Peggys note told me to run reel four, so I threaded that old projector for the first time in six years, and when the screen lit up over the empty field, there was my Peggy, filmed in 2015, sitting at the concession stand, telling me exactly how to save the Starlite.
The logistics man had looked up at the old screen and told me a distribution warehouse was going in along Highway 31, that the county had rezoned my field industrial, that my taxes would go through the roof and Id lose it anyway, that the screen was coming down by fall.
He did not know what Peggy left in the film canister.
My wife, who ran the concession stand for forty-eight years, had quietly gotten the Starlite listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015, one of the last classic drive-ins in the state, and she filmed herself explaining where the papers were and what the listing protects, because she knew Id never think to do it myself.
On the screen, Peggy told me she loved this place too much to let it become a parking lot someday, so she did the paperwork, got the Starlite recognized as historic, and put the certificate and a lawyers card in an envelope with the key, behind reel four, where she knew Id find it if the day ever came.
A drive-in on the National Register does not come down for a warehouse without a fight the county does not want, and the historic listing froze the assessment that the logistics man swore would tax me out. The rezoning meant nothing against a federal historic designation.
The key, Peggy said on the film, opened a safe deposit box with a small fund she had set aside from the good years, enough to cover the taxes and a lawyer for as long as Id need one.
When the logistics man came back for me to be reasonable, I did not argue. I handed him the National Register certificate and I said, my wife listed the Starlite as historic in 2015. Its protected, and my taxes are frozen, and I have got a lawyer and a fund to fight you as long as it takes. That screen is not coming down. Build your warehouse somewhere that isnt a piece of American history.
He read it and left, and the warehouse went up two miles down the highway, and the Starlite screen still stands over the field.
Ready to be reasonable, he had said. I have been reasonable for seventy-nine years. Peggy was the one who was clever. I run reel four some evenings just to see her, sitting at the concession stand with the popcorn machine behind her, and then I mow the field on Saturdays, and once a summer the town comes out and we show a movie under the stars, on the screen my wife made sure would outlast us both.