No doubt about it. Americans are in love with their cars. So in love, in fact, that we apparently hate to leave them.
We return library books and videos, mail letters, cash checks, pick up our cleaning, buy stamps, milk, roses and burgers, and watch movies, all from the cozy confines of our autos.
And, depending on where you live, it’s even possible to get a flu shot, view the deceased, get married, go to church and attend to the details of a divorce-all at a drive-through.
“The auto defines so much of what we do,” said Robert Kohl, history professor at Ripon (Wis.) College, who studies the effects of the automobile on American society. “I know of no other culture that has such an obsessive- compulsive marriage with the automobile as (Americans) do.”
Indeed, Americans said “I do” to the automobile in the 1920s, when the auto industry began the mass production that made cars affordable for the middle class.
“I teach (the car) as the almost perfect American machine,” said Kohl. “It fit our geography and the size of our country and the need for individuals to have means to direct themselves in all kinds of different ways, to go places and do things to meet the needs of a growing dynamic industrial society. It almost became a member of the family, so right off it had very broad social and cultural implications.”
So broad, in fact, that unlike in Europe, where the auto had to adapt to its cities, the cities here grew up to accommodate the automobile.
Kohl said: “The automobile appeared here before America became an urban society, so the cities grew up as an extension of the automobile. We have European students (at Ripon) who can neither understand the need for a driver’s license nor the fact that you can’t really do anything here unless you have an automobile. They just haven’t been drawn into the use of the automobile the way we have.”
Yeah yeah yeah. So we loved our cars right from the beginning. But if you were to ask any adult who has a driver’s license and a mortgage and a car pooling schedule posted on the refrigerator where he or she would most like to be, would the answer truly be, “In my car?”
Not likely. So why can’t we get out of them long enough to return a library book?
“It’s what we call `The 99 Lives Trend,’ ” said Elyse Ballard, spokeswoman for the Brain Reserve, a New York consulting firm that measures trends. “We saw this trend about five or six years ago with things like the drive-through (mortuary) and video stores. It’s the trend in which everyone is doing 99 different things with their lives, and time is of the complete essence.”
And in keeping with America’s ingenuity and productiveness, qualities Kohl also attributes to our love affair with the car, entrepreneurs have tapped into that trend with great success.
“People’s imaginations have gone wild when they think of what they can do to attract people in their automobiles, knowing that it’s a central feature in their lives whether they’re commuting or traveling or (socializing) because it’s assumed that that’s the way you get anywhere. Anything that can be done (with autos) has a guaranteed clientele.”
Drive-through convenience can be as ordinary as the grocery at 10240 S. Roberts Rd. in Palos Hills, where patrons can not only pick up a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread to tote home, but also a fast-food meal.
“People like this because they don’t have to get out of their cars and it’s fast,” said owner Bob Haddad, who took over the 8-year-old business a month ago.
Or a service can be as extraordinary as the drive-through mortuary, a service that has been offered by Gatlings Funeral Home at 10133 S. Halsted St. in Chicago. (A spokesman said the funeral home is not offering this service right now, however, and the owner would not return phone calls.)
More down-to-earth but still inventive is a driveup flower shop at 820 S. Elmhurst Rd. in Des Plaines. Owner Steve Sicurella converted an old Fotomat booth into the specialty shop called The Rose Connection.
“I kept reading about people out east who had taken over these booths after Fotomat went out of business,” said Sicurella. “One sells wiper blades, another is a little video store. So I thought I’d try roses. And it’s worked out pretty well.”
The booth can hold an employee and a cooler of flowers, mostly roses. By calling ahead, customers can even pick up enough flowers for a small wedding.
“In this society we live in, especially around here, the minutes count. People can drive up and get just what they want and be gone in a couple of minutes. Everybody is so rushed, so anything that cuts down on time people like,” Sicurella said.
Blockbuster Video outlets also have recognized that trend. Where space and zoning ordinances allow, the chain of video rental stores offers driveup and walkup boxes to its customers.
“It’s the only way I return videos,” said Tom Gruber, senior vice president for Blockbuster Video in Ft. Lauderdale. “Life today is very convenience-oriented, and (business) is based on giving customers what they want as quickly and as painlessly as possible.”
The drive-through concept even has been applied to divorce, possibly one of life’s most painful experiences. The Salem, Ore., law practice of Robert Nordyke is in a former bank, and Nordyke sometimes serves divorce papers and hands over final divorce decrees seated where bank tellers once handed out cash.
“(The driveup) works for an uncontested divorce where there are no kids and no major assets,” said Nordyke. “Someone drives up, pushes a button, and I hear a buzzer and go to the window and conduct a short interview, which takes about five minutes. I draft all the papers needed, and sometimes if everyone cooperates (the divorce) can be (granted) in the same day. Otherwise, they can come back in a week and pick up the final papers.”
Nordyke also uses the driveup window as a place spouses can pick up divorce papers rather than be served by a sheriff.
“It’s less embarrassing. No one wants to have a sheriff walk into the office in front of everyone else and hand them papers,” he said.
Nordyke said that only a small percentage of his clientele use the driveup window, opened in 1987, which has since garnered national media attention. But those who use it are usually people who “are already divorced in layman’s terms and have separate names and residences but need a piece of paper to say it.”
A doctor in Royal Oak, Mich., has also picked up on America’s penchant for drive-through convenience by administering flu shots to patients in their cars.
“I felt if people didn’t have to wait in the office and sign forms, more might take advantage of it,” said M. George, a physician with the Royal Oak Medical Center.
George held the drive-through flu shot campaign last fall in the parking lot next to his office. Patients drove through a station where they first received information on the flu shot, signed consent forms and paid the $20 fee before driving up to the second station, where they would roll up their sleeves and stick their arm out the window to receive the shot.
George estimates that his office staff usually administers 100 to 150 flu shots a season; with the drive-through service, offered over a three-hour period on two Saturdays, almost 500 people received the shots.
“We will do this again, and I would encourage others to do these things because that’s where we’re going to save on health-care costs,” George said. “If more get the shot, fewer come into the doctor’s office with the flu. And the flu costs business so much money because of people being off work.”
Though it’s difficult to pinpoint when the first drive-through service popped up on America’s landscape, restaurants and banks appear to have been leaders in developing the concept. Drive-in food service, for instance, became popular after World War II as a convenient way for families to eat out, Kohl said.
“The first drive-ins started out as family restaurants, but the teenagers soon took them over and drove the families away,” Kohl said. “My guess is that fast-food places really got their start as drive-in and drive-through places because people wanted to get inexpensive food and avoid the teen gatherings. And when more parents started working longer hours, they started buying more (at drive-throughs) so they could spend less time in the kitchen.”
That is confirmed by Wendy Webster, spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C., who categorizes drive-through and take-out food services as the fastest growing segments of the restaurant industry.
“Americans are more dependent on food service than ever before, but that doesn’t mean they want to bundle up the entire family and go out,” Webster said. “A lot of restaurants are seeing the handwriting on the wall and putting in drive-through windows and take-out service.”
Banks also recognized early on the convenience of drive-throughs. According to Virginia Stafford, public relations manager of the American Bankers Association in Washington, D.C., bulletproof drive-through windows were made for banks in the 1930s.
“World War II apparently slowed the growth of windows, and there were problems with the construction of those early windows,” Stafford said. “But by 1946 drive-in banking really began to take hold.”
Today, safety, as well as convenience, plays an important role in drive-through banking facilities, said Martha Rohlsing, vice president of public affairs for the Illinois Bankers Association in Chicago.
“Customers like the safety of being in their car and handling their transactions that way,” Rohlsing said.
The notion of being safe and secure in your car to attend to live’s myriad details spills over into the area of religion. For those who can’t or won’t get out of their cars, drive-in churches sprinkled across the country fill a spiritual need.
“Drive-in church meets a need for several groups of people,” said Stephen Trinkle, senior minister of the Westshore Christian Church in Tampa, which has held services at an abandoned drive-in movie theater next to its church. “There are the elderly and invalids who find it difficult to get in and out of cars. There are people who wish to remain private or anonymous for one reason or another but who want to worship. This is a good way to introduce somebody like that to our church. They can come and stay in their cars and it’s a very non-threatening kind of service.”
The drive-in congregation includes Cadillacs and beat-up Chevrolets, Trinkle said, and congregants tune into the service on their car radios. A ship modeled after Noah’s Ark is the stage, and churchgoers pick up a bulletin and communion from a booth when they drive in.
“We have people very, very dedicated to this who have been coming here for years,” Trinkle said. “For them, it’s not just an easy way to practice their Christianity. Some are very committed to our church and our ministries. We offer a fellowship time before the service begins so people can get out of their cars and have coffee. Some do, but others just stay in their cars and wait for the service to begin.”
Though there are not as many drive-in theaters as in their heyday in the late 1950s, it’s still a popular venue, said Jim Kozak, director of communications for the National Association of Theater Owners in North Hollywood, Calif.
“I don’t know why people think they’re dying,” Kozak said. “In some cases they’re a license to print money.”
Kozak said about 4,000 drive-in movie theaters existed in 1958, and now there are 872. Despite the decline in numbers, he said drive-in theaters are extremely popular where they do exist, particularly with families.
Said Kozak: “Parenting is coming back in a big way, and couples who have delayed having children are used to seeing the latest movies as soon as they come out. Now that they have kids they might not go out as much. One solution is to wait for (the movie) to come out in video. Another is to go to the drive-in and take the kids with.”
Kozak said that drive-in movie theaters sprung up around the country after World War II during the car boom years. They were typically built on large parcels outside of a city where the land was cheap and plentiful.
As the cities expanded and spawned suburbs, the value of property increased significantly, and many theater owners, having received incredible offers for their land, sold. “They’d have been fools not to sell, and that’s why a lot of them disappeared, and nobody replaced them,” Kozak said.
But the trend has somewhat reversed itself, and Kozak said new drive-in movie theaters are now appearing on the landscape once again.
“They’re great,” Kozak said. “They’re a lot of fun, and they’re definitely not disappearing.”
Despite the amount of time people spend not only driving their cars but also waiting in lines for drive-through services, Kohl said people still love being in their cars. He finds they’re much more patient waiting in a line of cars than they are when standing in lines on their feet.
“We feel free and secure and on the move when we are in our automobiles, even if we get in a line (of cars) and inch along, because we still feel we’re probably saving time. The car has been a symbol more important than voting in demonstrating that America is free. When we refer to ourselves as a free society, we’re really referring to the fact that we’re free to drive, not free to vote,” the professor said.
