Dec. 25: Southington Drive-In, Southington CT

It’s Day 359 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. On a sunny, cold day, it took about an hour and a half to drive from the Hyde Park Drive In Theatre in Hyde Park NY to the Southington Drive-In, Plantsville CT. Like the Hyde Park, the Southington is an example of local non-profits supporting the drive-in, but the details are very different.

A March 1950 Billboard magazine article suggested a long gestation period for the Southington. It wrote that property owners were appealing the build approval given to James A. Holmes. They must have found plenty of avenues for delaying the project, because the drive-in didn’t open until May 18, 1955, owned by Peter Perakos and Perakos Theater Associates. (Many sources mention 1954, which might have been when Perakos bought the land.)

By all accounts, the Southington was huge, with capacity estimates between 900 and 1100 cars for its single screen. John Perakos, one of Peter’s sons, added a second screen in July 1979.

In December 1992, the Hartford Courant wrote that the Perakos family had informally offered to sell the drive-in for $2.75 million to the town of Southington, but the town wasn’t interested. More about that later.

An August 2002 article in The New York Times wrote, “For Mr. (Sperie) Perakos, (the drive-in) is a family business, opened in 1954 by his father, and now owned by himself and his brothers, John and Peter Perakos Jr.” The article also quoted the family talking about their dedication and how they were hooked on the business, and mentioned that “despite stormy weather, car after car pulled into the Southington Drive-In.”

Just a few weeks later, the Perakos family closed the drive-in permanently. An article in the Republican-American, captured at the CinemaTour forum, wrote that as of July 2003, a For Sale sign was on the property, and “Sperie and Peter Perakos referred questions about the property to their nephew, Peter, a Hartford-based attorney.” That attorney said in August 2003 that “the theater closed this year because the Perakos family members who run the theater, now in their 80s, were unable to get help.” But there was still a lot of talk about the family wanting to sell the land to somebody, and in April 2004, Southington voters overwhelmingly approved the $1.61 million purchase of the 40-acre parcel.

The New Haven Register had a nice article about the next phase of the Southington’s life. It began in the winter of 2009-10 at a Southington Town Council meeting when resident Mike Riccio asked what it would take to get that drive-in up and running again. He was told that the town couldn’t run a drive-in theater. But council member Dawn Miceli had “a light bulb go off in my head.” What if local civic groups, a different one each week, could run the drive-in? Miceli and Riccio began the Southington Drive-In Committee, and in June 2010, the Southington lit up for the first time since 2002.

The weekly Saturday night showings feature movies voted on by residents and have become a nice income source for the volunteer civic groups. Instead of a snack bar, local food vendors set up tables and booths. Patrons are also allowed to bring in food and beverages. To see a typical year of movies, you can check the 2017 schedule here.

The YouTube video of the day is a rare treat – a view of the drive-in as it looked decades ago. In this case, we see its heyday in 1990. This year, the Southington closed after its annual Halloween Festival in late October. I’m glad it’s in such safe hands.

Miles Today / Total: 85 / 39748 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: It’s not easy to find a decent meal on Christmas Day. Instead of resorting to convenience store beef jerky, I was very happy to find the Gobi Mongolian Grill. If you’ve never tried a Mongolian grill, you really should experience it. I watched the cooks prepare my selections with a variety of sauces, then I brought my full plate back to the table to add brown rice. I washed it down with a Budweiser and was glad to have such a nice dinner on such a quiet day.

Where I Virtually Stayed: One of the closest hotels to the Southington is the Comfort Suites, which was again was a great deal for the price. There were cookies and coffee waiting for me at check-in. My comfortable room had the full set of modern amenities. Breakfast had some meat and eggs to go with the Comfort waffle machine and the continental standards. I was glad to have stayed here.

Only in Southington: Just south of Southington in Cheshire, you’ll find the Barker Character Comic and Cartoon Museum, tens of thousands of items of cartoon character memorabilia from the personal collection of Herb and Gloria Barker, who bought many of the items for less than a dollar apiece at garage sales in the 1970s.

Next stop: Becky’s Drive-In, Walnutport PA.

Dec. 24: Hyde Park Drive In Theatre, Hyde Park NY

It’s Day 358 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. It took only about an hour to drive from the Fair Oaks Drive-In Theatre north of Middletown NY to the Hyde Park Drive In Theatre in Hyde Park NY.

This drive-in opened as the Hyde Park Auto Vision Theatre on July 28, 1950, owned by Sidney Cohen and his brother-in-law Phil Eisenberg. It’s stayed in the Cohen family ever since.

(Looks like that pair stayed busy. When Eisenberg and Cohen bought the Canaan CT Drive-In in 1952, Billboard magazine said the pair owned theaters in Lakeville and Millerton CT, and Pine Plains, Red Hook, Rhinebeck and Hyde Park NY.)

The International Motion Picture Almanac drive-in lists listed the drive-in as the Hyde Park Auto Vision” through the 1966 edition, then switched to just Hyde Park. By 1978, they listed Cohen as the sole owner.

The Poughkeepsie Journal, in a 2011 retrospective, recalled the time the drive-in was the high bidder for a lucrative movie. “In 1977, we won county rights to show ‘Star Wars’ and it became one our biggest successes,” Fred Cohen said. “We ran it for 32 weeks and it grossed as much the first week it showed than we made our entire first year in business.”

The next time the Hyde Park was in the news was when community groups came together to save it. The growing prosperity of the area caused property taxes to rise to unsustainable levels for the drive-in, and Wal-Mart was interested in buying the land. Scenic Hudson, a Poughkeepsie-based environmental group, bought the property and leased it back to the Cohen family. “Scenic Hudson bought the land because they didn’t want a Wal-Mart going in right smack across from the Roosevelt home,” manager Andy Cohen told The New York Times in 2008.

In July 2011, Scenic Hudson transferred ownership of the drive-in’s land to the National Park Service, which runs the FDR National Historic Site. At the time, the Park Service planned to use part of the land to build a larger trailhead for Roosevelt Farm Lane. As the Red Hook Observer pointed out in 2014, the Hyde Park is the only drive-in on land owned by the National Park Service.

As of an October 2014 BBC article, owner Barry Horowitz (Sidney Cohen’s son-in-law) had just completed converting to digital projection. Horowitz told them that patrons like the drive in because they “can sit outside their car, they can smoke, they can have a beer, just [in] the open air. People like to get outside, just like going to a park.”

The Hyde Park closed in mid-September this year. I’m glad it’s in such safe hands.

Miles Today / Total: 48 / 39663 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: On a snowy day with no drive-in to watch, I again went looking for a diner with comfort food, and that’s why I chose the Eveready Diner for lunch. My chicken pot pie was so much better than the frozen versions I baked decades ago, with peas and carrots that weren’t mushy and serious chunks of chicken. Add mashed potatoes, a salad, and a warm roll, and I was in my happy place.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The classic Roosevelt Inn was closed for the season, so the Hyde Park Quality Inn was my second choice. There were cookies and coffee waiting at check-in. My king bed room had all the modern amenities. Breakfast had scrambled eggs, sausage, and a fresh waffle. This place worked out.

Only in Hyde Park: Literally across the street from the drive-in is the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. It’s got everything you’d expect from a presidential library plus tours of FDR’s home and great views of the Hudson River. Admission tickets are good for two days, and many TripAdvisor reviewers report enough areas of interest to fill that time and more.

Next stop: Southington Drive-In, Plantsville CT.

Dec. 23: Fair Oaks Drive-In Theatre, Middletown NY

It’s Day 357 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. Driving through the rain, I was glad the temperature was on the liquid side of freezing. It took me two hours to cross the border, going from the Laurel Drive-in in Hazleton PA to the Fair Oaks Drive-In Theatre north of Middletown NY.

The story of the Fair Oaks is vague and unusual from its very beginning. Both a 2001 article in the Times Herald-Record of Middletown and an October 2017 post on the drive-in’s official Facebook page say that opening was in 1967. The trouble is that Historic Aerials happens to have a photo of that location from 1968, and there’s no drive-in. Other online sources agree with the New York Drive-Ins web site, which has “Gala Opening” newspaper ads of the “All New – All Weather” Fair Oaks for May 15, 1970.

The Fair Oaks opened as a single screen, and the only owner info I’ve found for its early years was the Taylor family. The only personal glimpse I could find was in August 1976, when owner E.J. Taylor became an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church and planned to seek a tax exemption “as soon as I can do it.” By all accounts, the drive-in closed after the 1981 season.

In that 2001 Times Herald-Record article that got the opening date wrong, it was accurate in stating that Ron Mege “took on the ruins of Fair Oaks” in 1990. “Mege started with nothing but bare walls. He built the projection equipment, rewired the place, even built one of the screens himself.” That second screen went up after 1994, based on aerial photos.

(In an ironic counterpoint to Taylor’s 1976 suggestion of holding ULC services at the drive-in, landowner Pravin Patel donated 10 acres of the drive-in field for the Bharatiya Mandir Hindu temple, which was built in 1998.)

Mege and the Fair Oaks rolled along until 2013, when things got weird. In September 2013, the Times Herald-Record wrote that local man John Grimaldi planned to take over the drive-in and invest in an upgrade to digital projection. Then-current film projectionist Tanner Mege was to be hired as the manager. That didn’t happen. Instead, the Fair Oaks sat dark for all of 2014, which Ron Mege later blamed “on a divorce that tied up his assets.”

Then Regina Franz and husband Adam Gerhard entered the picture. They took over the lease in March 2015 and reopened the Fair Oaks in May that year. Newspaper accounts suggest that the digital projector they were using had been partly paid for by a Kickstarter campaign at the Randall Drive-In in Bethel VT. In May 2016, according to another Times Herald-Record article, Gerhard posted on Facebook that “actions have been taken against us” and that the couple had been “forced to seek legal recourse.” They said the Fair Oaks would remain closed.

Ron Mege and girlfriend Kelly Boland took over and began refurbishing the Fair Oaks with a new digital projector within days of Gerhard’s post. The drive-in reopened in July 2016, and they added a digital projector for the second screen in June 2017. Meanwhile, according to the West Lebanon NH Valley News, Franz and Gerhard were sued by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office in October 2016 for allegedly “making deceptive representations in connection with a fundraiser.” Through their lawyer, they denied any wrongdoing, and I don’t know the status of that lawsuit.

It looks like the Fair Oaks has settled down with good seasons of improvements, fun shows, and grilled onions. It closed for the season in late September, then began replacing its marquee sign, apparently the original. I look forward to a successful, uneventful 2018.

Miles Today / Total: 127 / 39615 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: I found another nice regional restaurant chain. Cosimo’s Brick Oven has four locations, and I wonder whether they’re all as good as the one in Middletown. I started with the garlic bread fresh out of that oven, then had a formaggi five-cheese pizza. With a glass of malbec to wash it down, I left with a warm, full belly on a cool, cloudy evening.

Where I Virtually Stayed: I had been denying myself for days, but in Middletown I relented and chose my old favorite chain, the Hampton Inn. There were cookies and coffee waiting at check-in. My large, comfortable room had all the modern amenities. Breakfast was the usual strong Hampton standard. I might get sick of them later, but right now I wish there was a Hampton Inn next to every drive-in.

Only in Middletown: Just south of Middletown in Goshen in the Harness Racing Museum & Hall of Fame. It’s built on an actual historic stables and track, and its interactive exhibits show what it’s like to buy a horse at auction, train it and race it. The museum is free, and you can take a virtual tour of the place on YouTube.

Next stop: Hyde Park Drive In Theatre, Hyde Park NY.