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This cache was hidden by my daughter (whose first two initials are LB) and her good friend (whose name starts with C).
Congrats to dragon9981 for being the FTF.
Every night, James Lloyd has what some movie fans might call the best seat in the house. In fact, it is his house.
Lloyd, 73, a Malco Theatres employee for 43 years, lives in a five-room apartment above the concession stand at the Summer Drive-In, the four-screen attraction at 5310 Summer that is the Mid-South's last outdoor cinema.
Looking out through his living room window one surprisingly cool recent summer night, Lloyd could see Johnny Depp, guns blazing, in "Public Enemies."
The view from his back deck included Harry Potter on one screen and Sandra Bullock on another. Light from the screens danced off the roofs of the scattered cars and sound echoed from auto stereo speakers.
"I been around the theater business practically all my life," said Lloyd, who was a 14-year-old Arkansas farm boy when he made his first money at the movies by pushing a popcorn cart between the rows of cars at the old Starvue Drive-In in Blytheville.
A movie theater jack-of-all-trades and trouble-shooter who remains active as a Malco vice president of operations, Lloyd shares his hidden-in-plain-sight apartment with Duke, a friendly if unlikely mix of dachshund and Jack Russell terrier, and Rocky, a chubby cat.
Duke, especially, makes the apartment less lonely.
The winding entrance to the drive-in off Summer Avenue is still marked by a series of signature hourglass-like decorative structures that once emitted rays of neon light and resemble something Austin Powers might place around the pool house near his space-age bachelor pad. A sign that warns "Do Not Enter -- Severe Tire Damage" reminds scofflaws who want to sneak in that angled spikes will puncture their tires if they drive the wrong way down the one-way exit road.
The drive-in used to be in business 365 days a year, but now it's open seven nights a week from about Memorial Day to Labor Day, and on Fridays and Saturdays the rest of the year. Admission is $7 per person, with children under 10 admitted free.
On weekends, when the Summer draws a crowd, as many as 1,600 cars can fill its asphalt acreage, which is "terraced" so cars can angle up toward the screen when they park. Most of the occupants of these cars will listen to the movie through signals beamed to their FM radios; only one screen still uses old-fashioned speakers, attached to a short pole by a wire, that moviegoers hang on a car window.
Before the Summer was built, "There wasn't nothin' out here," Lloyd said. "It was wide open."
In fact, the decline in drive-ins was due in part to the skyrocketing value of the real estate the outdoor theaters occupied.
Originally, it was common for drive-ins to be built with living quarters, in part because theater managers have to work such late hours. Before Lloyd, Summer Drive-In managers lived in the onsite apartment.
During the drive-in boom of the 1950s, the U.S. was home to nearly 5,000 outdoor theaters.
As of July 2008, 383 drive-ins were still open for business, including 22 in Tennessee, three in Arkansas and two in Mississippi, according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, a nonprofit business group that keeps tabs on the industry.
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