Category Archives: Video

Nov. 5: Goochland Drive-In Theater, Hadensville VA

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It’s Day 309 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. There aren’t that many drive-ins still showing movies on Sunday nights at this time of year, so I needed another fairly long drive. It took me about 3½ hours to drive from Middle River MD, around Washington DC, then on to the Goochland Drive-In Theater in Hadensville VA.

Although it’s next to an exit on I-64, the Goochland is tucked away in the middle of a forest, which must have been cleared away by John Heidel. He’s the guy who bought this piece of land and built the drive-in, which had its grand opening on Aug. 28, 2009. By all accounts, it’s been hugely popular ever since.

Heidel tells the story that he built the Goochland because he wanted to take his kids to a drive-in. He told the Virginia Credit Union, “I have always loved movies, but when we had small kids, and wanted to take a 1½-year-old and a three-year-old to the movies, we knew that going to a conventional theater just wouldn’t work.”

Since Day One, the signature dish of the open-air Goochland concession stand has been the Gooch dog, a beef hot dog topped with macaroni and cheese. Which reminds me of the drive-in’s only small misstep. In early 2014, the drive-in had become so popular, particularly at the concession stand, that Heidel launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to expand the facility to shorten the lines of patrons buying Gooch dogs and other snacks.

Heidel wrote, “The Goochland Drive-In Theater is a truly unique entity that offers more than just the act of watching a movie…it brings family and friends together. And for a few hours, people can escape to a simpler time of old-fashioned fun…without spending a fortune. That was our mission from the start – and it is quite rewarding to see it happen every time we open.” But the Kickstarter campaign raised less than a third of its goal, and he asked contributors to back a local muscular dystrophy patient instead.

Most recently, the drive-in saw overflow crowds wanting to watch the latest Stephen King thriller It. Heidel told WWBT, Richmond’s News Leader, “If we would’ve had 2,000, 3,000 car spaces, we wouldn’t have been able to fit everybody in. We had folks lined up at 2 to 2:30 for a 5:45 p.m. gate opening.”

On this night, the Goochland was finishing a long weekend of showing Thor: Ragnarok. I didn’t mind watching it a second time, because it really is a fun, humorous, often dazzling movie.

Miles Today / Total: 172 / 34959 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Thor: Ragnarok / 188

Nearby Restaurant: The closest restaurant that wasn’t a Dairy Queen or closed on Sunday appeared to be Satterwhite’s Restaurant in Manakin VA. It was still open for lunch by the time I arrived, which was good, and it was still serving breakfast, which is even better. I love great biscuits, and the small biscuits that came with my omelette tasted homemade. Nothing like comfort food after a long drive.

Where I Virtually Stayed: Google Maps says that there are no hotels anywhere near the Goochland. The best-looking alternatives looked to be along I-64 in the northwest suburbs of Richmond, and I picked the Hilton Richmond Hotel near Short Pump. This one had an executive lounge for dinner snacks, drinks, and breakfast for certain guests. My executive floor king room had everything, including a price tag that reminded me why I don’t do this every night.

Only in Hadensville: Little Hadensville is in Goochland County, the source of the drive-in’s name. In turn, the county was named for Sir William Gooch, the Royal Lieutenant Governor (and de facto governor in place of its England-based nominal governor) of Virginia from 1727 through 1749. Gooch honored himself with the naming of Goochland County in 1727.

Next stop: Hull’s Drive In, Lexington VA.

Nov. 4: Bengies Drive-In Theatre, Middle River MD

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It’s Day 308 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. With pretty clear sailing on a rainy Saturday, it took me only two hours to drive from the Delsea Drive-In in Vineland NJ to Bengies Drive-In Theatre in Middle River MD, just east of Baltimore.

Bengies is the last drive-in theater in Maryland, and is frequently packed in the summer. According to the Washington Post, it was built in 1955-56 by brothers Jack, Paul, and Hank Vogel. The area had been named for former president Benjamin Harrison, and the drive-in took that name, opening as Bengie’s (with an apostrophe) on June 6, 1956. The drive-in dropped the apostrophe when it changed its marquee in the early 1970s.

The screen at Bengies is huge – 120 feet by 52 feet, and can support over 1000 cars although its normal capacity is 750. The drive-in has a separate web page dedicated to its assertion that it’s “the biggest continuously operated drive-in screen in the USA.” (Bengies also has a separate web page devoted to its unhappiness with The Baltimore Sun’s words and actions in 2000. But I digress.) I’ll beat back one more contender – the web site for Coldwater MI’s Capri Drive-In Theater claims its main screen is 150 feet wide, but when I asked, they agreed it was just 115 feet.

This drive-in was built and designed by architectural engineer Jack Vogel. (Some of his later architectural plans for Bengies are in the Library of Congress.) According to Constructing Image, Identity, and Place, issue IX (April 2003), “Vogel was so concerned with efficiency that he even designed the women’s rest rooms with ladies’ urinals, which are still functioning”.

Kerry Segrave wrote in his book Drive-In Theaters that in 1976 Bengies narrowly fought off a proposal to prohibit showing movies where they could be seen by motorists. “This ozoner used to screen X-rated movies but discontinued them on May 4, 1976, after numerous complaints, before the proposed bill was introduced.”

Current owner D. Edward Vogel has been working at Bengies since he was nine years old, according to a 2009 CNN article. That would have been about when his mother married Jack Vogel in the Post’s timeline. Capital News Service wrote that he formally purchased the drive-in in 2007.

In recent years, Bengies has tangled with Royal Farms, which opened a convenience store across the street. The drive-in sued in 2010, claiming that the light from the store was interfering with the drive-in. In June 2012, a jury agreed to the tune of $838,000, according to The Baltimore Sun, but the judge later threw out the verdict. The Maryland Daily Record reported in November 2014 that an appeals court let that decision stand.

“I believe every drive-in theater takes on the personality of the owner,” Vogel said in the Capital News Service segment that is the YouTube video of the day. Watch it and you’ll see the apostrophe in Bengie’s on the side of the concession stand, which roughly matched the way the marquee used to look. If you want some irony, also check out a YouTube video about Bengies shot from that Royal Farms convenience store across the street.

This drizzly evening was a retro triple feature marking the close of Bengies’ regular season, although it posted on its Facebook page that “We have a few off season events in the works for Black Friday and a Holiday DouBBle feature in early December. If the right right movie (and weather) comes along in the mean time we may open as well.”

Miles Today / Total: 102 / 34787 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Sandlot / 187

Nearby Restaurant: When I’m in the Baltimore area, I need to find a restaurant that sells crabs. Schultz’s Crab House is one of the closest candidates to Bengies, and it might be the best. It’s been around longer than the drive-in serving up lots of seafood. I had the backfin crab cake and fried shrimp platter with some cold beer on the side. Food like this in such a comfortable atmosphere makes it easy to see why Schultz’s has lasted.

Where I Virtually Stayed: One of the closest cluster of hotels to Bengies is by the White Marsh area near Baltimore. One of those hotels is a Hampton Inn, so that’s the end of that search. After such a rainy day, I wanted the hotel equivalent of comfort food, and the familiar features of a Hampton always do the trick. My room didn’t have a fridge or microwave, but at least there were cookies to greet me at check-in and the standard Hampton breakfast in the morning. Ready for another drive!

Only in Middle River: Next door, Rosedale MD is the home of Cateraptasaurus, a 12-foot, 9-inch sculpture made entirely from used tractor parts. Built by Derek Arnold, it’s stationed outside the offices of Alban Cat, a Caterpillar equipment dealership.

Next stop: Goochland Drive-In Theater, Hadensville VA.

Nov. 3: Delsea Drive-In, Vineland NJ

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It’s Day 307 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. It’s Friday, so Halloween’s behind us, meaning no more special spooky showings anywhere. I really needed to find drive-ins that were still showing movies in November, and that meant a four-hour drive south from Coxsackie NY to the Delsea Drive-In in Vineland NJ.

According to Cinema Treasures, the Delsea was a single-screen, 700-car drive-in operated by the Budco chain when it opened on April 29, 1949. Budco was later bought by American Multi Cinema, which abruptly closed it in July 1987. It sat quietly for over 15 years as the rest of the drive-ins in New Jersey, the birthplace of the drive-in movie, also closed.

In 2003 a local pediatrician, Dr. John DeLeonardis, bought the property to build a skate park to keep his patients active. Then he saw the 100-foot screen was still in pretty good shape, so he started down the path of restoring the drive-in. The Delsea reopened in July 2004 with the same projectionist who was there on its last night in 1987.

DeLeonardis added a second screen in 2008. In 2011, he installed a bank of solar panels, making the Delsea the first solar-powered drive-in. (Of course, that’s not literally true; the panels generate into the grid during the day, and the Delsea uses electricity at night, but the net usage is pretty close to self-sufficiency.)

NJ.com wrote in 2011 that DeLeonardis’ wife Jude, can be found weekend nights working the snack bar, where she put edamame, stir-fry asparagus, wraps and other healthy choices on the menu.

The Delsea is the home theater for the Drive-In Film Festival, a non-profit organization that brings new, family-friendly independent films to drive-in theaters free of charge to promote filmmaking and drive-ins. They’ve got a great video about themselves and the Delsea on YouTube, although the embedded video of the day is a different one focusing more specifically on DeLeonardis and the results of his work.

On a wonderfully, unseasonably warm evening around 70 degrees, I was treated to the latest blockbuster entry in the Thor series, which made a great drive-in movie. It was nice to watch in the state where the industry was invented.

Miles Today / Total: 242 / 34685 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Thor: Ragnarok / 186

Nearby Restaurant: When I don’t want to think about dinner, I’ll often pick pizza, so I went over to the Taste of Italy Pizzeria in Vineland. The place was all right inside, but I just wanted something to take back to my room for some quiet munching time. The chicken parmigiana pizza was the perfect compromise between something familiar and something uniquely Vineland.

Where I Virtually Stayed: After my longest drive in weeks, I just wanted something dependable, which to me is another name for Hampton Inn. The one in Vineland had high ceilings in its breakfast area, which gives us a much airier feel, and there’s a nice indoor pool and hot tub. Meanwhile, the usual amenities were there in my room and the usual solid breakfast was waiting in the morning. Ready for another drive!

Only in Vineland: For decades, the most famous place in Vineland was the Palace of Depression, an eighteen-spired, pastel-colored castle in a swamp, built in 1932 out of rusted auto parts and mud. According to a nice summary on Roadside America, George Daynor built the palace to show that the Great Depression was beatable. Daynor said he was guided to the site by an angel, and that he ate frogs, fish, rabbits and squirrels during the three years it took to build.

Next stop: Bengies Drive-In Theatre, Middle River MD.