Lights out.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Features - Drive-in-movie theatres

Sundown. Lightning flickers over the horizon, and tree frogs chirp in the surrounding woods. Tires crunch on gravel. Lawn chairs squeak as they're unfolded, and couples shake out blankets on the ground between cars. Coolers and picnic baskets come out of back seats and trunks.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Here, in a clearing on a hillside on the Cleveland and Gaston county line, is Kings Mountain/Bessemer City Drive-In. It's where you will find Chris Sears, a lanky factory worker from Kings Mountain, most Friday nights. "Can you believe this? Seven bucks for a carload," he says. "And Jennifer--that's my wife--likes the food so much she comes by some nights and asks them to let her in just to go to the concession stand."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

As Sears talks, the door of the squat, flat-topped concession stand swings open. Jennifer steps out with a tray of burgers, fries and soft drinks. A 4-year-old in a red Levi's T-shirt--son Caleb--tugs at her leg.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Tinny sounds rise from the metal speakers that hang on iron posts between the almost 400 cars, pickups, SUVs and vans parked on the hillside. Caleb squirms in his tiny lawn chair. Finally, the big screen brightens. "Spider-Man!" he squeals.

This is the twilight of a business that once flourished in the South--the drive-in movie theater. You might not think so at first glance, despite the peeling entrance sign off a two-lane rural road. On this night, with the lot full of cars, you can imagine drive-ins in their prime, when owners pulled stunts such as burying actors alive to hype horror movies.

"The drive-in started in New Jersey, but it was one of the things the South absolutely fell in love with," says Tom Hanchett, historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte. "Southerners love cars, and what better place than the South to be outdoors most of the year?" In 1958, North Carolina had 209 drive-ins, according to the National Organization of Theatre Owners, a Los Angeles-based trade group.

On this Friday night at the the Kings Mountain/Bessemer City Drive-In, John Harbinson, manager and projectionist, is ringing up $2 hot dogs and $3 cheeseburgers as fast as the crew of four can fix them. He steals glances at a closed-circuit television monitor focused on the projector running unattended in the next room.

Gone are the X-rated films some drive-ins once ran. Here and at other Tar Heel drive-ins, fans of first-run family fare such as Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings...