The Blue Fox Drive-In Theater in Oak Harbor WA turned 60 years old this year, and KIRO radio’s MyNorthwest ran a nice story this week about the achievement.
As I wrote in my Drive-In-A-Day Odyssey in 2017, Woodrow “Woody” Cecil and his wife Charlotte built the Blue Fox in 1959. What I didn’t know then was the great naming story offered by current co-owner Darrell Bratt.
“The reason it’s called the Blue Fox, from what I understand from the original owner, was when he built the place in ’59 he didn’t have a name for it,” Bratt told MyNorthwest. “He contacted a sign company to build a sign for him. The maker of the sign says, ‘I’ve got a deal for you if you’re not picky on your name.’ He had a sign that was the Blue Fox Drive-In, you know the old drive-in restaurants. He goes, ‘It’s a repossessed sign, so if you call it that I can make you a heck of a deal on a sign!’ That’s how it got the name of the Blue Fox drive-in.”
Bratt and his wife bought the Blue Fox in 1988 and have run it ever since. They added a go-cart track. A few years ago, they raised the money for a digital projector by selling t-shirts and sweatshirts from its screen printing shop.
There’s so much more to see in the MyNorthwest article, including a fine photo of a woman holding a popcorn bucket, so you just know you need to go read it!
