Weather getting warmer

After an endless winter, warm weather is always welcome. When I was a kid, I looked forward to warm weather so I could grab my Brother Craig and play baseball.  As I got a bit older, the things I looked forward to changed along with me.
     By my teens (the mid-late '70's), the best part of warm weather for me and my buddies (both male and female, depending on the planned activities) was the drive-in movie theater out on 26. For those of you not familiar with drive in theaters, you drive into the place, (as the name implies), and rather than finding an air conditioned seat like you do in a traditional theater, you watch (probably at least a couple) movies right from your car. Great for dates, or for hanging out with your buddies (for different reasons, of course).
     (I probably ought to apologize to the folks that ran that drive in, since I was one of the many who occasionally hid buddies in the trunk to save the admission fee.) Warm weather was pretty much a prerequisite for enjoying the drive in, but rain could either be a friend or an enemy, so it was important to check the weather. If you wanted to know what weather to expect back then, you could tune in to WLFI and watch a fella named Willard Watts.  Ol' Willard was the local weather man, and it seemed like he was flat wrong most of the time.  The standing joke was tune in to watch Willard, and then expect the opposite of what he predicted. If Willard said it was gonna rain, we could count on a rainless weekend at the drive in.  (Although, to some folks, though, getting caught in  the rain was no big deal at the drive in, since on a date they were not necessarily there to watch the movie anyway). That drive in was a great place to hang out and watch (or ignore on a date) a lot of "B-grade" movies. The drive-in could become whatever you wanted it to be. Nowadays, my priorities have changed. Anything over 40 degrees is fair game for a ride on my Harley, and that old Drive-in is long gone.  But, in some ways, the EastSide Drive-in will always be the best part of the coming of warm weather, and coming of age for lots of folks like me .