Pig in a park at dusk

“What time is dusk, anyway?”

That is the operative question when planning to go watch fireworks or free movies in the park.

While I’ve pretty much outgrown any serious interest in the former, I can still get excited about the latter – particularly when the film is one I’ve never seen or the setting is new to me.

Those two qualities applied this evening and I headed toward a city park here in Whitby, Ontario at around 8 p.m. to take in “Charlotte’s Web,” featuring the voices of Julia Roberts, Robert Redford, Oprah Winfrey and other cinematic notables.

My affection for these open-air exhibitions may stem from childhood days in Ohio when our family piled into the car and headed for the drive-in theaters that have since almost completely disappeared from the landscape.

Part of the appeal was being able to create a personalized “nest” in the back seat. Blankets and pillows from home made our deluxe accommodations seem quite cozy, so cozy, in fact, that we three kids rarely stayed awake until the end of the second feature.

Though the sound quality actually left much to be desired compared to large and expensive speakers housed in indoor theaters, having that little volume knob on a window-hanger speaker gave the illusion of providing control over the audio.

I remember my father experimenting with various locations atop the berm that allowed just about any desired angle of incidence for screen viewing. From the ideal perspective, each family member should be able to sit in complete comfort and see the entire screen.

When the car was in motion, my sisters and I often argued for the right to sit in the front seat. We usually made a similar stink over who would enjoy the “front row seat” at drive-ins; but the winner quickly realized that sitting up front greatly limits nest-building opportunities and before long he or she would crawl over the back of the seat and join the siblings.

Our family car was a carryall – a cross between a panel truck and a station wagon. Its height made it only fair that we occupy a berm near the rear of the lot – or near one side or the other – as we would definitely block the views of others. But that added height, along with our father’s scientific maneuvering meant that we could usually see the movie from any of three rows of seats.

The Whitby “theater” is level parkland. Families were already gathered in roughly formed rows – actually more in clumps that comprised rough rows. Each encampment had unique features designed to meet family needs based on ages, sexes, numbers and dispositions of the kids.

Some parents obviously prepared to deal with sleepyheads and brought warm blankets, pillows and stuffed animals. Others were ready for big appetites, hauling huge ice chests and bag after bag of goodies to their sites.

Here and there, parents applied insect repellant to exposed skin. Some were like me and uncertain of how long they’d be waiting for the show to start and brought interim toys and other distractions for their offspring. And a few seem to have simply brought anything and everything they could carry, setting up campsites that appeared to be equipped for the entire weekend.

When the movie began, most of the kids in our crowd appeared to be oblivious.
For a few moments, I feared that the constant company of videos in most 21st century homes might have made the movie part of this evening less captivating for today’s kids than it was for me in years past.

But the magic of E.B. White’s classic, combined with the sky’s transition from blue to black dotted with and emerging blanket of stars, soon captured the young audience’s attention – and held it for the duration of the film.

I was four when Charlotte’s Web was published, living in Ohio and spending the occasional evening at a drive-in theater. The story of a pig and a spider and the power of friendship resonated in me then, but never more than tonight under Canadian stars in the company of a new generation of humans.

Today is my friend Frank’s 100th birthday and the topic of friendship has been on my mind since breakfast. Charlotte, the spider, seemed to be senior partner in the relationship until her own vulnerability became known to the viewers. The tragedy of loss was tempered by the joy she experienced when her dying efforts succeeded in saving her friend from the Christmas dinner table.

And hope for new friendships became reality when hundreds of Charlotte’s young appeared in the springtime and set out into the world to seek adventures, and friends, of their own. Three remained behind in Homer’s Barn with Wilbur and the others to build on a community of friends who had learned to love each other despite their differences.

Canada doesn’t seem at all like a foreign country; but I suspect that children anywhere in the world would understand the simple but profound messages offered in tonight’s presentation. It’s a shame that these same messages fail to guide their parents.

It’s a beautiful Friday night in Ontario.

“There's no denying that our own little Wilbur... he's part of something that's bigger than all of us. And life on that farm's just a whole lot better with him in it. He really is some pig.” - Homer Zuckerman