Route 17

In the summer in the South, movies at the drive-in can't start until nine o'clock or so, when it gets dark. Given that that's almost past our bedtime these days, and given Anthony Lane's uncharacteristically humorless pan of it in the New Yorker, we suspected we wouldn't make it all the way through Superman Returns at the theater on route 17 outside Dewey Rose, on the way from Elberton to Bowman. We didn't, of course, but it had mostly to do with the dim projection, which was hard on the eyes. New to the format, we didn't realize that parking off to the side and at about mid-field didn't help us any; next time we'll park up front, among the trucks turned backwards, beds to the screen.

We arrived at about the listed start time, before any of those in the know

showed up and the movie started forty-five minutes later.

Also showing were Click and Nacho Libre, whose screens were closer to the projection booth (a crazy tall Hitchcockian house in the middle of the field) and whose picture quality appeared to be brighter and clearer for it.

I can't even begin to describe the "gift shop" on the main floor of the house except to say
that on offer were a couple dozen paintings done in a high medieval style and featuring
maidens on horseback accompanied by stiff-limbed attendants and exaggeratedly skinny hounds.

Also, I think Superman was just a bad movie, although it's hard to say for certain because I was never quite sure what I was looking at. It was a nice night out in the country, though. The moon was beautiful, it was cool, the bug slept well. The drive home had an exciting Twin Peaks quality about it as we passed logging trucks along the railroad leading back to Elberton, granite headstone factories, and an establishment called Scenic View (no windows) that judging from the overflowing parking lot is the place to go in that neck of the woods on a Saturday night. Besides the family drive-in, I mean.