"The Last Drive-In"

The Orion Drive-In Theater in Grayson, Kentucky, closed its doors for business in the summer of 1996. Even though nobody said it aloud, everyone in town knew it. Orion's screen was fading, and its neon sign was flickering as if it was undecided about whether to fight or let go, as the new multiplex had opened across the county line.

That summer, Jack Owens, the owner's seventeen-year-old son, worked in the projector booth, as he had since he was thirteen. Earl, his father, had inherited the establishment from his own father, who continued to refer to it as "the future of entertainment." Jack had some doubts. In order to create something greater than his father's smashed reels and popcorn buckets, he envisioned leaving Grayson and moving west to California to study film.

However, Jack believed that there was enchantment about the old place. It was in the way headlights flickered like fireflies when families drew up right before showtime, the hum of the vintage speakers, and the scent of buttered popcorn drifting into the muggy night.

Cars lined up along Route 27 every Friday night, and Earl showed the movies as if the theater was full, even though ticket sales were down. He would not play the most recent releases. He remarked, "People do not come here for the new items." "To remember, they come here."

Jack never asked what they were supposed to remember.

One humid night in late July, a ’67 Mustang rolled into the lot just before the opening credits of Back to the Future. The girl behind the wheel had a streak of red hair dyed down the center, wore Doc Martens in the summer heat, and looked at Jack like she had seen every version of him in every possible timeline.

“Is this place for real?” she asked as she handed him cash for a ticket.

“Depends what you mean by real,” he replied.

She introduced herself as Lana. Said she was passing through on her way to nowhere in particular. Jack nodded like he understood—because he did. They watched the movie from her Mustang, windows down, speakers crackling, moths dancing in the light of the screen. When Marty McFly hit 88 miles per hour, she leaned over and whispered, “If I had a DeLorean, I’d go back and tell myself not to stay so long anywhere.”

He didn’t ask her why.

The next night she came back. And the next. They shared popcorn and talked about everything and nothing. She told him she’d been born in Chicago but hated the cold, that she used to play bass in a punk band, and that her dad had once owned a diner that served Elvis his last piece of cherry pie.

Jack told her about his film school dreams and how he was scared to leave his dad alone with the drive-in. Lana didn’t say much to that, but the next night, she brought a camcorder and said, “Let’s make a movie. Something to remember this place by.”

For a week, they filmed. Shots of the concession stand, the flicker of light over kissing teenagers, Earl laughing at his own jokes as he ran the register. They recorded Jack threading the old projector, the way the film danced between reels like magic. They caught the final scene of The Graduate on screen and the way silence lingered afterward like it was part of the script.

On the last night of summer, with just a few cars in the lot, Earl announced it was the final showing. Jack and Lana sat on the hood of the Mustang, the camcorder between them, and watched Rebel Without a Cause. The film glowed across their faces, a grainy beacon in the dark.

When the credits rolled, Earl shut down the projector for the last time. Lana turned to Jack and said, “You have to go. Don’t let this be the biggest thing you ever do.”

And then she was gone—just like that. No note, no forwarding address. Just the camcorder, left on the passenger seat, and the Mustang already halfway down Route 27 by the time Jack realized she wasn’t coming back.

Years later, in a small Los Angeles theater, a short documentary called Orion won a local film award. Jack stood under bright lights, thanked his father, thanked Lana, and said, “Some places stay with you, even when they fade.”

Back in Grayson, the Orion sign still flickered on stormy nights. Some say it's just faulty wiring.

Others say it's memory.