Wow! I’m a widow with a terminal illness, so I spend a lot of my time reliving the memories from a long lifetime. I was really enjoying all the post, then I get to yours, it was like a ghost had just slapped me in the face. My late husband grew up in West Whittier, loved to ride his bicycle in the Whittier hills, spend Saturday afternoons at the Wardman theater, Pattie Melts at Nixon’s and when old enough the Sundown Drive in. Tears! These are things that I had forgotten that he loved so much as a kid. Thanks for reminding me.
I, too recall the patty melts at Nixon's, which was so popular that the line of cars waiting for service would spill out onto Whittier Boulevard. In 1957, Nixon's became Whirly's, and we would continue to eat there regularly. Its location is now an abandoned car dealership that folded at the start of the current depression.
I also went to the Sundown Drive-in regularly, where I saw films such as Bell, Book & Candle, Huckleberry Finn and South Pacific. In addition to the Wardman, there was the Roxy on Philadelphia and the Whittier Theater, an old movie palace on Whittier Blvd. whose tower may have been the tallest structure in Whittier. Sam Cohen, the father of the enhanced radiation bomb, aka the "neutron bomb," often came over from his home in Boyle Heights to watch movies there when he was a kid.
The Roxy was demolished following a suspicious fire in 1971 and the Whittier Theater was razed in the 1990's, but the Wardman is still going.