“The final days for pools are upon us this week. The pools will officially close for the summer season on August 3.” As the August heat — those unbearable ‘dog days’ – descend, the pools close up and our children head back to school. Insanity. The calendar runs summer through September 23rd.

Now I realize that the weather does begin its shift out of sync with the calendar, but in a town where lakes and ponds are virtually non-existent and the grass dries out from the often unrelenting heat, it makes no sense to:

a) start school that early (just as it makes no sense to end the school year in mid-May), and

b) close pools when they offer the greatest amount of relief from heat and humidity.

I can only hope we are not re-visited by a replay of last summer’s 100+degree record-breaking heat waves, or that if we are, that bus drivers and students are allowed to bring bottled water along for the ride, that sports trainers are aware of the correlation between high heat, heat indexes, heat island effects and potential illness.

I realize that many like this system, that the early start date for local schools has great support in many corners, but it doesn’t take an hour for hot humid air in close quarters to trigger heat exhaustion or worse.

The rest of this public notice reads:

“It’s not too late to get in on some cool summer fun at Smith Pool on Greenwood Avenue at Norman Smith Elementary School. Smith Pool is less crowded during the morning hours and is an excellent place for adults with small children to spend a relaxing time. Pool admission is $5 and after 3 p.m., late arrivals pay $3. All of our pools will be open daily this week from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.”

]]> http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2008/07/27/pools-to-close-as-the-summer-heat-revs-up/feed/ 0 http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2008/06/22/aarp-a-resource-for-seniors-boomers/ http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2008/06/22/aarp-a-resource-for-seniors-boomers/#comments Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:00:54 +0000 Rev. Charles Moreland http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/?p=5613 AARP (American Association of retired Persons) is a national organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for senior citizens. Clarksville has a dynamic AARP chapter where an enthusiastic groups of people age 50 and meet socially and serve the community with a variety of social actions.

AARP is political but non-partisan, and wields considerable influence on state and federal legislation, serving as the voice of their demographics. They do so without endorsing specific candidates and they remain issue oriented.

To educate and inform their membership. AARP publishes a monthly magazine with the largest circulation in America. the March/April edition got my attention with the cover photo of a smiling Jack Nicholson, one of the outstanding actors of our generation.

Besides an insightful article on him, the magazine from cover to cover offers articles with practical information. Two articles in particular that apply to many of us involve dealing with stress: “Riding Out a Recession” and “Finding Faith” (a search for spiritual peace).

For example, the State of Tennessee is promoting reduced taxes for seniors with annual incomes below $24,000. property taxes support city and county infrastructures. Without that income, our schools, law enforcement and social services would be on life support.

This issue gives guidance on property taxes in answer to this question:

“I just got my tax bills, and with home prices dropping, I say my house isn’t worth nearly as much as the town assessorseems to think. What can I do?”

The broad answer, if a citizen appeals, is as follows: “Don’t delay. Gather the evidence,. Hire an appraiser. Look for unique factors.” For a fuller explanation, refer to AARP (Mar/April, p 14; “Lower That Too!”)

Nuggets of helpful, realistic and utilitarian information is disseminated in these pages.

The Clarksville Montgomery County AARP invites all residents age 50 and up to their monthly meetings, which are held on the second Tuesday of every month at 10 a.m. at Hilldale United Methodist Church. Each meeting includes a guest speaker. Through their meetings, one hears first hand the progress in improving and protecting lives of seniors and political actions at the local, state and federal level.

These young adults are members of the Clarksville High School H.O.P.E (Helping Other People Everyday) club. The causes they are raising money for are the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Catie Summers Memorial Scholarship.

The method by which they are raising money and bringing notice to these causes is by riding bikes from Tennessee to the Lance Armstrong Foundation headquarters in Austin Texas – a trip of almost 1200 miles, which they will do in about six days.

If you have missed it, they are working and pedaling to Texas to bring attention and money to a disease that affects too many of us, cancer. The Lance Armstrong Foundation focuses on a national program of cancer prevention, access to screening and care, quality of life for cancer survivors, and investment in cancer research.

The Catie Summers Memorial Scholarship fund was established after the death of my own 16 year old daughter who died this past December after an almost four year battle against bone cancer. My daughter loved school and was a straight “A” student and in her honor a scholarship, in her name, will be given to students that have battled cancer in their young lives and want to go to college. First priority for scholarship awards will be cancer-surviving students graduating from the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System. The first award will be given to a student(s) in the 2009 graduating class, which is the year my Catie (at left) would have graduated.

The H.O.P.E club riders have been raising money for a couple of months and are still taking donations which can be delivered to any U.S. Bank branch in Clarksville, in the name of the Armstrong/Summers Fund. The fund will be split equally between the two causes.

I normally do not send this type of information by itself. However, I hope you will excuse me for doing this as it hits on several areas that I have devoted much time to in the last 14 years since I moved to Clarksville. I have performed thousands of hours of volunteer time to the school system, I do engineering and technology contract work for the school system, I’m a city councilman and the father of the daughter that never gave up and provided me with a definition of bravery that few can match. Thus, these great kids from the CHS H.O.P.E club come from, represent and touch those things in life I hold dear.

I hope to get end of day reports from them each day along with a picture or two which I will sent to you. Their bike jerseys, car signs and their grit and determination represent the qualities of our youth and city that all need to see and hear about. This afternoon the team packed, loaded their gear and drove to Columbia Tennessee. They will start their ride on the Natchez Trace Parkway at 6am Thursday morning heading to Austin Texas. Viva Lance Armstrong. Viva Catie. Viva CHS H.O.P.E club. Viva Clarksville

Editor’s Note: This article was submitted by Bill Summers, Catie’s father, who is a City Councilor serving Ward 10 in the City of Clarksville.

Land Between the Lakes has a lot to offer, not the least of which a free roaming bison that, topping the scales at a ton (a very solid 2,000 pounds), leave no doubt as to who has the right of way on the roads in the prairie compound.

At up to 2000 pounds, adult bison can have the right of way ...

Discounting its paved road, the Elk and Bison Prairie is a step back in time to an age when these magnificent animals roamed free across the American landscape, the midwestern prairies. Though modern living and urban expansion has come perilously close to decimating native prairie landscape, many groups across the midwest are laboring intensively to save and/or restore these landscapes. It’s enviromentally sound and historically smart.

LBL has created a prairie landscape, encouraging the growth of native grasses and plants, many of which have healing properties. The have also restored two herds of native animals: the elegant elk and the bulging bison. Swift, sleek movement, and lumbering, occasionally thundering beats.

The Prairie visits ideally begins with a stop at the Golden Pond Visitor Center, where the film Restoring the Land for Tomorrow is screened. Little House on the Prairie’s Karen Grassle narrates.

Imagine a landscape 200 years ago when elk and bison numbered in the tens of thousands, leavings swathes of dusty earth in their wake as they migrated from one corner of the prairie to the other. Portions of interstate 24 was once a bison trail.

Native Americans hunted, and used controlled burns of the prairie grass to trigger new growth and new feeding areas for the bison while keeping forestlands at bay. Native Americans killed bison for food, and for furs, with a tradition of killing only what they would use. Early settlers and traders shifted the balance of the prairie and decimated the bison herds, hunting them almost to the point of extinction. As the bison moved, so did the natives who depended on them for survival. In the absence of grazing animals, the forests gradually returned.

In the past century and a half, woodlands came to dominate this region. It wasn’t until 1970 that biologists spotted new prairie growth at land Between the Lakes, and that is where the elk and bison now roam. Controlled burns keep the grassland renewed, and the current herds is hearty, healthy and growing. LBL’s prairie is “landscape in the early stages of renewal.”

Today we travel to the bison prairie, dropping our $5 per car admission into the box, grabbing the token it gives back. A short drive puts visitors at the gate where the token is deposited and a large gate swings slowly open. We are in. And we see … nothing. It’s not for a lack of looking. We are on the late side of midday, and as nature-oriented people we also know the prime time for viewing animals in the wild is early morning and late in the day, when animals emerge to feed and drink at the chosen water sources. Midday, in the heat of the sun, most will seek shelter in wooded, shaded areas. The high grasses are natural but inhibit viewing especially at midday.

Undaunted, we drive in a slow procession of the curious, looking from side to side, allowing our eyes to scan the landscape. Still nothing. Not an elk or bison in sight. Not snakes, rabbits, woodchucks, or even a lot of birds. Just as we were about to admit defeat hope sprang in the distance: a small herd of elk galloping across a meadow in the distance. Magnificent. Leaping through the grasses, up the hill … away from us. It was something.

A bit further, again, a line of cars, stopped. One grandmother poked herself up through the sunroof of the family SUV for a bird’s eye view of three adult elk and beyond, a baby barely toping the height of the spring grass. The elk stopped, and in a unique moment each of the three adults faced a different point of the compass. Surveying. On the “skittish” side, the elk were more apt to bound away from their human observers.

Bird’s eye view ...

Disappointed with our meager viewing, we were almost at the turn to exit the prairie when ahead of us traffic slowed. Stopped.

Suddenly the earth moved. Huge brown arched backs, those scraggly clumps of shredded fur, the lumbering movement of a beast who knows he has the right of way. One. Then another. And another. Meandering from the fields to the road, cows and calves, a bull or two. Muzzling the grasses, swishing their tails to ward off hundred of flies. The reddish-brown calves scurrying and scampering back and forth from grasslands back to nurse at their mothers udders.

We were captivated. We watched in awe as the beasts we’d seen before from a distance of hundreds of yards in another heavily fenced pen near LBL’s The Homeplace walked through the line of cars, alongside them, in touching distance. Not that you are supposed to touch them; they are, after all, wild.

Out came the cameras. Closer came the bison. They were in no hurry, but neither were their human observers. Close-up, we saw ravaging biting flies, hundreds of them swarming on the bison’s hides, and no amount of tail swishing could rid them of the biting pests.

The adult bison looked a bit ragged, winter fur hanging in matted clumps. The horns looking solid and formidable. And while I am sure that it is not wise (or advised by park officials) to get out of your vehicle and step into the herd, our herd of cars was definitely absorbed by the bison.

“Now I know we got our $5’s worth,” said one of my companions who, as a norm, is “not a country boy.” Nonetheless, this overpowering show of nature’s beasts in the wild captivated him, and the steady click click click of his camera was evidence that this was a moment to be remembered.

CO publisher Bill Larson sat at the wheel, camera in hand, staring eyeball to eyeball with one of the bison, who paused long enough to make us wonder if the bison was assessing our edibility. Would we be crunchy and good with … well, you get the idea.

By the time the herd drifted past — a long process — and we left the compound, we knew that it would likely not be our last visit to this amazing grassland.

Along the circuitous prairie roadway, there are information stops, places to pull over, step out and read a bit more about the landscape, the plants, and the restoration of a prairie and its inhabitants.

Visitor’s information defines what you can expect to see in what season, what kinds of grasses grow in this habitat, what birds one might expect to see, and how to react to encounters with the inhabitants.

You can find more information on the internet by logging in to www.lbl.org or by calling 1-800-LBL-7077 for specific directions. Plan on an hour to an hour and a half travel time, and bring a cooler with beverages and water, and a picnic lunch to enjoy at one of the many picnic and rest stops along the way. You might want to consider camping at LBL. See the website for more information.

Here are more BILL LARSON PHOTOS from the Elk and Bison Prairie at Land Between the Lakes.

The run will be launched between noon and 2 p.m. from Buddies on the by-pass at Appleton’s HD, with the run ending at 6 p.m. at the Wingman Motorcycle Clubhouse at 3437 Pembroke in Oak Grove, KY. Free hamburgers and hot dogs will be served at the clubhouse. Card games and prizes are also offered. For more information, call Robert Warren at 905-0366.

May 16th and 17th marked the fifth anniversary of Family Properties’ Black Tie Dinner Dance. The annual combination celebration highlights the wedding anniversary of Doris and James Witherspoon and James’ birthday. What distinguishes this celebration is that the feted couple actually produce the annual weekend-long celebration, staging the affair and entertainment. The two-day gala features two sumptuous sit-down dinners and live entertainment provided by The Blues Doctor- “Dr. J. W. Feelgood” and the BCOL (Better Choice Of Living) Band.

Family and friends travel from great distances across the country for this annual extravaganza of celebration and music. Grandchildren came from Temple, Texas, (left). Family friends arrived from New Orleans, Cleveland, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix and Detroit, while local friends from Clarksville joined this groundswell of visitors at the Holiday Inn in Hopkinsville for two nights of stellar live Blues and R&B favorites.

The music was high energy Blues and R&B performed by The Blues Doctor, Dr. Feelgood (James Witherspoon) and the BCOL Band. Additionally, guests were treated to a special performance by BB Queen from Detroit that brought everyone to their feet. The Lady knows her instrument. And she plays it so well! A podcast of the live performance will be available online at <http://unsignedartistsmixshow.podhoster.com>. Dancing thru the night, spirits were jubilant!

Mrs. Doris Witherspoon (l); Friends traveled from New Orleans(r)

BB Queen “jams her stick!” (l); BB Queen excites the crowd (r)

BCOL Band brings Blues favorites (l); The Blues Doctor joins the show (r)

Does it get any better than this?

Looking for a scenic bike trail, horse riding trail, or a walking trail? What once was a railroad bed running between Nashville and Clarksville was turned into a beautiful, fairly level and almost completely paved trail. It is perfect for biking, hiking, power walking or a leisurely stroll with the intent of observing nature’s best offerings. You can find it all on the Cumberland River Bicentennial Trail.

Local enthusiasts, Kitty Madden (l) and Beverly Fisher (above) invited me along for a early spring flower identification walk. We walked approximately four miles, though the trail runs at least 7.5 miles. With flower guidebook in hand, Beverly Fisher identified many of the spring flowers that we spotted along the trail.

The Cumberland River below gives a home to many species of birds, from native bluebirds and bright yellow goldfinches to ruby hued cardinals, several species of woodpeckers, bluejays and owls, and shore/marsh birds including heron and cranes.

It is a bit difficult to see the Chapmansboro Road turnoff so you may want to note that when I map quest searched it, it said that it is 21.5 miles from the start of Ashland City Road (Hwy 12) to Chapmansboro turnoff. (maps at end of this article)

For more information, visit http://cumberlandrivertrail.org/

Photos by Debbie Boen

Bluebirds raise two or three broods, beginning in May. After each brood has left the nest, clean out the old nest; it’s also okay to lift the top of the house and take a peek at the baby birds or the nest filled with eggs. Just don’t put any food directy into the bluebird house.

Bluebirds are perfectly capable of caring for themselves and their babies. After taking your weekly peek at the little ones, be sure to secure the lid. You need not be afraid of frightening away the parent birds; they will return.

Remember:

• Bluebirds will raise at least two broods
• Clean the old next our between broods
• It okay to raise the roof 9lid) and peek at the chicks
• Put your blue houses up now (don’t place then trees; instead use a sturdy pole). We attached ours to our deck and have already attracted new tenants

It’s also the season for hummingbirds, and yes, they’ve arrived in Clarksville. They are wonderfully entertaining guests at our feeders, where they will continue visiting through the summer. Hummingbirds usually stay in our area through October and we take pleasure in caring for our “hummers.”

Hummers, radiant jewels in the birding kingdom, are the smallest and most colorful of our feathered friends.They’ll be hovering in our yard, famished from their long flight from Mexico, searching for a regular source of food. Hummingbirds beat their wings 80 times a second as the hover at a flower or feeder; it is a constant expenditure of energy.

Preparing a hummer “lunch,” a sugary nectar, is easy.

• Clean you feeder twice a week, discarding any leftover solution (do this more often if you have many hummers). I use a baby bottle brush to clean my feeders.
• Mix four parts water to one part sugar (dissolve thoroughly) and put it in the feeder.
• During mating season birds may seem absent from the feeder; don’t worry. they will return.

Your commitment to these beautiful, colorful birds can enrich your life. They are arriving now and I’ve just seen the first of them in my yard. My feeder is already in position to serve as a fountain of energy for these exquisite, radiant birds.

In Fall of the House of Usher,Vincent Price as Roderick, the head of the Usher house, who believes his family to be cursed. He and his sister Madeline are the end of their bloodline, and ERRoderick wants to keep it that way. Hypersensitive, he requires quiet, soft lights, bland food — otherwise he feels pain intensely. But Madeline has a lover, a fiancee would take her away for all of this madness. Usher crosses the line away from sanity and decides that everyone must die and the house burned to the ground, destroying the curse forever. It’s a spine-tingling race to the and one of the faithful adaptations of a Poe novel for the screen. It’s a movie and a role Price was born to do. (1960)

In the famed House of Wax,  Price is Henry Jarrod, an artist whose lifelike reproductions grace a wax museum — figures from Joan or Arc to Marie Antoinette. he favors the women. He craves beauty above the horror the public is more to apt to want to see in such a place, and burns the museum down in protest. Supposedly crippled and scarred from the fire, he re-emerges as the creator of his own exhibition with figures almost to real to be believed. And so they are. Enter the beautiful young woman who inflames his passion. is she destined to be the model for the next waxen image? Charles Bronson has a supporting role (one of his first movie roles) and Carolyn Jones (pre-Morticia of the Adams Family) also plays a part here. House of Wax is one of Price’s all time best in this genre, of which he reigns as master for all time.

Roger Corman (1966) directed Tomb of Ligeia, this last of eight Poe films, a classic ghost story with Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd) faling for the handsome Verden Fell (Price), whose behavior, naturally, is odd and his past, shall we say, “questionable?” Enter the odd disappearances, the proverbial black cat, and ghostly nightmares that threaten the marriage.

Dragonwyck (1946) is a gothic tale set in Connecticut farmlands and along the Hudson River. Price is Usher, who comes to squire a country cousin to the gracious estate to care for his child and a wife of “ill health.” Spooky mansions, foggy woods, ghostly music and mournful songs haunt nights in the mansion, and when the wife dies (who would have guessed?) the young cousin (Gene Tierney) becomes the new mistress of the manse. Will she suffer the same fate as her predecessor? Will the proud Usher survive the threats to his power and fortune? Hang onto the popcorn and enjoy the ride!

The House on Haunted Hill (1959) is one of those quiet films with primitive special effects. Want $10,000? Stay in this mansion for the night, under lock and key. It more than just ghosts, though. Haunted Hill is a murder mystery in the making, a maze of deception and infidelity that is a map for murder.

Quoth the Raven, “nevermore!” We say “ever more!” Edgar Allen Poe’s classic The Raven (1963) was made for Vincent Price, even if other than the quote, this film has little semblance to the Poe poem. Oh, Price’s wife in the film is named Lenore, but everything else is strictly coincidence. Peter Lorre snivels his way around, and jack Nicholson makes a pre-fame appearance. The Tell-Tale Heart (1959) keeps beating and beating in another Poe re-telling via cinema. Spooky music, murder and mystery, and that haunting thump-thump-thump…

The Pit and The Pendulum (1961) is another  matinee chiller from the days of double and triple features. Poe Again. Price again. Medieval torture devices, gothic castles and dungeons, cobwebs and flames, and a hero lashed to a stone altar beneath a swaying pendulum. Roger Corman teams again with Richard Matheson and Price to tease and taunt and scare the heck of innocent audiences of the era. So well done it’s still great.

Loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Terror (1962), this trilogy begins with the tale Morella, the story of young girl who questions her father about his abandonment of her, a story that weaves its way back to the death her mother, Morella. The Black Cat is second story, a the classic tale of infidelity, with campy comic acting by Peter Lorre and Price and the other man. Third and finally, The Case of M. Valdemar, has Basil Rathbone (a.k.a. Sherlock Holmes in other films of that era) as a mesmerizing (read “hypnotic”) man juggling living and dying to a gruesome ending.

Roger Corman, horror-meister, sci-fi author Richard Matheson and Vincent Price cornered the market on horror tales  during this time period, creating a cottage industry with a cult following that has spanned nearly 60 years.

Price re-emerged on the horror scene in 1990 with renewed charm as the inventor/father in Edward Scissorhands, in a supporting role to Johnny Depp’s title character. Though this role dipped heavily into magical fantasy rather than horror, it gave Price one more chance to shine brightly in the film arena.
Other Price films, good, not so good, and truly awful they are great fun  for fans and collectors:

Abominable Dr. Phibes/Dr. Phibes Rises Again

Theater of Blood/Madhouse

Masque of the Red Death

Tower of London

House of the Seven Gables

Return of the Fly

Drive -In Saturday Night appears weekly on Fridays through Labor day, recalling the best and the worst of movies from a generation ago, when drive-in theaters ruled Saturday nights and double features were the oder of the day at the Saturday matinees.

One Million Years BC: Raquel Welch fills out her skimpy skins quite well in this prehistoric time trip. Tumak is a caveman banished from his tribe, finding brief sanctuary with coastal dwelling tribes. But he gets booted from there too (a pattern here?) Along the way he’s garnered the affections of Loana (Welch), who follows him into prehistory, unafraid of monsters and volcanic mayhem. (1967)

The Land That Time Forgot: How many of these has Doug McClure made? With the sinking of a British ship, a German U Boat makes a wrong turn, landing in the unknown territory of Caprona, home of Neaderthals and dinosaurs forgotten in time. (1975) It’s sister film, The People That Time Forgot (1977), Patrick Wayne battles huge fake dinosaurs while searching the Arctic for his lost girlfriend. A lot of dirt, explosions and busty cavewomen.

At The Earth’s Core: Doug McClure and horror meister Peter Cushing team up for At The Earth’s Core. Rollicking adventure and campy special effects put these two adventures into the Iron Mole, a machine that will transport them through solid rock (shades of the much newer The Core). Naturally, when you pierce the earth that deeply you find prehistoric cave woman (a lot of body, not a lot of clothes) and telepathic birds. McClure swaggers a lot and Chushing plays against type as an absent-minded professor. This film is complete with fire-breathing animals and outdated social notions. (1976)

War Gods of the Deep: A thousand fathoms beneath the sea off the Cornish coast dwell an apparently immortal underwater gang of smugglers, served by a cadre of gill-man slaves. Vincent Price and Tab Hunter lend their services to this “B” movie.(1965)

I have to add several modern films to this category:

The Core: The world’s gone wild. Weather is both explosive and freaky. The Golden Gate Bridge collapses. people with pacemakers drop in their tracks. Birds begin crashing into things. seems the core that governs the earth’s electro-magnetic field has stall. What to do? Build a machine (in just three months) that will take a band of eclectic “terrenauts” to the center of the earth to nuke it back into shape. Add to the mix stuffy military guys, a computer geek who can control the net, and whales who relate to sounds the rest of us can’t hear. Hey, I don’t write them — I just enjoy them. (2003)

Deep Impact: A comet barreling towards earth threatens humanity. Who will allowed into shelters; who makes the life and death choices? Only 800,000 people can be saved. Are you one of them? (1998)

The Day After Tomorrow: This one has to be a “guilty pleasure.” The world’s climate is about to shift and a new ice age is dawning. The government can’t see what the rogue scientists all already sure of. Global warming is the culprit and Dennis Quaid is the heroic dad/scientist who tries the save the world in general and his son in particular. Lots of rampaging special effects including ice balls pelting Japan, tornadoes ripping up L.A., and a storm surge swamping the big apple. What more could you want in a movie? (2004)

Drive-In Saturday Night is all about fun. Summer fun at the movies. This column appears every Friday so that you have time to shop for, browse, or rent films for your weekend viewing pleasure. Maybe this is the weekend to have pizza delivered!

The Patna is unexpectedly salvaged, the passengers saved, and Burke and crew disgraced. Branded a coward, Jim becomes a guilt-laden drifter, unable to completely escape his past. His chance at redemption comes in form of gun-running — delivering arms to an indigenous tribe oppressed by a warlord.

But the line separating heroism from cowardice is thin, and the past comes racing forward with a chance at nobility, honor and personal salvation — but only at the highest, and most inescapable price.

Directed by Richard Brooks, this stunning film was shot in Angkor Wat (Cambodia), the Lautau Islands, Hong Kong, China, Malacca Malaysia and in British studios. The 1965 film, which runs 154 minutes, also features James Mason and Curt Jurgens.

The Lion In Winter: Acclaimed classic set in regal England, circa Christmas 1183. King Henry II (O’Toole) plans a family reunion unlike no other, in hopes of naming his successor to throne. But first he has to release his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn), from the prison he keeps her in (after all, she tried to raise an army against him), assemble his three sons, the handsome Richard (Anthony Hopkins), the devious, calculating Geoffrey (John Castle) and the blithering, unkempt idiot John, ( Nigel Terry), each of whom desire the throne, Princess Alais (Jane Merrow as the king’s mistress and promised bride — never mind that he’s already married to Eleanor), and Alais’ brother, the crafty King Philip of France (Timothy Dalton).

It’s a story of family dysfunction, holiday depression, the model older son, the overlooked middle son and the over-indulged youngest son, of power and passion, all pulled together with the sharpest of writing and a fine directing hand.

Deceptions and rapier wit abound as brother plays against brother, husband against wife, king against king. It’s hard to picture such drama unfolding with a repertoire of one-liners — but that’s how it is: one of the best comes from Eleanor, as she sits in a dungeon, telling her husband and sons “every family has its ups and downs.”

Lawrence of Arabia: This 1962 Academy Award winning film begins with the end of a life, that of Thomas Edward Lawrence (O’Toole), crook, sadist, and unlikely hero. Lawrence recalls through flashbacks his life as a soldier under an assumed name. He works intelligence in Cairo, and becomes involved in the investigation of the Arab revolt and against the Turks in WWI. He creates a guerilla army, leading Arabs in devastating raids against the turks and ultimately helping bring an end to the Ottoman Empire.

In the company of a cast that includes Anthony Quinn, Omar Shariff and Alec Guiness, David Lean masterfully weaves this majestic film against a panoramic landscape.

Drive-In Saturday Night runs every Friday in order to give you time to get the movies and stock up on popcorn. This films are the best, the funniest, the scariest or most quirky of films that played on Drive-In theater screens for many decades before the air-conditioned surround sound Imax’s took over.