Jan. 28: Stars & Stripes Drive-In Theatre, Lubbock TX

It’s Day 28 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, starting with a two and a half hour drive from Abilene TX to Lubbock, home of the Stars & Stripes Drive-In Theatre.

This place is a pioneer of 21st century drive-in operation, opening in 2003 with two screens and radio sound. A third screen came soon afterward.

The Stars & Stripes concession stand is set up like a 50s themed cafe, and that’s not the only unusual part. The specialty of the house is a sandwich they call the Ay Chihuahua, with chili, cheese and other stuff between two crispy corn tortillas. The soda and popcorn prices are reasonable, and I have a weakness for corn fritters.

For the first time in weeks, I had a choice between two early-show movies I hadn’t seen yet. A Dog’s Purpose just came out this weekend, so I went with Monster Trucks, which has been around longer. That dog will probably show up again in the next week or two.

Miles Today / Total:  172 / 3330 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Monster Trucks / 20

Nearby Restaurant: Isn’t it nifty when the only really close choice happens to be really great? The Shack dishes up the kind of barbecue that overcomes a humble, out-of-the-way setting and gets patrons lined up to get a table before they run out of food. Definitely recommended!

Where I Virtually Stayed: Most of the hotels in Lubbock are along the highways on the southwest and east sides of town. The closest hotel to the Stars & Stripes, northwest of town, is the Best Western Plus Tech Medical Center Inn. It’s a pretty new place, and I always like having a mini-fridge in the room.

Only in Lubbock: There are prairie dog towns around plenty of cities in the western US (I know of several within a 30-minute drive from Carload World Headquarters in Denver), but only Lubbock has the Prairie Dog Town. The official Lubbock web site gushes, “Of all Nature’s wild creatures, none is more appealing and entertaining to watch than the Prairie Dog.” PDT was established in the 1930s and has grown and relocated a couple of times since. It even has its own Goodwill Ambassador, Prairie Dog Pete.

Next Stop: Big Sky Theater, Midland TX.

Jan. 27: Town & Country Drive-In Theatre, Abilene TX

It’s Day 27 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, starting with another hour and a half or so to drive from Graham to the Town and Country Drive-In Theatre in Abilene TX. Here in Texas, I’ve seen brand-new drive-ins, and over the last two days, I’ve seen ancient, pioneering drive-ins. The Town and Country is somewhere in between.

The Town and Country wasn’t really a pioneer. When it opened in 1956, there were already six other drive-ins in Abilene: the Chief, Crescent, Elmwood, Key City (two screens), Park, and Tower. What the T&C offered was size; its 1500-car capacity was more than half of what the other seven screens in town could handle together. The T&C had two screens of its own, plus a playground with an electric Ferris wheel. It closed in 1981, but was resurrected in 2000 and has been rolling along since.

The T&C sure isn’t like the Coyotes I visited earlier this week. There were no alcoholic beverages to be found at the concession stand. On the other hand, the prices felt reasonable again; a bacon cheeseburger and the largest fountain drink they offered were only $3.50 each. This place felt a lot more like the drive-ins I visited when I was growing up.

After two dark nights, I was happy to return to a drive-in that’s showing movies in January. Of the four early movies, the only one I hadn’t seen was Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, so that was my Friday night show.

Miles Today / Total:  94 / 3158 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter / 19

Nearby Restaurant: I found another chicken dinner house a lot like the one I visited two nights ago in Granbury, but this one is called Belle’s Chicken Dinner House. Same deal though, great chicken (or chicken-fried steak) and unlimited green beans, mashed potatoes, and other fixin’s. Yum!

Where I Virtually Stayed: There were several close hotels along I-20 of the inexpensive, expedient type that didn’t match what I was looking for. It was only another mile or so to a cluster of my type of lodgings at Lake Road. I picked the newest, the Hampton Inn, because the only thing more reliable than a Hampton Inn is a brand-new Hampton Inn.

Only in Abilene: There are several sculpted items of interest clustered near Business I-20 as it runs through central Abilene. There’s the world’s largest (really) paper airplane, a flat buffalo for photo-op rides, the second-largest faux animal skull in town, a park full of Dr. Seuss character statues, and the world’s largest faux buffalo skull.

Next Stop: Stars & Stripes Drive-In Theatre, Lubbock TX.

PA Man Applies to Revive the Moonlite

The Moonlight Drive-In marquee, overgrown with weeds

The Moonlite marquee as it looked five years ago. Photo by Mike Kerick from the Carload Flickr pool

The drive-in revival continues to build. According to The Citizens’ Voice of Wilkes-Barre PA, a man has applied to the local county zoning hearing board to be allowed to renovate and reopen the Moonlite Drive-In of nearby West Wyoming PA.

Eric Symeon of Exeter said he is negotiating to buy the property from the West Wyoming Borough, which owns the vacant site, contingent on zoning approval. The borough council seems willing to cooperate with the necessary variance to the otherwise residential area.

According to his application, Symeon wants to show movies on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights between May and September. He wrote that he plans to repair the concession stand, ticket booth and screen. Based on Mike Kerick’s Flickr album of Moonlite photos from five years ago, Symeon has plenty of repair opportunities.

The slow decay of the single-screen Moonlite site has been well documented online. To watch nature reclaim the vacant lot, compare an aerial photo from the Moonlite’s heyday with this 2011 Google Earth photo and the latest from 2016. For ground-level narratives with lots of photos, check out this July 2008 post from Forgotten PA and this May 2013 entry from the Drive-In Theater Adventures blog.

When did the Moonlite open? Exactly when did it close? I could only find a few clues from Carload World Headquarters. It wasn’t listed in the 1955 Theatre Catalog, my most recent edition, so it probably opened after 1955. (It was definitely open by 1967.) I found another TCV article from 2010 that said the Moonlite’s former owners sued the borough, alleging that “sewer installation in the early 1990s caused increased water-retention issues that thwarted potential sales of the property in 2005 and 2006.” A borough solicitor said the site suffered from flooding before the sewers were installed, and that the Moonlight “has not shown a movie since the 1980s.” A PDF from that lawsuit says “the Moonlite Drive-In operated until approximately 1991.” (Hope that Symeon has a good drainage plan!)

Back to Symeon. “This is something I always wanted to do since I was little,” he told The Citizens’ Voice. “Every time I’d drive by, I’d see it just sitting there. Everyone in the valley knows about it.” The projected opening is Summer 2017. I look forward to hearing more about this project.