Photo from the Coyote Drive-In Facebook page

How can you tell when your phone stops ringing? It’s not when a ring ends; it’s when enough time passes that you know a new ring isn’t coming.

I say that as an excuse why last month’s closure of the Coyote Drive-In of Lewisville TX didn’t strike me as anything very unusual. Sure some drive-ins in Texas stay open later in the year, but an end-of-September announcement on its Facebook page that it was “closed for the season” didn’t raise an alarm with me even though the Coyote added “until further notice.”

Today I finally noticed a mention in the Denton Record-Chronicle that indirectly pointed back to an earlier R-C article about the possible end of the Coyote. That article quoted a statement from company officials saying, “The theater just simply wasn’t as busy as we had predicted. We are evaluating some strategic alternatives for the drive-in and the property.”

Although that sounds a lot like a permanent closure, I really wonder what might happen in the spring when blockbuster movies and warm weather return. This Coyote might never open again, but I’ll still wait awhile to hear whether that phone rings again.