The drive-in theater (Google SatMap) where we saw Moonraker with our dad (at an age where the implications of “Doctor Goodhead” completely escaped us[1]) is about to close. It’s hung on for years, off and on, but Katrina seems to have pushed it over the edge.

Hit the photo at right for a small gallery at our hometown paper. Drive-ins were weird things; given the climate and the mosquito population, we can’t imagine too many of them ever did well in our native Mississippi. The Hargroder family actually owned two in Hattiesburg, but we can’t remember the other one ever actually functioning. Attending high-school football games as a kid at the rapidly-collapsing white-flight school our father sent us to, though, we can recall seeing the Beverly’s screen in the distance, silent but still compelling from a half mile or so away. It seemed surreal that it still existed in 1979, let alone 2001, though we guess nostalgia can account for a lot.

([1.] We were much more worldly-wise by the time we got to see Goldfinger.)