One for the Mountain Man

My good friend the Mountain Man has an excellent post celebrating the existence while mourning the passage of the Bright Leaf Drive-in in Mt. Airy, NC. While they’re definitely an endangered species, they aren’t quite extinct yet.

Drive-ins are a dying breed, and Belmont’s is one of about a half dozen that survive in North Carolina.

For George Hall, Belmont’s theater evokes memories of “the good times we had as teenagers in junior high and high school.”

“We might see a car load of girls and holler at each other. None of us was overly polished in the social arena,” said Hall, 77, a former Belmont City Council member. “It was sort of a community gathering place on warm summer evenings.”

I still remember going to the drive-in when I was a kid. For us, it was the old Midway Drive-in between High Point and Thomasville. The first movie I can really remember from then was John Wayne’s “Big Jake”. That’s probably what set the stage for me to be a big fan of The Duke.

Even though I missed out on a trip to the Bright Leaf, I have another relatively close by, the Badin Road Drive-in. Those warm summer evenings are almost here….