Modern Living: Drive-In Delinquency

It was around 9 in the evening, and they were sitting in Glenn Farbolin's 1955 Dodge at a Richard's Drive-In restaurant on Detroit's northwest side. Besides 18-year-old Glenn Farbolin, there were David Burman, 19, David Lazarov, 21, and Ronald Thomas, 24. Maybe they were drinking and maybe they weren't, but a whisky bottle with blood on it was later found where the car had been.

Ronald Thomas, a medical technician at Detroit's Osteopathic Clinic, produced a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver he had stolen from a doctor's coat. "I got a crazy idea," he said, pointing it kiddingly at the others. "Let's play Russian roulette." Then the gun went off, and David Lazarov went down with a bullet in his head.

He was dead when they got him to the hospital.

It was a tragic accident, but the thing about it that most bothered Detroiters last week was the place where it happened : a drive-in. For drive-in restaurants are fast becoming the hangouts for teenagers that corner drugstores used to be—with a considerable difference. In the dark of their cars, boys and girls can do more than consume hamburgers and milkshakes, and many an adult buys liquor and brings it to a drive-in to sell at fat profits to the underaged from the back of his car.

The problem is worse in some areas than in others. A few drive-ins have had to hire their own corps of guards. But local police chiefs generally keep an eye on them as potential trouble spots. During the past year, Houston drive-ins have seen a murder, a gang brawl involving Rice University football players, and a generous share of assaults.

Drive-in delinquency is usually not the fault of the proprietors, who sometimes find the situation impossible to control.

Last fall, the proprietor of Henry's Hamburgers, another drive-in on Detroit's northwest side, found that he and his private policeman could make no headway in ejecting a group of rowdy teen-agers who had been drinking in their cars. He called the police, who sent two squad cars, and in the resulting riot two of the policemen were knocked out.

Los Angeles is one large city with few records of drive-in trouble. Major reason: a 10 p.m. curfew for youngsters under 18.