Hi-Way 50 to reopen next season

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HiWay50_FacebookHere’s another sign of hope. Our last, brief mention of the Hi-Way 50 in Lewiston TN was that its owner had retired and shut down the place. Now comes word from the Marshall County Tribune that Steve and Danielle Wakham, residents of nearby Lewisburg, have purchased the Hi-Way 50 and plan to renovate it in time to open in 2014.

According to the Tribune, the Wakhams “plan to open with digital equipment from the start. Visitors to the drive-in can also expect to see new bathrooms, new paint, and a brand new menu.” The article also noted that the screen tower “is one of the few remaining screens that were typical in the early days of outdoor movie theaters.” You can see what they mean in the photo I’ve borrowed from the Hi-Way 50’s Facebook page. What do you call that style with the thick borders around the screen and support legs on either side?

And that Facebook page looks like it’s the place to go for Hi-Way 50 status updates. The first post after the sale offered a welcome dose of enthusiasm: “Hello everyone, we’re honored to be the new owners of the Drive in and keep an old tradition alive. The Douglas family has put countless hours over the last 20 years and if not for them it very well could have closed up like most of the others around. Thank you Douglas family!” Thank you Wakhams for keeping the Hi-Way 50 alive!

Great times at the Rodeo

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rodeo_URLThere’s a type of newspaper article that I read all the time, often once per year per newspaper. It’s the fun summer article that says, in effect, “Hey, have you readers noticed that we still have a drive-in theater near here? I went, and it turns out that it’s lots of fun!” I suspect that they’re often written by summer interns, but you never know.

Of course, you already know about the unmatched experience that is a trip to the drive-in, but sometimes it can be fun to see how others discover it. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that you might be interested in the Central Kitsap (WA) Reporter’s story last week about the Rodeo Drive-In near Bremerton.

The best news is that the Rodeo has made the transition to digital, a $250,000 investment according to owner Jack Ondracek. “We’ve known this project was coming for 10 years,” he said. “We’ve been planning for this for a long time. We bought and paid for this with the support of our customers.”

There’s a lot of fun discussion with Ondracek and Rodeo patrons, so you really ought to go read it!

After you’re done with the article, head over to the Rodeo’s web site. It’s got some interesting regional history, lots of nice photos, and a great quote at the end of the All About Us page: “Drive-in theatres are special places, with a nostalgic atmosphere that can’t be found in an indoor theatre.”

The Tyler TX drive-in that no one talks about

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There’s a drive-in east of Tyler TX that doesn’t seem to engender much civic pride. It’s one drive-in that doesn’t need to worry about converting to digital projection because it apparently dumped film a long time ago. I’ve never been there, but according to two reports, the Apache Drive-In now shows adult-rated movies, and business is pretty good. According to Google Maps, as of April 2013, the place looks pretty much the way it did when Captain Chicken and someone from filmmaker Lucid, Inc. visited, separately.

Captain Chicken, aka Terry Moore, runs (ran?) a Texas Drive-In page. His report from 2002 is the more extensive of the two, including more photos. He determined that the reason the image on the screen was so dim was that the movie was being delivered by a home theater-type projection system in a box a short distance from the large, damaged screen. That’s what he saw, and we’ll have to take his word for it. As he wrote, “The duty manager was less than cooperative. He refused to discuss the projection source. In fact, he was unwilling to discuss anything related to the theater.”




The page at Lucid, Inc. is undated, but Archive.org first noticed it in 2012, so that’s likely to be the year it was written. It includes a few photos suggesting that the Apache didn’t change much for 10 years. The “bite” at the upper-right corner of the screen had widened, validating Captain Chicken’s theory that nearby trees had grown to knock down that piece. The projection box, entrance sign, and ticket booth looked pretty much the same as they had a decade earlier. And the folks there were just as uncooperative. “On the porch sits a husky, overall-clad man fiddling nervously with a large diamond stud in one ear,” the Lucid-eer wrote. “He has very little to say about who owns the still up and running XXX drive-in theater – except that she is a private person who is quite happy to remain unknown. ‘This is East Texas, honey. The big shiny buckle of the bible belt. Ain’t nobody gonna talk to you about what they do here.’ ”

I don’t know what else to say. The 1955 Theatre Catalog showed three drive-ins in Tyler, the Crest, Rose Garden, and Starlite, but it’s unclear if any were what would become the Apache. This spring, I had the opportunity to snap a picture of an allegedly similar drive-in near El Paso, but I routed my Arizona-New Mexico trip through Alamogordo NM instead. I’d rather see another family-oriented drive-in near Tyler, but if that’s what the locals want, I guess that’s their business. Still looks kinda creepy to me.

Update: On March 9, 2023, the Apache Drive-In Facebook page, the apparently official account posted “Sad to announce the Apache Drive-In Theatre is permanently closed and the property has been sold.”