Recently, I wrote about my End-of-Summer Bucket List, and on it, I included going to see  a drive-in movie. When I was a little girl in Brewton, Alabama, I went to the drive-in movie more than a few times. I remember going with my parents, my friends and their parents, and I remember going one time with my mother and her friend, Martha. Martha was one of my mom’s fun friends. She had three boys around the same ages as my brother and me, and we loved spending time with them. I must have been about five or six when we all piled into Martha’s station wagon and went to the drive-in movie.

While I can’t remember what movies we saw at the drive-in, I remember the experience. The trip to the drive-in with Mother and Martha sticks out in my head, because things went wrong and everything was funny. Mother and Martha laughed all the time, anyway, but this was a comedy of errors. While I don’t remember a lot of details, I remember parking and re-parking, because it was difficult to find a speaker that worked.  These days, drive-ins play the audio through radios, but back then, there were corded speakers on poles. Movie-goers would take the speakers off the poles and hang them on the car door or window, so they could hear the movie. Eventually, we found a speaker that worked that night, but Mother and Martha thought it was so funny that we had to search for one. When it started raining, we had to put the windows up, and that was another source of laughter. With the windows closed, the windshield steamed up…more laughing. No wonder I can’t remember the movie!!

Back then, you could see drive-in movie theaters everywhere…in cities and towns all over the country, but now they are few and far between.

In 2016, my daughter and I went to a resort in Upstate New York with our friends from Ohio. Every year, we go on vacation with my friend, Jennifer, and her daughter, who is the same age as my daughter, 14. That trip was our third stay at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York. We flew into Albany and drove from there, with a stop in Hyde Park for snacks. While we were in Hyde Park, we noticed a drive-in movie called Hyde Park Drive-In right across the street from the FDR Presidential Library, which I had forced them to visit on another trip to the area. I asked Jennifer how long it had been since she’d been to a drive-in, and she said, “Never.” Really? It became my mission to make sure we went to the drive-in one night during our stay. I checked the website and found out the movie for the weekend was Ghostbusters, the latest one with the female characters.

Jennifer was game for the drive-in, but the girls didn’t want to go. I tried to talk them into it before I finally just told them they were going. This was something they needed to do, an experience.

We picked a night and discussed what we would need. We didn’t need snacks, since we knew there was a concession stand. We opted to take mosquito bands to keep mosquitos away (even in upstate NY they have mosquitos), blankets (one for the ground for me and Jennifer, and two for the girls inside the hatch of the truck), and cash, since credit cards aren’t accepted.

We arrived early, and the owner took our money at the entrance. We ended up renting a radio from him to hear the sound, because we couldn’t get the accessories (radio) on our rental SUV to operate without the lights staying on. We didn’t need a dead battery at the end of the night.

People don’t do drive-ins the same way they used to. We used to stay in the cars with the doors closed, but now people back up their SUVs and open the backs so kids can sit there.  They also put blankets on the ground like a picnic behind their SUVs. That’s what we did, too. Once we got everything set up, we took turns going to the concession stand before the movie started. This particular drive-in theater, Hyde Park Drive-In, opened in 1950, and we were thrilled to see the concession stand looked like it hadn’t been renovated since its opening. The bathrooms looked original as well…pink tiles in the ladies room. We got popcorn and drinks from the concession stand and settled in at the car for the movie to start. Of course, we had to wait for the sun to go down, and as soon as it did, the vintage ads came on…advertising the concession stand and mosquito coils, making us feel as if we’d stepped back in time. You can see the concession stand ad here. You can see the mosquito coils ad here.

After the movie was over and we were driving across the Mid-Hudson Bridge on our way back to the resort, I asked the girls if they had fun, and the answer was a resounding, “Yes!” Then I asked why they had resisted, and they told me they didn’t know how drive-in movies worked. I asked my daughter, “What? I told you we used to sit in cars and watch movies!” She said, “I know, but I thought we were going to sit in the car and watch a movie on iPads.” No wonder she didn’t want to go. We could do that anywhere! And didn’t she know we didn’t have iPads in the 1970s?!

Everyone agreed it was a night to remember, and now I want to do it again. I’m hoping to round up some kids in the next couple of weeks to go to the Hounds Drive-In in Kings Mountain, NC (click here). If you have an opportunity to visit a drive-in theater, I highly recommend it. You never know when they’ll be obsolete and we won’t be able to enjoy movies under the stars.

Growing up is hard. I’m not talking about adulthood. I’m talking about childhood and the injuries that go with it. My brother, like my daughter, was crazy active, so he had all sorts of injuries. Mine were fewer and farther between, but I had a few memorable ones.

I was reading an article on Today.com about a teenager who went to the beach, got buried in the sand, and got a hookworm. Yes, hookworm. You can see the article here. If you’ve never heard of hookworm, you didn’t grow up in my house. My mother was a nurse, and she warned us regularly against going outside without shoes, saying, “You’ll get hookworms.” But how? She would tell us, “Hookworms climb up through your skin when you go barefoot outdoors.” Naturally, the article I read made me think of my childhood. Not many people can say hearing the word “hookworm” makes them think of their childhood, but I can. *For information on hookworm from the CDC, click here.*

The first big injury I remember as a kid was when I was three or four and walked outside where some workers had left some boards after finishing a project. I didn’t see the board with the nails sticking up. You guessed it; I was barefoot (against my mother’s warnings) and stepped on one of the nails…and it was off to the emergency room. That one ended with the doctor slicing open the bottom of my foot to get any rust out from the rusty nail…only to find there was no rust. Wow. And don’t ask how many medical professionals it took to hold me down while they did all that fancy “foot work.” Four? Five? I was stronger than I looked.

There were lots of bicycle wrecks and fingers slammed in doors after that, but nothing particularly memorable…till the “hookworm.”

And here’s where the hookworm comes into play. My next injury. Again, I disobeyed my mother and went outside without shoes. Before I continue, you should know there was a lake down the street from our house, and we occasionally went fishing. On this particular day, I ventured into the front yard shoeless. I had made it about 15 steps from the front door when I felt a stabbing sensation in my foot. I picked up my foot, looked down, and saw something sticking out of my foot, and it was shaped like a hook. Remember how I said my mother was constantly warning us about hookworms? Well, when you’re six years old and you’ve been hearing about hookworms your whole life, when you see a fish hook sticking out of your foot, you think it might be a hookworm.

I hobbled quickly into the house, calling my mother as I made my way into the living room, crying hysterically. She came running from the back of the house, and when she saw the hook sticking out of my foot, she said, “Sit down and don’t touch it! I will be right back!” As she ran to the bathroom to get whatever it was she needed to help me, I sat down on the sofa, took another look at that hook (hookworm, in my mind), became terrified that the “hookworm” would continue to climb into my foot, and I yanked it out. My parents had just had the living room re-carpeted…new green carpet; it was the 70s, after all. Mother came back into the living room, and I’m sure she couldn’t believe it when she saw I had snatched the hook out of my foot, and I was bleeding all over her new carpet. Poor Mama. She cleaned me up and took me to the doctor. They didn’t have to slice my foot open this time; it seems the fish hook was shiny and new (we must have dropped it recently as we were on our way to the lake), so rust was not a factor. On the way home from the doctor, Mother asked me why I had yanked the hook out of my foot after she told me not to. I responded, “I thought it might be a hookworm.” That’s when she told me, “You can’t see hookworms like that.” Ohhhh!

At least she didn’t make me clean the carpet. She never would have done that. She was a very nurturing mother. Not that it would have mattered if she had anyway, because soon thereafter, my younger brother discovered matches and walked through the living room with a box of them, lighting one match after another and dropping them on the new carpet. Fortunately, he didn’t burn down the house, but he did leave little black melty-looking holes all over the carpet. I have no idea where he got the matches…probably the same place he got the ballpoint pen he used to write all over the white vinyl backseat of my mother’s car. Yeah…she and daddy spent hours trying to clean it, but nothing worked. A week or so later, though, the ink marks disappeared…the sun bleached them out. My brother was lucky that way.

I think  we all have those childhood injuries that stick out in our minds. They stick in our brains, because they illicit emotions. That’s my theory, anyway. But here’s a lesson: be careful how you say things to your child. Children are very literal, and when they hear “hookworm,” they think of a worm shaped like a hook. Hookworm is a parasitic infection that can be very dangerous, because it can take a while to diagnose it and treat it, and it can wreak havoc on the human body. You don’t want it. You’re not likely to get it in the United States, but as the Today article illustrates, it’s not unheard of. God bless the young man who has it, and I wish him a speedy recovery.

Wear shoes.

It’s almost August. Hard to believe. How can the summer be passing so quickly?

The beginning of August signals the beginning of the end of summer vacation, but instead of getting sad, I’m choosing joy! Over the course of the next three weeks, since that’s what we have before our daughter goes back to school, I want to have some fun, so I’ve made an End of Summer Bucket List. I plan to end the summer with some fun! We can’ t go on another vacation, because high school sports are starting, but we can do some fun local stuff. Maybe you’ll get some ideas for your own list.

• Visit Carowinds or another amusement park (maybe Six Flags over Georgia) for some rollercoaster fun. We used to go to Carowinds all the time during the summer, but as our daughter has gotten older, we don’t go as often. Does that mean I don’t love rollercoasters? Heck no! Let’s go ride the Fury! See the website here. Or the website for Six Flags Over Georgia here.
• Rent an electric kick scooter in uptown Charlotte and explore uptown on two wheels. There are three scooter companies, and you can rent by downloading the apps. Download Lime, Spin, or Bird…or maybe all three…and find a scooter. You can scoot all over town!
• See a classic film (or two) on the big screen. In conjunction with Fathom, Turner Classic Movies present Big Screen Classics in theaters. For August, the featured films are The Big Lebowski 20th Anniversary event  (Aug 5 & 8) and South Pacific 60th Anniversary event  (Aug 26 and 29). For more info, click here.
• Have a mother/daughter staycation in a local hotel for one night. This is something we have done before, and we usually go to the Ballantyne Hotel. They offer balconies overlooking the golf course, in room dining, afternoon tea, swimming pools, a great spa, and a great restaurant called Gallery. Rates vary based on availability. There are other great hotels in the Charlotte area, as well, and other cities have their fair share of hotels that are good for staycations. For info on the Ballantyne, click here.
• Revisit the US National Whitewater Center (or another outdoor center if you live somewhere else). I used to go all the time, but we haven’t been this summer. Before the chill sets in, it could be a lot of fun to go out on the river on a Stand Up Paddleboard. For info on the Whitewater Center, click here.
• Box up any children’s books we have left in the old upstairs playroom and donate them to a friend who has just taken a job as a librarian at a school that needs books.
• Get together for coffee/wine with some friends/moms who have rising 9th graders before school starts…we might need to do this more than once.
• Visit Pinky’s Westside Grill on Morehead in Charlotte. How have I never been there? A friend sent me a message last week telling me I had to go to Pinky’s, so now it’s on my End of Summer Bucket List. See the Facebook page here.
• Spend a few hours of each remaining week out by the pool or at our club pool. All that sunshine helps the body produce Vitamin D, and lots of Vitamin D means more energy and better moods.
• Get a back-to-school pedicure with friends right before school starts…maybe while our kids are at orientation.
• Go to the Hounds Drive-In in Kings Mountain (click here) or the Sunset Drive-In in Shelby (click here)with friends and kids to watch a movie from the comfort of my SUV or from the tailgate. Grab some popcorn and sodas from the concession stand and enjoy! My friend, Jennifer, and I took our girls to a drive-in movie in Hyde Park, New York, a few years ago, and they loved it. Maybe I should say I forced them all to go, but afterward, they were glad they did. We had a great time. When I asked my daughter afterward if it was what she thought it would be, she said it wasn’t; apparently, before we went, she thought they would give us iPads, so we could watch the movie in the car. She’d had n idea how a drive-in movie worked. I used to go to the drive-in as a little girl, but Jennifer and the girls had never been before that visit.                                             
• Squeeze in a day trip here and there when possible. My daughter might think I’m crazy, but here are some ideas: Happy Hills Alpaca Farm in Monroe (click here), Biltmore Estate in Asheville (click here), sunflower fields on the Biltmore grounds, Davis General Store on Old Statesville Road (click here), or find some options on the Roadside America app OR the Charlotte Adventure Map (purchase here). I don’t have the Charlotte Adventure Map in hand yet, but as soon as I receive it this week, it’s on! My poor daughter and some of her friends will be dragged all over town to see stuff we didn’t even know about before.

With August 1 approaching, it’s time to hit the ground running. Only a little more time for some summer fun, and I plan to enjoy it as much as possible. Even if my daughter doesn’t think the alpaca farm sounds like fun, she’ll look back on it later and laugh.

What’s on your End of Summer Bucket List?

Three weeks…go!

As I type, my husband and I are on vacation near Miami. My brother and sister-in-law have been with us for the past few days, but they left this evening. We didn’t bring our daughter, and they didn’t bring kids either.  We have relaxed. Sure, we’ve had some fun too, but we have relaxed much more than I normally do on vacation.

I never take a “relaxing” vacation. I’m usually more interested in an adventure or exploring a new city, but this time, we have relaxed, and I will admit, I’ve enjoyed it. I don’t want to take a “relaxing” vacation all the time, but once a year might not be bad.

From the resort where we are staying, there are lots of different vantage points. On one side is the Atlantic Ocean…beautiful. On another side, there is a shipping channel…cargo ships and cruise ships come and go all day. On yet another side, we have a beautiful view of downtown Miami and the Port of Miami. We have taken advantage of all of them…entertaining ourselves with different views throughout our stay. Watching a gigantic cargo ship being loaded and unloaded is actually quite relaxing. We’ve done a lot of that.

Interestingly, I’ve become obsessed with the ships that have come and gone. For example, one was named AS Fabiana. I put the name in Google, and I discovered there are several websites through which you can get information on vessels and track their movements. One is called marinetraffic.com. You can see the information on any ship out there. To see the most recent information on AS Fabiana, click here. There is another site called vesselfinder.com that gives good information as well. A cargo ship named Northern Julie is in the Port of Miami as I type, and we checked it out at vesselfinder here. The ships became even more fascinating to us once we had more information about the size of the ships, where they had been, and where they are going.

By the same token, I’ve been entertained by an aviation app that tracks airline flights. Since we live in Charlotte, an airline hub, I’ve used the app before, but it became more fascinating here in Miami, as the flights seem to be going to more exotic locales. There are several apps that track flights, but the one I found easiest to use is called FlightAware. You can track by flight number, airline, airport, or even track flights as they fly overhead. I took great pleasure in seeing which flights were flying over us while we were out by the pool in the afternoons, and while my brother made fun of me for it, he eventually started asking, “Where is that one going?” Download the FlightAware app to your phone from the App Store. The icon looks like this:

When my brother and his wife left this evening, using the FlightAware app, I was able to see when their flight took off, and I even saw their plane from our resort. Because I could find it based on the positioning shown on the app, I took a picture of it as the plane soared over Miami:

We’ve enjoyed using an app called SkyGuide, as well. I’ve talked about it before. It is a great app for identifying constellations, satellites, stars, and planets. Just tonight, my husband and I were sitting out by the jetty, and he asked me, “What is that orange light in the sky over there?” I had no idea, but told him I had an app for that! Before I could get the app open, he said, “I bet it’s Mars.” He was right! And then, using the app, we were able to find Saturn and Jupiter too! There was too much light from the city of Miami for us to see any satellites, but we were thrilled to see three planets! The son of my friend, Mary Ann, told me about the app when we were at the Virginia Creeper Trail last year, and it is a favorite. You can download it from the App Store, and the icon looks like this:

While these apps have added another dimension to our relaxation, we’ve done lots of other fun things. I’m not going to pretend to be a Miami expert. I’m not. Our resort is not in Miami proper, so we have spent very little time in Miami. We did have a great Cuban dinner in Miami Beach last night, and we had a lot of fun people-watching a couple of nights there too. And it was some good people-watching. Whew! I love how our world is made up of so many different types of people. No two are alike. And that is exactly what makes Miami Beach (and the world) an interesting place. We weren’t “judging;” we were amazed, impressed, and entertained.

Our Cuban dinner last night was a highlight of the trip:   Lechon Asado; Ropa Vieja; Jamon Croquettas; Frijoles Negros; Tostones; Yuca Con Mojos…all delicious. I love all sorts of Caribbean food. My husband is not an adventurous eater, so I think he was a little apprehensive, but he was pleasantly surprised to find out just how good Cuban food is. And who doesn’t love a good Cuban mojito?! I opted for a passionfruit mojito…muy delicioso!

Aside from that, we’ve spent a lot of time in the sun, hanging out in the pool, having cocktails on the patio, walking around the island, golf-carting around the resort, and laughing…laughing a lot. My brother and my sister-in-law are two of the funniest people I know, so I have laughed a lot. My husband and I find laughter very relaxing…so we have relaxed a lot with those two! I’ve loved every minute, and I’m shocked that I’ve been able to just relax. I usually hit the ground running on vacation, but it has been refreshing.

Clearly, when I say we’ve had a relaxing vacation, there are lots of reasons. Yesterday, from the pool, we watched a Celebrity cruise ship leave port. We also watched a peacock try to impress another one with his gigantic tail fan. We floated in the pool. We people-watched. We’ve walked, and we’ve treaded water quite a bit, so we have exerted some energy, I guess. It has just been so beautiful outside that any exercise didn’t feel like exercise! Lazy days have been the rule during the vacation.

After we get home from this trip, our daughter will return soon thereafter from Iceland, and then we are off on another adventure with my sis-in-law, her son, my friend (Angela), and her daughter. There won’t be much laziness on that vacation, so I’m storing up my energy. My daughter will likely be exhausted after her Iceland trip, so she will have to rest up in the three days we are home before the next trip. That will be a more active vacation…one in which I will say many times, “Let’s get moving! We can sleep at home!”