Drive In Theater Site in SW Georgia

Curious The George

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Just back from a Thanksgiving visit to SW Georgia and my wife's mother and family.

My wife's father was involved in managing motion picture theaters in small towns of Southwest Georgia. He is gone now but worked for about 40 years doing that. Fortunately her mother is still with us and very active for 84 years old. More about her in a post I will call "Granny's Hoard".

Their house was built, buy them, on land that was at the time a drive in theater that Mr. Bob ran. The time frame is rather vague but was something like 1950 to around 1960. Since then the land has been bought by a church. The old snack bar and projection building still stands. In the photos you will see the building with the long window area, that was where the projectors were. One photo is of the area in front of the projection building and you see the church that was built. That is the back of the church. The screen stood about where the front of the church is now. The area between the projection building and the church is where the cars parked for movies. It has been scraped level at some point in the past, it used to have ramps and speaker stands for the movie goers cars.

I spent about two hours Thanksgiving morning around the projection building. In the photo of my finds on the left is more recent coins that are from the church era, newest are 1999 penny and quarter and oldest, 1965 penny. On the right are finds that date to when the place was a theater. A 1941 Mercury Dime, 1955 Wheat Penny and a disc with a pierced star in the center. The disc was likely a candy or Cracker Jack prize. On one side, in the center is the word "LUCKY". On the other side in the center I can make out what may be a row a patent numbers, then "HARVARD", "AUTOMACH Co", "Jamestown", and what I think is, "NY". Around the edges are what seem to be random letters and spaces. I can't make any of them seem like words so I wonder if this was a coder/decoder device of some kind for kids. If anyone knows exactly what this was, please post it.

I did not photograph the junk metal that I found but it was mostly pieces of plumbing pipe and electrical wire that was buried and ran out to the speaker system in the car park area. I am sure there are more good coins there and perhaps on another visit I'll turn some of them up.
 

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Nice post and finds! HH, Mike
 

The "Lucky" piece is a letter-punch machine tag or token. These machines have been around since the early 1900's, and you may have seen them at amusement parks, tourist stops, train and bus stations, etc. The customer inserts a coin and then embosses the token with his name or some other inscription. This is done one letter at a time, using a dial or pointer to select the letter and then pulling a lever to press it onto the token. Many of the token blanks or planchets had cut-outs around the center: star, four-leaf clover, etc.; others had pre-embossed solid centers. Here are a couple of the machines:

LPM-1.webpLPM-2.webp
 

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those types of token coins often came from machines that let you make your very own "lucky coin" -- often it was step up to let you stamp your name or what ever into it letter by letter -- dang it kicked me back when I tried to answer -- another post added --check post -- dang pbk beat me to it
 

I found one of those lucky things from my families yard this summer. Nice find :thumbsup:
 

what a day, nice token
 

NICE HUNT. LIKE THE COINS AND TOKEN :thumbsup:
 

Any hunt with three keepers is a good hunt! Congratualtions on your finds! :thumbsup: Love the merc!!! ;D
 

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