Friday night, as cars ambled their way on down the long, puddle-packed driveway and into the sprawling Columbia Drive-In parking lot, she was in the snack bar with her grandson Tyler, now about the same age she was then.

“It has a lot of memories. It’s hard to pick out just one,” she said, as 6-year-old Tyler and his 3-year-old brother Cody worked off some of their boy enthusiasm on a video game.

Four generations of her family have gone to the drive-in back off of Route 462 just outside Columbia.

“And of course, now I’m making memories with my grandchildren, but this is the last one I’ll be able to make with them. So I’m real disappointed,” she said.

She wasn’t alone. Friday night was the start of what’s shaping up as the last weekend in the nearly 50-year history of Lancaster County’s last drive-in.

Instead of closing for the season, it looks like the drive-in is closing for good. A Lancaster developer has bought the property and plans to tear down the theater, replacing it with shops and homes.

While Mrs. Brown talked and watched her grandsons inside the snack shop at dusk Friday, teens Christine, Janelle and Jennifer Felegi, 16, 14 and 12, respectively, and friend Rebecca Reitzel, 19, were continuing their own briefer tradition.

They’ve all been coming together “for a few years ... you just sit around and eat, have fun, talking until the movies start,” as Christine said.

They’ve seen favorites like “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Cats and Dogs” at the outdoor movie venue, the girls said.

The family, of Conestoga, is “real disappointed that it’s not going to be here,” the sisters’ mom Pam said, “because it’s a completely different feeling, going inside to the theater.”

“It’s more fun,” daughter Christine agreed.

“My friends and I are just starting to drive, so we really haven’t gotten a chance to come here together yet ... and now that we’re all turning 16 and getting our licenses, it’s closing.”

While they chatted, husband/dad John was over taking a picture of the marquee: “He wanted to do that before they tore it down, for memory’s sake,” his wife said.

There was talk among some people of winning the Powerball and buying the land, or buying the site owned by Columbia Borough on Blue Lane south of town and making it the drive-in’s new home.

“It’s all like family in here,” said Christine Robinson of Mount Joy, who’s 18.

Michael McBride of Columbia, who has worked at the drive-in for 15 years &tstr; “so I guess I’m the old-timer out here &tstr; was watching the cars come in Friday.

He said attendance was down Friday night, probably due to high-school football: “You come out here Saturday or Sunday, it’ll be packed.”

By the time the first movie of a special tripleheader, “Shrek,” began playing, there were about three dozen vehicles in the big lot. Some were minivans parked backwards, the back hood up and its occupants sitting in the back.

This weekend’s final triple feature will include “Spiderman” and “Witness,” and gates open at 6 tonight and Sunday, with the movies to start at 7:30.

Admission tonight is $8 for adults, and $4 for kids under 12 and seniors over age 60.

Sunday’s finale is free as a thank-you to patrons over the years.

Stephanie Specht of Millersville, who since this summer has led a petition drive to save the theater, was near the front gate Friday with Melody Doughterty getting more names. They already have 18,000, and expected another 50 to 60 new ones Friday, they said.

“Everybody wants it to stay. They’re very devastated by this,” Specht said.

As for this last weekend, “I see it as the closing for this season, not the closing forever,” she added.