little piece of that old drive-in left in all of us
Nobody moved through what seemed like hours, and slow motion it came tumbling down
We just stood there with a taste of metal in our mouths and a silence all around
The day they tore the last drive-in down
And we'd sang goodbye...