The Hilden home of Ernie and Helene Maynard ties in with a once popular piece of community history.
"When we are giving directions, we always tell people that we live where the old drive-in theater once was," Ernie said. "People usually always know where we mean."
Maynard points to the south-east where the large outdoor screen for the popular Bel-Air Drive-In Theater once stood.
"The screen would have been on part of our three acres of land," Maynard said. "It would have set approximately 200 to 250 feet from where our house now stands."
The projection building, canteen and washrooms were located further up the hill to the east, just beyond his property. There are also rocks (still in place) that apparently served as steps leading to different elevations to where cars once parked.
Showing me maps he had collected over the years, Maynard pointed to the different levels.
"The elevation jumped about six feet for each row of cars the further back the rows went from where the screen was located," he said.
As we studied another map, the screen, projection building and canteen were clearly marked.
"There's the ticket booth right there," Maynard said, pointing to a marked area closer to Highway 2. "That's where you paid your money if you wanted to watch a movie."
According to Hilden native John Fisher, the drive-in opened in 1955.
"Doug Robertson was the owner," Fisher said. "It probably operated until the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was certainly a very popular place to watch a movie for quite a number of years."
Since purchasing the property in 1994 the Maynards have held onto an interesting piece of history pertaining to the theater.
"This transmitter was in the basement of the house when we moved in," Maynard explained, as he displayed a five-foot high piece of equipment. "It is an RCA Victor Photo Phone (high fidelity) which fed the sound to each car. People will remember those posts you pulled your car up beside. The posts held the speakers which you lifted off and placed inside the driver's window.
"I expect that this transmitter was located in the projection room," said Maynard. "The sound people enjoyed when watching the outdoor movie would have been transmitted to the speakers and the vehicles."
Maynard, a native of Ellershouse, Hants Co., said he watched the occasional movie at the popular Hilden location while attending Nova Scotia Agricultural College during the late 1950s.
Helene was a more regular visitor.
"I can still remember when I was 16 and the excitement of heading to the drive-in theater," she said. "It would have been 1955 and I filled my little Toyota with friends and away we went."
Tuesday nights were special at the drive-in.
"By paying admittance for one, everyone else in the car got in free," said Helene.
"My memories include seeing people getting out of trunks of cars once on the grounds, eating the worst hotdogs ever but going back for more and some nights on weekends the drive-in being so popular that they were sold out and you couldn't get in."
Robertson, the theater owner, apparently built the building they now live in to house the Glen-Air Restaurant during the late 1950s. Later, it became home to Cobequid Animal Hospital operated by Dr. Glen ‘Mac' Mowbray. Dr. Mowbray eventually added a living residence.
"It had been vacant for a period of time before we moved in," Ernie recalled. "It needed a lot of work and as I had just retired in 1994 I thought that I was getting in to a six-month project."
It actually took three years before the Maynards had the cozy home they wanted.
"I sometimes think of researching the history of this property and the surrounding property more closely," Ernie said. "There is definitely some interesting history here as two well-known business's once operated close by."
TAGLINE: Lyle Carter's column appears every Tuesday in the Truro Daily News. If you have a column idea, contact him at 673-2857.
