Category Archives: 2017 Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey

This is the virtual tour that will imagine what it would be like to visit every North American drive-in theater in 2017 by visiting one or two every day. While the drive-ins, restaurants, and hotels are real, all the events in this section are fiction. But it’s fun to dream!

Nov. 7: Meadow Bridge Drive-In, Meadow Bridge WV

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It’s Day 311 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. I-64 took me most of the way of my hour and a half drive from Hull’s Drive In in Lexington VA to the Meadow Bridge Drive-In in Meadow Bridge WV of course.

This tiny drive-in, which never held more than 180 cars, opened on July 4, 1953 as the N & R Drive-In Theatre, owned by Ned Garten. Details about its early days are very sketchy, and the part I find most curious is the number of times Garten tried to sell it. An ad in The Raleigh Register in July 1954 listed the “new drive-in theatre” for sale, and a similar ad appeared in September 1956. The “For Sale ads” got larger and more serious in June 1958, as Garten wrote that he was moving to Florida for his health and offered the N & R for $15,000, less than the cost of the projector. That might have been when the sale finally happened; the following year, one “Roger Ned Garten” of Ft. Pierce FL attended the family reunion.

The majority of what I could find about the drive-in came from a single lengthy article in The Register-Herald in 2013. That article said that after Garten, “the Thomas Theaters company ran it. Then one of the shareholders purchased the location outright.”

I turned to my shelf of International Motion Picture Almanacs to see how their information lined up. The IMPAs had Garten through 1959, then the drive-in was off the lists until 1978. By then it was listed as the Meadowbridge (sic) and owned by B. Hartley. In the 1980-82 editions, the owner was L. Thomas, which must be that Thomas Theaters that the newspaper mentioned. In 1984, the IMPA showed J. Boyd as the owner.

Now we pick up the newspaper’s narrative. “Word on the street was that the theater was going to turn X-rated because its screen faced away from the road. That’s when (current owner Howard) McClanahan stepped in and decided to make an offer.”

In fact, the Meadow Bridge had already shown a fair number of X-rated movies, a fact hinted at in the article and verified by 1973-74 ads in The Raleigh Register. Anyway, McClanahan was listed as the owner in the 1986 IMPA.

McClanahan had worked at the Meadow Bridge (or was it the N & R?) when he was young, and he maintained a day job until 2001. Since his retirement, he’s been able to devote his attention to his little drive-in. “I don’t know what I’d do if we didn’t have this place,” he told The Register-Herald. “Plus, I have this problem — when I buy something, I never get rid of it.”

The YouTube video of the day comes from WVNS, Lewisburg’s News Leader. It was shot in 2013 during the Project Honda contest to win a new digital projector for several drive-ins. The Meadow Bridge already had its digital projector, but was trying to win anyway? I guess it could have passed it along to a neighbor.

At any rate, the drive-in closed for the season several weeks ago. It’s another dark night for me.

Miles Today / Total: 105 / 35158 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 188

Nearby Restaurant: The best place to eat in Meadow Bridge is almost certainly Carol’s Restaurant, home of the local legend, Carol’s hot dogs. They’re grilled and covered in some homemade concoction of chili and other stuff. There’s also all the coffee you can drink and plenty of other standard fare, but what’s the point of typical food? For dessert, the chocolate cake was an excellent companion to one more cup of Joe.

Where I Virtually Stayed: One of these days, I feel like saying that there were no hotels anywhere near the drive-in, so I slept in my car. Not this time, not quite. There was a pretty good one, the Sleep Inn in Beaver, less than a half hour away. My clean, comfortable room had all the modern amenities, and breakfast even had hot sausage and biscuits. For a solid stay like that, the price was amazing.

Only in Meadow Bridge: Just up I-64 in Sam Black Church, there’s a historical marker for the Greenbrier Ghost. It reads, “Interred in nearby cemetery is Zona Heaster Shue. Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward. Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition’s account. Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison. Only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.”

Next stop: Pipestem Drive-In, Speedway WV.

Nov. 6: Hull’s Drive In, Lexington VA

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It’s Day 310 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. Thanks to the miracle of interstate highways, it took me less than an hour and a half to drive from the Goochland Drive-In Theater in Hadensville VA, over the Blue Ridge Mountains, to Hull’s Drive In in Lexington VA.

The story of Hull’s is an uplifting story about how a community came together to save its beloved drive-in theater. I’ll get to that shortly, but first I wanted to take it all the way back to the beginning.

This drive-in opened as the Lee in 1950, built and owned by Waddy and Virginia Atkins of Roanoke on land leased by “the Hostetter family,” probably farmer Mason Hostetter who owned adjacent land. The Hull’s history page on Weebly said that the couple would “drive back and forth from Roanoke every night.”

Meanwhile, Sebert Hull and a partner had built the Mountain View Drive-In in Buena Vista VA in 1950 and sold it in July 1957. Reminiscing in an article in The News Leader of Staunton VA, Hull remembered that five weeks later, “There was a movie my wife wanted to see … I hadn’t been on the field 20 minutes when the owner came up and started propositioning me. He’d been commuting from Roanoke, and wanted someone local to take it over for him. How he knew I was there I still don’t know.” (My wife figures that Hull’s wife set him up.)

That’s when Mr. & Mrs. Atkins sold the drive-in, which immediately became Hull’s. In 1958, the Lee’s former owners purchased the Riverside Drive-In in their hometown of Roanoke.

That 1994 News Leader article asked Hull, then 70, when he would retire. “The only thing I’ve ever said is that at my age, I never really know what my health will be, so I’m just going to play it year by year.”

When Hull passed away before the 1998 season, his widow sold the drive-in to W.D. Goad, who owned the adjacent body shop. Goad ran it for one season then saw the drive-in needed technical improvements and began looking for a buyer. Hull’s was mostly dark for 1999.

In June 1999, two months after the drive-in failed to open; Eric and Elise Sheffield convened a public meeting with more than 50 concerned fans. They formed Hull’s Angels, a non-profit group dedicated to re-opening the drive-in. Within three months, Hull’s Angels had sponsored a two-night benefit at the drive-in, grown to 500 members, and raised $10,000. After researching other options, Hull’s Angels decided it should try to buy Hull’s.

The group’s first lease-purchase agreement was in April 2000, and the IRS approved Hull’s Angels as a 501(c)(3) non-profit that December, making it the first tax-exempt drive-in. In May 2001, Hull’s Angels exercised its option and purchased the business and land lease.

As you can see in the embedded YouTube video of the day, Jeremy Reter is the current executive director of Hull’s Angels. Another YouTube interview calls him the manager and projectionist, so it’s safe to say he runs the place. “Being the first non-profit, community-owned drive-in theatre in the country made us unique,” Reter told The News Virginian this year. “Since then we have been the model for other communities to save their drive-ins. It is a special thing to be non-profit because it allows people to realize that this is something that they can get behind and be part of in keeping alive.”

Hull’s had its last weekend of the season at the end of October, but it promises to be open bright and early in 2018.

Miles Today / Total: 94 / 35053 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 188

Nearby Restaurant: It’s getting to be that time of year when I look for good soup. Good soup plus pastry would be even better, and that’s Sweet Treats Bakery. The blackened chicken noodle soup was comforting and interesting at the same time, and the cheesecake brownie was two more great tastes rolled into one. Mmm, comfort food!

Where I Virtually Stayed: Lexington has what is typically an oxymoron – an unusual Hampton Inn. It’s the manor house of the historic Col Alto mansion (which has its own Wikipedia page), which is why I stayed in a queen bed “historic” room with a fireplace but no mini-fridge. Breakfast was the Hampton standard, although its setting was much nicer than most. This place is definitely something to experience.

Only in Lexington: Confederate general Stonewall Jackson’s favorite horse, now stuffed, is on display at the Virginia Military Institute Museum in Lexington. According to the VMI web site, Little Sorrel is one of two Civil War horses to be mounted at death. Atlas Oscura wrote, “Originally named Fancy, the Confederate general bought the horse for his wife as a gift in 1861, but soon decided, in a Homer-buys-Marge-a-bowling-ball-esque move, that he would keep the beast for himself”.

Next stop: Meadow Bridge Drive-In, Meadow Bridge WV.

Nov. 5: Goochland Drive-In Theater, Hadensville VA

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It’s Day 309 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. There aren’t that many drive-ins still showing movies on Sunday nights at this time of year, so I needed another fairly long drive. It took me about 3½ hours to drive from Middle River MD, around Washington DC, then on to the Goochland Drive-In Theater in Hadensville VA.

Although it’s next to an exit on I-64, the Goochland is tucked away in the middle of a forest, which must have been cleared away by John Heidel. He’s the guy who bought this piece of land and built the drive-in, which had its grand opening on Aug. 28, 2009. By all accounts, it’s been hugely popular ever since.

Heidel tells the story that he built the Goochland because he wanted to take his kids to a drive-in. He told the Virginia Credit Union, “I have always loved movies, but when we had small kids, and wanted to take a 1½-year-old and a three-year-old to the movies, we knew that going to a conventional theater just wouldn’t work.”

Since Day One, the signature dish of the open-air Goochland concession stand has been the Gooch dog, a beef hot dog topped with macaroni and cheese. Which reminds me of the drive-in’s only small misstep. In early 2014, the drive-in had become so popular, particularly at the concession stand, that Heidel launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to expand the facility to shorten the lines of patrons buying Gooch dogs and other snacks.

Heidel wrote, “The Goochland Drive-In Theater is a truly unique entity that offers more than just the act of watching a movie…it brings family and friends together. And for a few hours, people can escape to a simpler time of old-fashioned fun…without spending a fortune. That was our mission from the start – and it is quite rewarding to see it happen every time we open.” But the Kickstarter campaign raised less than a third of its goal, and he asked contributors to back a local muscular dystrophy patient instead.

Most recently, the drive-in saw overflow crowds wanting to watch the latest Stephen King thriller It. Heidel told WWBT, Richmond’s News Leader, “If we would’ve had 2,000, 3,000 car spaces, we wouldn’t have been able to fit everybody in. We had folks lined up at 2 to 2:30 for a 5:45 p.m. gate opening.”

On this night, the Goochland was finishing a long weekend of showing Thor: Ragnarok. I didn’t mind watching it a second time, because it really is a fun, humorous, often dazzling movie.

Miles Today / Total: 172 / 34959 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Thor: Ragnarok / 188

Nearby Restaurant: The closest restaurant that wasn’t a Dairy Queen or closed on Sunday appeared to be Satterwhite’s Restaurant in Manakin VA. It was still open for lunch by the time I arrived, which was good, and it was still serving breakfast, which is even better. I love great biscuits, and the small biscuits that came with my omelette tasted homemade. Nothing like comfort food after a long drive.

Where I Virtually Stayed: Google Maps says that there are no hotels anywhere near the Goochland. The best-looking alternatives looked to be along I-64 in the northwest suburbs of Richmond, and I picked the Hilton Richmond Hotel near Short Pump. This one had an executive lounge for dinner snacks, drinks, and breakfast for certain guests. My executive floor king room had everything, including a price tag that reminded me why I don’t do this every night.

Only in Hadensville: Little Hadensville is in Goochland County, the source of the drive-in’s name. In turn, the county was named for Sir William Gooch, the Royal Lieutenant Governor (and de facto governor in place of its England-based nominal governor) of Virginia from 1727 through 1749. Gooch honored himself with the naming of Goochland County in 1727.

Next stop: Hull’s Drive In, Lexington VA.