It’s Day 333 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. Having finished my sweep of the drive-ins of the southern US, it was time to return to Pennsylvania to start the final survey of mostly closed-for-the-season theaters. It took over 5½ hours to drive from the Twin City Drive-in in Bristol TN through the full height of West Virginia to the Skyview Drive-In just a bit north of the border in Carmichaels PA.

The origins of the Skyview, and even its early spelling, aren’t perfectly clear. To start, every anecdotal reference I’ve found, including the drive-in’s official Facebook page, says that it opened in 1946. They’re all wrong – it was 1948. The 1948-49 Theatre Catalog listed the Carmichaels Drive-In as under construction at that point. A later newspaper clipping mentioned a lawsuit against the drive-in’s owners which alleged “when the theater was opened in 1948, reddog and earth was heaped up near the headwaters of a brook” and so forth.

Was it really called the Carmichaels? If so, not for long. The 1949-50 Catalog listed it as Carmichaels, and Pittsburgh radio station WESA‘s list said it was “Formerly The Carmichael’s Drive-In”. Yet its first advertisements in the newspapers of nearby Uniontown in summer 1950 were as the “Sky View”.

And then there’s the spelling issue. Its vintage sign shows it as the Sky View in all caps and a small gap between words, exactly like those first newspaper ads. By the 1960s, those ads were for the Sky-View, with a hyphen. Today its official Facebook page calls it the SkyView, one word, two capital letters. But the logo and the self-description on its web site has it Skyview, one word, one capital, so that’s how I use it.

From all accounts, Louis Stuler and Duard (or Durwood) Coe owned the drive-in from the time it opened. Stuler passed away from a heart attack at the age of 47 in 1961. Coe continued to own the Skyview for a while after that.

By 1978, the Cinemette Corporation of America had taken over the Skyview, and by 1984 it was owned by G & G Theaters, Inc. Then it all gets fuzzy for a while. The Southwest Pennsylvania Rural Exploration blog says that the Skyview’s “second screen and additions to the original screen (to facilitate wide-screen format) were added in 1986.”

Elizabeth Walker started working at the Skyview in 1999, and her husband Charles became manager in 2001. Together they bought the drive-in in 2007 and still own it today.

In 2011, the Walkers told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that they run the Skyview for the same reasons that patrons come. “The way I see it, you’re not going for the movie when you’re going to the drive-in,” Charles said. “You’re going for that fancy little word: nostalgia. It’s a piece of the past. It’s romantic.”

The Almanac of Pittsburgh wrote in August 2013 that the Walkers pooled their retirement savings and received money from two donors to buy used digital projectors. “We decided we would do everything we could to ensure it didn’t go down on our watch,” Charles said. This year, one of those projectors went bad, but they bought a replacement and kept on going.

The embedded YouTube video of the day has a dreamlike quality to it as shapes bend and wobble with the movement of the camera. I don’t know whether that’s intentional, but it’s kind of fun.

Miles Today / Total: 346 / 38614 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 199

Nearby Restaurant: The Hungarian Smokehouse in Carmichaels only offers its food to go, but it was worth stopping there to pick up dinner anyway. The special of the day was wings, cooked with a special smokehouse sauce. (I could have ordered Billy’s hell, but it sounded and smelled too frightening.) I added a side of baked beans and fries, and I was ready to bring my feast back to my hotel room for a relaxing dinner alone.

Where I Virtually Stayed: Surprisingly, Google doesn’t show any hotels very close to the Skyview, so I had to travel 11 miles west to Waynesville. There’s a Hampton Inn there, so that’s very good news. I had to drive through a shopping center parking lot to get there, but it had cookies and coffee waiting at check-in, a comfortable room with a king bed and all the modern amenities, and the great Hampton breakfast in the morning. When I drove back out past the Wendy’s, I wasn’t tempted to stop.

Only in Carmichaels: The Skyview is almost certainly the only drive-in theater across the street from a courthouse. Mind you, the building that holds the Magisterial District Judge of the Eastern District of Greene County looks more like a strip mall than a capitol. I’ll bet the judge’s decisions are just as binding as they’d be in a more ostentatious setting.

Next stop: Brownsville Drive-In, Grindstone PA.

It’s Day 320 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. Thanks to the miracle of I-79, it took me less than two hours to drive from the Sunset Drive-In Theater just south of Shinnston WV to the Dependable Drive-In in Moon PA.

The single-screen Dependable opened in late June 1950, then was heavily damaged by a flood a week later. It was reportedly owned by three couples, the Hofackers, the Marcuses, and the Springers. (Although a 1951 newspaper report called Howard Benson the owner, I’m guessing he was the manager.) In April 1952, Robert J. Springer sued the other two couples for leasing the drive-in to Ernest Stern in June 1951. Springer was still around in 1955, so I guess that worked out somehow.

The Pittsburgh City Paper wrote that Rick Glaus had “run the Dependable since 1968”. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote in 2010 that “Glaus, 56, … operates the drive-in with his son, Jonathan. The Glaus family bought the Dependable in the late 1960s from original owner Pat Springer.”

Sure enough, a March 1974 article about concerned neighbors identified Rick Glaus as the manager. “Let’s face it – X-rated films are the only thing that saves us,” he told The Pittsburgh Press. If all these newspapers are right, Glaus would have been about 20 at the time and 14(!) when he started running the Dependable. That can’t be right, can it?

Cinema Treasures says the Dependable added a second screen in 1995, a third in 1997, and a fourth in 2003.

It appears that Jonathan became known as Jay, because a 2012 article in The Pitt News said that Jay Glaus was the 19-year-old manager at that point. “We try to keep it modern but nostalgic at the same time, which is a challenge because you want to make everything modern, and you want to bring everything up to contemporary stuff. But you have to remember you’re running a drive-in,” he said. “You’re not running an indoor movie theater.”

The last I saw, Rick still owns the Dependable and Jay still runs it as general manager. The great thing about it now is that it’s open year-round, giving me a chance to get a little closer to my goal of 200 active drive-in nights this year. It was cold and rainy, but I got the chance to see a special Thursday night premiere of Justice League.

The embedded video of the day comes from WPXI, Pittsburgh’s News Leader. It tells of the generosity of Dependable patrons after one jerk stole from a donation box.

Miles Today / Total: 114 / 36249 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Justice League / 191

Nearby Restaurant: For a fine, inexpensive lunch, I headed over to the Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe, part of a regional restaurant chain. Fresh-cut French fries and hot dogs with a special chili sauce were all I really needed to get me from breakfast to dinner. Did I also have one of their Oreo and peanut butter milkshakes? I’m not telling.

Where I Virtually Stayed: When you’re across the highway from a major airport, you know that hotels can’t be far away. One of those was a Hampton Inn, and if you’ve been reading these virtual visits, you know the rest. This one had a manager’s reception with free beer in the lobby, so that’s a point in its favor. My comfy room had all the modern amenities, and the breakfast was the good Hampton standard.

Only in Moon: Just across I-376 from the Dependable, the Pittsburgh International Airport is home to a 20-foot robot sculpture that appears to be made of bridges. As described in Geek Pittsburgh, “Arch” was built to last only six months as part of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary, but it was so admired that it was restored to a more permanent state and replaced inside the airport in June 2013.

Next stop: Family Drive-In Theatre, Stephens City VA.

It’s Day 302 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. Coming from the Warwick Drive-In Theatre, just across the border near Warwick NY, it took just an hour and a half to drive to the Circle Drive In Theatre in Dickson City PA.

The important part of the history of the Circle is that Michael Delfino bought it some time in the 1960s, and as of 2015, the 95-year-old was still the owner. That year was when he added a second screen to the Circle, which still packs them in every weekend.

What went before is a little sketchy from the very beginning. Milford Now reported in 2014 that the Circle was built in 1945, which matches what the Circle web site’s history page says. Also in 2014, Happenings magazine said the drive-in had been around “for 65 years” which would put the opening date at 1949, but that it broke ground in 1945. Cinema Treasures also puts the opener in 1949. Why would an erected drive-in sit idle for over three years? That’s a story, but it’s one I don’t know.

What I do know is that the Circle’s first appearance in the fairly reliable Theatre Catalog series was its 1949-50 edition. It was said to be owned by “Albert Frangel,” who I suspect to really be Albert Frengel only because that was a much more common surname in eastern Pennsylvania.

The 1952-59 editions of the Motion Picture Almanac listed the owner as E. Hollander of the Allied Circuit or just the circuit. In the early 1960s, it switched to the “Milgrim (sic) Bkg. Serv.”, actually Philadelphia’s Milgram Booking Service which was associated with Nathan Milgram Services, owner of over a dozen PA drive-ins.

Next up was Delfino, but when exactly? Milford Now said he bought it in 1964. The Times-Tribune of Scranton said it was 1963. WNEP, Moosic’s News Leader, reported it was “the early 1960s.” The Paper Shop blog said it was 1969. Happenings wrote that he had been there “for 61 of the theater’s 65 years,” implying that he worked there before buying the Circle. All I can tell for sure was that it was before the MPA’s 1978 edition, which listed Delfino as the owner.

And that’s when the uncertainty ended. From all accounts, Delfino has had a great time running the Circle. “When you love what you’re doing, you’ll never work a day in your life. I’ve never worked a day in my life at the theater,” he told Happenings. He guided the switch the digital projection in 2012, enlarging the screen at the time.

In 2015, the Circle added a second screen. “I’m a firm believer in perpetuity and that’s forever and everything here is going to last forever. It’s going to be here permanently and that’s why we are doing that,” he told WNEP.

On this night, the occasion was the drive-in’s annual Circle of Screams, “America’s only haunted drive-in theatre.” As part of the package, it was showing two public domain classics, The Horror and Night of the Living Dead.

The video of the day is that WNEP report on the new screen in 2015. Enjoy!

Miles Today / Total: 84 / 34215 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Terror / 185

Nearby Restaurant: It’s just a little out of the way, but I had to see the life-sized pirate ship in front of Cooper’s Seafood House in Scranton. It’s been around about as long as the Circle (1948), and the walls are covered with dioramas, photos, and quirky decorations. And there’s food! And a bar with plenty of beers! I had the broiled seafood platter and a pint of Shipyard Pumpkinhead. It was a great way to get ready for the drive-in.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The best bargain among Dickson City’s hotels is probably the Microtel Inn. I got the standardization of a chain hotel at a mom and pop price. There were cookies and coffee to welcome me, my two queens room had all the modern amenities, and the continental breakfast included hard boiled eggs, waffles and fruit. I was ready for another week on the road.

Only in Dickson City: Over in nearby Scranton is the Steamtown National Historic Site, a railroad museum to top them all. There’s an active restoration shop for the steam locomotives and a working roundhouse. Scranton also had the first electric streetcar, and the Electric City Trolley Museum is right next door.

Next stop: Unadilla Drive-In, Unadilla NY.