Today, uprooted tree trunks serve as an audience for the skeletal remains of the old Augusta Drive-In.
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But 50 years ago, the Sand Bar Ferry Road site - recently exposed after land was cleared at a new development there - was the place to be for Augustans such as 73-year-old Lee Schweitzer.
"Even before I was married I went there," she said, noting that the drive-in was one of the first in the Augusta area during the 1950s - a time when Bob Hope and Burt Lancaster starred in movies.
Mrs. Schweitzer said she drove by the area recently and at first didn't recognize the old hangout because the site had been overgrown. Her memories flooded back while looking at a now- cleared lot and a white, 35-foot tall wooden frame structure exposed in the distance.
"I kept thinking it was the frame of an old house, and then it finally dawned on me," she said. "We all used to go to that drive-in."
A return of residents to the area is something Martin "Gator" Cochran, the owner of the site, would like to see. The return won't be to see movies this time, he said, noting that he had to agree not to set up a drive-in theater in order to purchase the land.
Mr. Cochran said he eventually wants to open a commercial strip with 15 to 20 businesses where the remains of the former drive-in theater's screen still stand.
"It is nostalgic," the owner of Gator Cochran Construction and Gator Custom Renovations said about what's left of the drive-in, which he said closed in the late '60s. "And it's nice to see that the land is going for good use again."
For now, he is relocating his steel fabrication shop further down on Sand Bar Ferry near Bobby Jones Expressway on one of the parcels developed from the old drive-in site. He plans to start moving in sometime this week.
Mr. Cochran said he also would like to open a restaurant at the site for plant workers, but he isn't sure exactly when it or a retail strip will be constructed.
Fielding McCrary, the project manager for Edgefield Construction, which is in charge of the work, said that while developing land for the steel fabrication shop, he found an old wallet that belonged to someone he once knew. Construction workers with metal detectors also found a lot of old coins, "which were probably dropped when someone was buying their popcorn," Mr. McCrary said.
A gate entrance and sign for the former drive-in, which has deteriorated badly, remain at the edge of Sand Bar Ferry Road. Mr. Cochran said the theater screen's structure doesn't seem to be sturdy anymore, and it probably will go down when the retail strip comes along.
If so, it would close a final curtain on a past when residents didn't mind spending an evening outdoors to catch a glimpse of the stars, both Hollywood and celestial. At the same time, though, it will open the stage for a new attraction.
"I've had several of the residents living in the area glad to see something coming there," Mr. Cochran said.
Reach Preston Sparks at (706) 828-3904 or preston.sparks@augustachronicle.com.
