Twilight Gardens was literally a block behind my childhood house on Carleton Way in The Village. Everyone could see the back of the massive screen from their backyards along Carlton Way and Chaucer Drive. My parents, older brother and older sister used to pile into my dad’s station wagon, fill the back end of it up with blankets and pillows and go see a double feature there on hot summer nights in the 60’s – lots of screwball comedies, the first Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, etc) and James Bond movies. I remember the multi-tiered water fountain and all the multicolored lights on it near the entry to the theater and the same colored lights along the perimeter fence, the crunch of the gravel under the tires as you arrived and left. It felt kinda magical going there. By the 60’s and 70’s when I was going there, the kiddy rides at the foot of the screen were pretty broken down and no longer electrified. We used to push the carousel ourselves to make it go round and same with the little train. Usually, we kids fell asleep in the back of the station wagon by the middle of the second feature and I remember so well the sound of the crunching gravel coming up through the floor of the car where we slept as my dad would slowly pull out of the theater and drive us home.
“Okie”’s comment is not quite right. The Quail Twin movie theater was in the Quail Creek part of OKC, something like 20 blocks away. My family and I moved to Quail Creek when I was 13 years old and that theater was apart of the Quail Plaza Shopping Center. Twilight Gardens was in The Village not far from the corner of Britton Road and May Avenue. The Quail Twin was up near May Avenue and Hefner Road.
Twilight Gardens was literally a block behind my childhood house on Carleton Way in The Village. Everyone could see the back of the massive screen from their backyards along Carlton Way and Chaucer Drive. My parents, older brother and older sister used to pile into my dad’s station wagon, fill the back end of it up with blankets and pillows and go see a double feature there on hot summer nights in the 60’s – lots of screwball comedies, the first Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, etc) and James Bond movies. I remember the multi-tiered water fountain and all the multicolored lights on it near the entry to the theater and the same colored lights along the perimeter fence, the crunch of the gravel under the tires as you arrived and left. It felt kinda magical going there. By the 60’s and 70’s when I was going there, the kiddy rides at the foot of the screen were pretty broken down and no longer electrified. We used to push the carousel ourselves to make it go round and same with the little train. Usually, we kids fell asleep in the back of the station wagon by the middle of the second feature and I remember so well the sound of the crunching gravel coming up through the floor of the car where we slept as my dad would slowly pull out of the theater and drive us home.
“Okie”’s comment is not quite right. The Quail Twin movie theater was in the Quail Creek part of OKC, something like 20 blocks away. My family and I moved to Quail Creek when I was 13 years old and that theater was apart of the Quail Plaza Shopping Center. Twilight Gardens was in The Village not far from the corner of Britton Road and May Avenue. The Quail Twin was up near May Avenue and Hefner Road.