Remember that old Joni Mitchell song about paving paradise?

“Don’t it always seem to go ... That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

Last week the marquee lights went dark at the Astro III movie theater in Clemson. The 30 something-year-old institution died a sudden death, closed by its corporate managers with only a few days’ notice.

And now that the Astro’s gone, a lot of people in Clemson are realizing — too late — what we had.

The Astro, it must be admitted, was never beautiful, especially in its declining years. A long, squat building and pockmarked parking lot. A dark entrance that looked like the front door of a Halloween horror house. No landscaping. An old-fashioned marquee with barely enough space for the titles of three movies.

Inside, the floor was sticky from decades of spilled sodas. You had to sit in two or three different seats before you found one that wasn’t broken, its springs long past their prime.

If you wanted multiplex fancy, you didn’t go to the Astro. You went to the Astro for cheap seats and a second-run movie. You went to the Astro if you didn’t feel like driving all the way to Anderson or Seneca or Easley.

But the Astro, it turns out, is part of Clemson’s history — and close to Clemson’s heart.

“I’ve been amazed by how many calls and e-mails I’ve gotten saying, ‘I had my first kiss in the Astro,’ ‘’ said Clemson mayor Larry Abernathy.

Abernathy is among those in Clemson who want to save the Astro — in some form or another. A lot of ideas are floating around.

I called Abernathy to tell him my idea: I’d like to see a venue for foreign and art films in Clemson. We have a large foreign student population at the university. Many of them used to rent videos in their native languages at a small Asian grocery, but that business burned last year.

So, now that the Astro’s ready for a new life, why not devote one of its three screens to foreign films? We could have an Indian Film Night, Pakistani Film Night, Chinese Film Night, Iranian Film Night. Alternate those with documentaries and noncommercial films that don’t play the cineplexes, and you have what I predict would be a smash hit in a college town.

Abernathy shared his Astro dream with me, too. He envisions another of the three auditoriums as a showcase for local musical talent, with Clemson performing arts students helping run the theater.

“I wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about it,” he said.

The Astro is owned by a family in Mt. Pleasant. The city has not approached them yet. Abernathy wants to have a plan in place first. And he’d like to round up investors who might partner with the city to give the grand old dame a much-needed facelift.

How about you? Do you have childhood memories of sitting in the Astro, your seventh-grade crush beside you in the dark?

What’s your idea for the Astro’s third auditorium?

Jeanne Malmgren can be reached at malmgrenjeanne@yahoo.com.