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!

Dec. 22: Laurel Drive-in, Hazleton PA

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It’s Day 356 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. On a chilly, overcast day, I was glad it took less than an hour to drive from the Point Drive-In between Northumberland and Mechanicsville PA to the Laurel Drive-in in Hazleton PA.

The Laurel was built on the site of the Mount Laurel Race Track, and was so good it opened twice. Its associated miniature golf course and restaurant opened in early June 1950, then the drive-in’s first movie was on Saturday, June 24, 1950. However, the Laurel’s official grand opening was Friday, July 14. The Plain Speaker of Hazleton wrote that the “500-car” drive-in was owned by Charles V. O’Donnell and Anthony D. Sacco. It offered RCA in-car speakers and “an all-metal screen over 60 feet high.”

The Hazleton Standard-Sentinel wrote, “Sacco and O’Donnell began the Laurel Acres project three years ago.” The concession stand was “equipped with a large screen view window, speakers, a 100-foot snack bar, and rest rooms.”

There were more newspaper clippings about the Laurel over the next couple of decades. In July 1956, owners O’Donnell and Sacco announced a new sound system, extra speakers, and free mini-golf for drive-in patrons. In October 1959, O’Donnell and Sacco, “trading as Laurel Drive-In Theater” were in court about a theater in Tamaqua. A windstorm blew the roof off the concession stand and damaged the screen on Sept. 10, 1968, and about 50 speaker posts “were torn from the ground”. Sacco and O’Donnell were mentioned as joint owners then too.

The odd thing is that O’Donnell’s name is missing from everything but those contemporary newspaper accounts. The 1952 Theatre Catalog said the Laurel was owned by just Anthony Sacco, and the 1951-88 Motion Picture Almanacs all listed only a single Sacco as the owner. A March 2016 article in The Times-Tribune includes an otherwise good summary: “The Laurel Drive-In is a family-owned business owned by (manager) Steve Sacco’s father, Frank Sacco. Steve Sacco’s grandfather, the late Anthony Sacco, started the drive-in in 1950.” The MPAs changed the owner’s initial from A to F by 1980, so that could be about when Frank took over.

(For a really weird one, check out this 2014 Standard-Speaker photo caption. It said that today’s Frank’s founding father was “Frank ‘Chic’ Sacco”. A 1952 article in The Plain Speaker mentioned a “Chic” Sacco who chaired a church committee, but his real first name was John. Was that the same Chic? Why would anyone mistake him for Anthony? But I digress.)

In recent years, the Laurel has had trouble converting to digital projection. Based on its Facebook posts this year, for 2017 it opened in mid-May and closed in mid-September. As far as I can tell, except for two classic horror weekends, the film-only Laurel showed only three movies all season – Baywatch, Wonder Woman, and Transformers: The Last Knight. In my opinion, they ought to call the folks who run the Mahoning about finding interesting 35mm films to show in the absence of a digital projector.

A post on that Facebook page says, “We look forward to seeing you again next year.” I really hope they can find a way to keep this great family-owned community treasure going for another few decades.

The embedded YouTube video of the day is an aerial view of the Laurel. I’ve seen plenty of drone videos this year, but I can’t recall seeing another that gets quite that high.

Miles Today / Total: 52 / 39488 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: They told me that one of the best places in Hazleton for lunch is Jimmy’s Quick Lunch, one of the few restaurants in town that predate the Laurel. As Mod Betty at Retro Roadmap points out, it’s got a very cool vintage neon sign after dark, and it’s home of the Jimmy Dog, a weiner topped with chili and mustard and onion cubes. Great stuff!

Where I Virtually Stayed: Once again I stayed strong and bypassed a Hampton Inn to save money and prove I could do it. Instead I stayed at a Red Roof Inn for less than half the price. Apparently it used to be a Best Western, but it’s pretty nice right now. My clean room had all the modern amenities, and the continental breakfast was enough to fortify me to look for a real meal, with more than enough cash left in my pocket for any restaurant in town.

Only in Hazleton: Just north of Hazleton there’s a large lump of coal to commemorate the Lattimer Miners Massacre. On September 10, 1897, about 300 to 400 unarmed strikers marched to a coal mine at the town of Lattimer to support a newly formed union. The sheriff and 150 armed deputies opened fire on the crowd, killing 19 and wounding dozens more, almost all of them shot in the back.

Next stop: Fair Oaks Drive-In Theatre, Middletown NY.

Dec. 21: Point Drive-In, Northumberland PA

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Point Drive-In marquee and back of one screen

Photo from the Point Drive-In Facebook page

It’s Day 355 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. On an ugly, wintry day of driving, I was glad it only took about a half hour to go from the Pike Drive In Theatre in Montgomery PA to the Point Drive-In between Northumberland and Mechanicsville PA.

The Point opened under a different name. The June 21, 1952 issue of Billboard wrote “Harold E. Bell opened his new 250-car Arrow Drive-In near Danville, Pa.” Later that year, Billboard noted that the drive-in had installed “new high-intensity lamps”, perhaps to increase its capacity. By 1955, the Motion Picture Almanac listed the Arrow at 400 cars, owned by “Bell & Kipp Bros.”

An October 1, 1957 ad in the Hazleton Standard-Sentinel for the Australian adventure film Walk Into Hell mentioned the Point Drive-In in Danville, the first reference I could find to its new name. The MPA, frequently slow to notice changes, updated its listing by 1959.

The next solid information I could find was in an article in the Winter 2005-2006 issue of Spectrum magazine, hosted at Archive.org. It interviewed current owner Dave Renn about the 1970s and 1980s when the Point showed some X-rated movies. “There was very low overhead,” Renn said. “They needed only one person to run the projector and one for the concession stand – people rarely got out of their cars.”

The Point stopped showing adult films after the 1987 season. Owner Joe Farruggio, whose Sportservice Corporation had purchased the Point some time before 1980, then transformed the Point from single to triple screen and added FM stereo sound.

Renn apparently told the Drive-In Theater Adventures blog in 2015 that he had owned the Point for 27 years, which is only a little off from the Spectrum article, which said he “took over” in 1990.

In October 2014, Renn held a Jackalope music festival to raise money to finance the conversion to digital projection, according to The Daily Item of Sunbury. Something must have worked, because the Point outfitted its first digital projector in June 2016, and its movie listings this season suggest it found a second. On the other hand, it was still raising money in early October 2017 for a third digital projector.

The Point closed for the season at the end of October. I’m glad it promised to reopen next spring.

Miles Today / Total: 30 / 39436 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: The closest restaurants are all in Danville, and the one I chose for dinner was the Old Forge Brewing Company. Heck, it’s got Brewing right in its name! I had a salad to stay healthy, then dove in to my ribeye steak brushed with beer butter. I don’t know how one would make beer butter, but it sure sounds great. For dessert, I enjoyed a stout float, like a root beer float without the root. Good times!

Where I Virtually Stayed: The closest hotel to the Point is the Pine Barn Inn in Danville. For such a homey-sounding name, it’s a modern-looking place. There was coffee waiting for me. My comfortable room had all the modern amenities. And there’s a full restaurant on-site for dinner and, most important, breakfast. It was a welcome refuge on a cold, drizzly day.

Only in Northumberland: According to Wikipedia, Northumberland was founded in 1772. Its land was purchased from the Iroquois in the first Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, and the village was laid out in 1772. During the American Revolution, Northumberland was evacuated in response to British-led attacks during the Big Runaway in 1778, and was only finally resettled in 1784.

Next stop: Laurel Drive-in, Hazleton PA.

Dec. 20: Pike Drive In Theatre, Montgomery PA

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It’s Day 354 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. I-80 is still there and I got to see more of it this day, driving over an hour and a half from the Super 322 Drive-In Theatre in the unincorporated community of Woodland PA to the Pike Drive In Theatre in Montgomery PA.

The Williamsport Sun-Gazette reported on Oct. 30, 1952, “Three city men have started construction of a modern, 800-car theater on the Montgomery Pike. They are Harry J. Miele, Harry L. Nixon and Benjamin Pulizzi. Mr. Miele said the theater being built at an estimated cost of $135,000, will open about April 1. Clearing work on the land, about 12 acres, started last week.” It opened on April 16, 1953, showing Son of Paleface.

Strange that he wasn’t mentioned in the 1952 newspaper article, but Billboard magazine reported a little after the fact on April 18, 1953, “Charles Collins and his partners are about ready to open the Pike Drive-In near Montgomery, Pa.” Both the Theatre Catalog and Motion Picture Almanac during those times listed Collins as the first owner.

After that, the only ownership information I could find was in those MPA annual lists. John Shade was listed as the owner in the 1961 edition. The Sportservice Corporation, which ran at least a couple dozen drive-ins in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, owned the Pike in 1976-82. Somebody named G. Tomka was the listed owner in 1984, and J. Farruggio closed out the MPA lists in 1986-88. That was probably Joe Farruggio, known to have owned the nearby Point and converted that drive-in from one screen to three.

According to the official history page at the Pike Drive-In web site, it also expanded from one screen to three “in the 1990’s”. HistoricAerials.com photos suggest that happened in the early 1990s, so maybe that was more of Farruggio’s work.

From that point, I’ve got nothing until the current owner arrived. According to his LinkedIn page, Joe McDade bought the Pike in March 2006. In 2014, he started showing retro horror movies to raise money for digital projectors for his three screens, a story described by the embedded video of the day from WNEP, Scranton’s News Leader. That station also had a nice video report in September 2016 about the positive results of the digital conversion, which had covered two screens by that point.

The Pike closed for the season in October. I’m glad it promised to reopen next spring.

Miles Today / Total: 93 / 39406 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: The Station House in Montgomery is another good example of an unassuming small-town restaurant, across the highway from the railroad tracks, with good comfort food. I stopped in for dinner and had a couple of grilled pork chops with veggies and a baked potato. What a friendly place!

Where I Virtually Stayed: Google said the closest hotels were just up the road in Williamsport. Just to prove I’m not a slave to the Hampton Inn, and to save about $35, I chose the Comfort Inn in town. There were cookies and coffee waiting at check-in. My comfortable room had all the modern amenities. Breakfast included meat, eggs and waffles. And best of all, I still had that extra cash in my pocket when I left.

Only in Montgomery: Just south of town in Allenwood is Clyde Peeling’s Reptiland, a specialized zoo that has what you would expect and more. The room full of parakeets is an interesting attraction, as is the chance to feed a tortoise. There are komodo dragons in an extensive habitat. And there’s original art for sale, painted by the creatures on display.

Next stop: Point Drive-In, Northumberland PA.