Drive In movies, in the fifties, were a popular family outing and also a place where teens, borrowing the family car, could get away and explore birds and bees in the back seat of station wagons.

The latest Hollywood movies were projected onto huge screens and patrons watched from their cars with sound provided by little speakers that hung on a partially rolled down car window. If you got hungry you walked down gravel, between cars, and bought Cokes and popcorn at a cinder block concession stand that had restrooms, tables to sit and eat, promos that told about coming attractions.

At night it was cool and pleasant and if you didn’t like the movie you could watch shooting stars or look for aliens on their way to Washington D.C.. The movie screen was enormous and much better than the little black and white television in your living room.

The 60th anniversary of the Sandell has arrived and the featured movie this Saturday, August 29th, is ” Love Me Tender ” with Elvis.

Deep in Jesus country, Elvis still gets air time. He is remembered as a rock and roll legend, a womenizer, a great entertainer who died middle aged and alone with a drug problem. He sang great gospel, served in the military as a regular enlisted man, and never lost his Southern roots.

Finding a functioning drive in movie these days is as impossible as finding a roll of Kodak film, or a camera that uses film.

Clarendon is a small Texas town where my father, and his sisters, were raised and went to school. They used to ride a horse to class during the Great Depression.

When Elvis burst on the scene he must have looked, to them, like a madman.

He was a harbinger of things to come.



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