Ode to a Drive In Movie

While you are reading this, I'm far from home, on an annual trek to North Carolina that is one of my favorite weekends of the year and, at the same time, one of my most melancholy. It's the weekend that I bring my daughters to camp where they will stay for nearly a month.

Dropping them off is my thing and each year I extend it and turn it into a girls only road trip and stop somewhere along the way that we've never been before. This year we sent a night in Abingdon, VA. The town is small but it's lovely and there is a lot to see but we didn't get around town as much as we thought we would. I did take them to experience something new to them... a drive in movie!


I can still remember going to the drive in as a kid. My siblings and I would be in our pjs with our pillows and blankets, sitting in the way back in our parents station wagon. The drive in had double features then too but I don't think I ever made it to the later feature. The only movie I actually remember seeing there was George Hamilton in Love At First Bite. Do you remember that one?

On Saturday night we saw Wall.E and Journey To The Center Of The Earth but the movies weren't important. The fun was in camping out on the car and relaxing under the stars while enjoying the movie. It was a warm evening and the air was full of the scent of wood burning.

The theatre we were at was recently added to the Virginia Register of Historic Places because it remains very much as it was when it opened in 1949. The little concession stand is still in the center of the field and looks very much as it must have back then and we still parked on a series of grassy berms to angle our cars to the screen. The speakers were removed long ago but the posts at each parking spot are still there. It was a little like being in a time warp.



The girls loved it and I loved being there with them. I will miss them so much when they're away but I know that they have a blast at camp and the felling that it's the best possible place they could be makes it all ok.