A news flash announces that you can now go to drive-in movies during the pandemic, and that there are two drive-in theaters in the Bay Area. I haven’t thought about drive-in movies in many years, but suddenly a memory comes creeping in . . .
Without much thought, I send a text:
Me: I just read that during the pandemic you are allowed to go to drive-in movies. Do you remember that our first date was to a drive-in movie?
Him: Every time I hear from you I remember how much I loved you....
I am more than lucky. What a sweet way to say “Are you out of your effing mind? Out of the blue you want to know if I remember something from 55 years ago?” Our exchange continues.
Him: Do you remember what we saw?
Me: No! It was 1964! Do you? Do you remember where the theater was? Did you clean your car before we went??? 😇
My text had come out of the blue to a man I broke up with fifty years ago, whom I have seen but a few times in the intervening decades. And he wants to know what movie we saw?
Him: I'm thinking it was a double feature, though I was paying more attention to you than the movie. The second movie was The Yellow Rolls Royce. The theater was near the Cow Palace, and I'm not sure I ever cleaned my car back then.
Me: I cannot believe you remembered it. I must've been too distracted by the man sitting next to me.
So of course I look up the movie. I discover that one of the major parts has Omar Sharif and Ingrid Bergman in Yugoslavia as World War II is raging around them. The Germans are getting ready to invade the country, and the Communist Partisan revolt is brewing.
I must’ve been really distracted to forget this. And now my mind starts circling…
***World War II is in full force in 1941. A yellow Rolls Royce pulls up to the Yugoslavian border. No one else is waiting to get in. Ingrid, a wealthy, native-born American, seems alone, but a handsome bearded Yugoslav patriot, Omar, is hidden in the trunk.
***The Cold War is in full force in 1973. Tania drives up to the Yugoslavian border. Tania is a naturalized American, born in Yugoslavia in 1949, after the Communists took over. She was unceremoniously exiled from that country as a baby. She is alone. There is no one in the trunk.
***Ingrid is driving a yellow Rolls Royce. She is a wealthy American heading to a party given by royalty.
***Tania is driving a small, cheap Japanese car. She works in France near the Swiss border and is heading to visit relatives who still use newspaper strips for toilet paper.
***Ingrid has a fussy little dog who starts sniffing around the trunk. But when the border guards get suspicious, she flaunts the name of the Serbian king and of her friend President Roosevelt. She is allowed in without further ado.
***Tania pulls up to the border. Unlike Ingrid Bergman, she does not have a safe passage from Marshall Tito—quite the contrary. She does not have a friend in the White House, occupied by Richard Nixon. And Nixon and Tito are not pals.
There are a few cars ahead of Tania. Each driver is interrogated and the car searched.
The car in front of Tania suffers a fate far worse than all the preceding cars. It is torn apart piece by piece. The doors are disassembled, the trunk is eviscerated. The floors are pulled out. The window and door handles are removed. The people are taken inside, strip-searched and questioned. It seems like this will never end.
Finally they are allowed back and forced to reassemble their own car. They quickly jump in, ready to be off. They stare at the border barrier; the guards stare at them. Finally, after more tense moments, the long white barrier pole creeps up to a 90° angle and hovers above them. They drive through.
I, Tania, stare at the guard on the other side of that barrier and see that he is waving me by, impatiently. I turn on the motor. It is a stick shift. I throw it into first, press the gas, release the clutch—and kill the motor.
I start again. Turn the key to start the motor, shift into first. The man is now waving angrily as if I am the one holding up the show.
I step on the gas, the car lurches forward, I pass by the barrier, wave at the man who is standing there and move through. He starts screaming and running after me, sirens start blaring, someone else is shouting and running, a motorcycle gears up. I step on the brake and look back.
Clearly, I was not supposed to go through the border. I was supposed to pull up to it.
So of course I throw the car into reverse, step on the gas—after checking to see in my rearview mirror that there is nobody there—and slam into something, shattering wood and bending metal. Someone must have released whatever was holding up the barrier at the same moment that my car crashed through.
The barrier is in splinters and I am back outside, staring at the land of my birth. How does one recover from crashing into and destroying the boundary gate into one’s parents’ country?
I’m fucked. I can’t bear to think what might happen. My father has warned me all my life that I should never go back. It’s an evil, Communist country, and everyone knows people disappear in places like that. This is foolish and dangerous. But he is in California, and I am here, alone. What was I thinking?
The border barrier lies all over the pavement before me. I am surrounded by men with guns and dogs. A rifle is pointed at me as I get out of my car.
“Passoś!”
They stare at my passport. It is American, but shows my birthplace as Yugoslavia. I briefly consider pretending I don’t understand their language. My language. Fortunately, I do not try that gamble. I answer their questions.
“So you left this country when you were six months old and went to America. Your mother is the only person you know from Yugoslavia. And yet you speak our language perfectly...”
It is not a compliment. It is a statement of major disbelief. In their minds the story lacks any credibility. But who am I? What idiot would break through the barrier if she was really a spy? If she were here for nefarious purposes? Who would send such an idiot on an assignment requiring any intelligence?
Fortunately, although I am twenty-four, I look about thirteen. I look like a naïve child. And my Serbian, while fluent, is the language a child speaks with her mother. Not the language of a sophisticated adult. I’ve never spoken in Serbian to a sophisticated adult; I have only spoken to family members—child to parent.
Finally, my obvious stupidity must have overcome any alternative scenario to the one I describe. The guards shake their heads, check my passport once more, put a stamp on it, and wave me through. There is no longer a border barrier to lift. I drive in.
***Ingrid Bergman drove north, towards Ljubljana. I drive east, toward Zagreb. They let us both into their country.
This is not a dream. I find my old passport. It carries the stamp: Kozina, on the Slovenian border, August 31, 1973. It doesn’t say watch this woman, she’s dangerous.
Surely my passage would have made a better movie than Ingrid using influence to get in? I did not remember this movie from the drive-in theater in 1965. I did not remember Ingrid Bergman or that sexy young Omar Sharif. I did not remember a yellow Rolls Royce.
Hmmm... we split up before I was old enough to drink... or else I might think I looked high. Probably taken at Greg’s sister Jackie‘s wedding.
But I do remember my handsome young Greg and my first date in an American drive-in movie. Those details I will leave to your imagination.