The flamingo rising

by Larry Baker

It's the 1960s in Jacksonville, Florida (where the sixties are still the fifties), and some of America's last sweet moments of innocence are unfolding out on the coastal highway at the Flamingo Drive-In Theatre, owned and operated by the Lee family. Patriarch Hubert Lee has a spirit and ego to match the size of his drive-in: "The symbol of human power and aspiration, the stairway to heaven," he says, describing the gigantic screen tower. But his ego is at its most unforgiving in his dealings with Turner West. Turner owns the funeral home on land adjacent to the Flamingo and wants to put a cemetery on property that Hubert owns and will never, ever, under any circumstances sell! - his gleeful stubbornness spiking an already intense rivalry between them. So when Hubert's teenage son, Abe, develops his first full-blown adolescent crush, it makes perfect, devilish sense that the object of his desire should be Grace West, Turner's only daughter. As Abe moves from adolescence toward adulthood