It didn't go out in spectacular fashion - no interstallar ball of fire on that windy, overcast December day in 1994. No, the North Star Drive-In in Thornton, CO went out fairly quietly, a relic from another age coldly dismantled.

The North Star, once part of a local theater chain called Compass (with East and East locations as well), was operated by several different companies before it closed for good and the real estate sold in 1994.

My wife and daughter attended one screening there - "Gremlins 2" and Steve Martin's "My Blue Heaven." The little one was eight years old and had never been to a drive-in movie.  I had not seen a film through a windshield in more than a decade.  The stereo FM sound coming through the car radio was better than the crackly traditional single speaker option. But our small 80s auto was much less comfortable than I remembered our massive family station wagons of olden days to be.

In fact, little of that night reminded me of the best memories I have of attending many drive-in movies with my parents and brothers in the late 1960s. Sad but true.

While thinking of those earlier times I documented the death of the North Star.  Perhaps memories made there continue to reverberate like an expanding supernova in the minds of north Denver movie-goers.