Not this kind of drive-in dog

Pet360.com reminded me recently of yet another reason why drive-ins can be more fun than indoor movie theaters. With drive-ins, it’s okay if you bring your dog to watch with you.

The uncredited author talked with Don and Susan Sanders, who wrote the book The American Drive-In Movie Theater. One of them (perhaps both in unison?) was quoted as saying, “Dogs help us to meet people. People take their dogs to the drive-in and socialize with others who have a pet.”

According to Cindy Deppe of Becky’s Drive-In (Berlinsville PA), a growing number of customers are bringing dogs. “Fido can relax next to their owners instead of staying home alone,” she said.

The article’s a fun, offbeat look at drive-ins and dogs, so you ought to go read it. But ignore the suggestion to rely on DriveInTheater.com for the latest drive-in list. I love that site, but I don’t think it’s been updated for 10 years. Am I wrong?

WNEP, Scranton PA’s news leader, ran a story last week about the Mahoning Drive-In in nearby Mahoning Township. There’s a dispute there between the Mahoning’s projectionist / manager and a Florida guy who said he wanted to lease-purchase the place. It turns out that a similar scene played out last year at the Tee Pee Drive-In of Sapulpa OK, where things didn’t work out so well.

According to WNEP, Mahoning manager Mike Danchak was contacted by Glen Brannon, who said he wanted to lease and eventually buy the drive-in so it would continue to operate. So this spring a bunch of volunteers helped spruce up the Mahoning. Then Brannan sold 250 season passes for $59 a carload, but Danchak said the drive-in “would go bankrupt” if they accepted those, so he had to buy them back, using up the money he was saving toward buying a digital projector.

The remarkable thing about this story is how closely it matches what happen to the Tee Pee. According to a summary at Route66News.com, the same Florida guy, then going by the name Russ Glen, lease-purchased the Tee Pee, which had closed in 1999. (Speaking of confusing names, you’ll see the name Tee Pee used with and without a space in various news stories. Based on photos of the original sign, I’m going with Tee Pee.)

Soon after Glen entered the picture, a group of volunteers repainted and cleaned up the Tee Pee. The summary says that Glen also set up the TeePee Drive-In Theater Association to accept donations of money and equipment for the theater’s restoration. A month later, one of the volunteers said “the association is suspending the acceptance of donations, and money from the bank account has been removed because of ‘issues with the legitimacy of the nonprofit.'” Glen insisted that everything was perfectly legitimate. And from all accounts, the Tee Pee never reopened.

And that’s about as far as I can go, given that I have no first-hand information about any of these stories. I recommend the Route66News summary, which also includes a lot of links and embedded videos of the Tee Pee saga. For the Mahoning, only time will tell.

Thanks to the Erie Times-News and GoErie.com, we’ve got this fun, silly bit of video about the Sunset Drive-In of Waterford PA. And there’s even a story about the Sunset that doesn’t just rewrite the dialogue from the video, so you still need to go read it.

Sunset owners Dennis and Margaret Koper have purchased and installed the new digital projection equipment, and now they’re trying to figure it all out in time for the season opener May 17. As with all the other drive-ins that have sprung for this expense, it’s a sign that they’re in it for the long haul. The article said that Dennis “expects a 15-year return on his digital investment.”

Dennis said it was this or retirement, and he jokingly blames his wife for deciding to keep running the drive-in. Now about that new equipment. “I don’t have any idea how to work this thing right now,” he said. “But we’ll both learn in time.”