Most of us were in need of magic this year as the coronavirus pandemic left little in our lives unchanged.
My son and I found that magic on a hillside in North Smithfield, home to the Rustic Tri View Drive In.
Jeremiah, 13, and I became regulars at the Route 146 drive-in, taking in movies on 18 of the 31 weekends the theater was open.
We started May 22, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, which was the second weekend the drive-in showed movies after Gov. Gina M. Raimondo allowed it to reopen following the spring lockdown.
Until then, the only things we left the house for were occasional food shopping trips and — often with Jeremiah's older brother — walks through Lincoln Woods State Park, where the deer took over the landscape and the number of other people we saw could be counted on one hand.