It’s Day 220 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. I returned to two-lane highways through farmland, driving a little over an hour from Mansfield OH to the Field of Dreams Drive-In Theater in Tiffin OH.

Cinema Treasures has a complete history for this Field of Dreams, which spent most of its life as the Tiffin Drive-In. The Tiffin opened in June 1949, built and owned by Brinkman & Shults Inc. and H. Horsteimer. Brinkman had opened the Defiance (OH) Drive-In the year before.

Ed Suffecool, who helped Shults build the drive-in, remembered “Howard and I had to go out and oil the ramps and driveways with used motor oil to keep the dust down.” In front of the screen there was a kids’ playground with a teeter totter, a slide and a sand box. I hope that used motor oil stayed clear of the playground.

To entice families to come early, Shults opened the Tiffin’s Fun Farm in May 1951. It featured miniature horses, deer, Shetland ponies, sheep, prairie dogs, wild ducks, rabbits, and other animals for kids to enjoy. The star of the Fun Farm was ‘Little George’, a one-ton Texas Longhorn steer. In 1963 they added a buffalo calf. The Fun Farm also featured a miniature prairie schooner with matched teams of ponies that would pull kids around the drive-in for a dime. Shults had two miniature Model Ts that could be driven around the drive-in for a quarter.

A root beer/ice cream stand was built in front of the screen tower, but the business quickly failed and was converted into a house. After the 1955 season, the screen was rebuilt and widened, and the old concession stand was replaced with a new 50×70-foot concession stand/projection booth.

After just one year with that widened screen and new concession stand, Shults sold the Tiffin in December 1956 to Leonard Mishkind, owner and president of General Theatres in Cleveland. Tiffin Drive-In Theatre Inc. was formed to operate the drive-in. In the following half-decade, the drive-in weathered the storms, real and economic, and also just weathered.

In 2010, the president of General Theatres Management and Tiffin Drive-In Theatre Inc., Norman M. Barr, told a drive-in owners’ convention that he was retiring. Rod and Donna Saunders, who had built the Field of Dreams Drive-In from scratch in Liberty Center, bought the Tiffin in April 2011. They renamed the drive-in, gave it plenty of overdue maintenance, and added a second screen.

The Saunders’ son, Denton, a Fremont Middle School special education teacher nine months of the year, runs the Tiffin drive-in throughout the summer. At the time of the purchase, they told the Toledo Blade that Denton would live on-site in that former ice cream stand.

The YouTube video of the day comes from Dead Shark Productions, and it’s an amazing time-lapse of an evening at the Field of Dreams. I especially like the patterns of clouds passing by.

Thank goodness for the Saunders’ second screen! With Screen 1 showing The Emoji Movie, I turned away to watch The Dark Tower for the first time. It’s nowhere near as bad as The Emoji Movie.

Miles Today / Total:  53 / 26850 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Dark Tower / 135

Nearby Restaurant: I’m a huge Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan, so I dropped in at the MST Pub in Tiffin. Turns out that it stood for Madison Street Tavern, and I guess they didn’t want “Tavern Pub” in the name. Those folks sure know how to serve up a bacon burger with lots of pub food appetizers to boot, plus Oreo pie for dessert.

Where I Virtually Stayed: I promise that I’m not a slave to the Hampton Inn, it’s just the most attractive hotel in a lot of towns. This one had a nice indoor pool and a workout area. My room had the full set of amenities, and the breakfast was the same Hampton quality as the previous three nights.

Only in Tiffin: Tiffin was once known for its ceramic and glass products; it was home of Tiffin Glass Works from 1889 to 1980 and the American Standard Company, maker of ceramic kitchen and bath products, from 1899 to 2007. It’s still home to the Tiffin Glass Museum, where over 1000 pieces of Tiffin Glass are arranged chronologically in oak cabinets. Admission is free.

Next stop: Hi-Road Drive In, Kenton OH.

It’s Day 215 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. It was just a 20-minute drive from the Melody 49 Drive-In, on the outskirts of Dayton OH to the Dixie Twin Drive-In on Dixie Drive in eastern Dayton.

According to Greater Dayton Drive-In Movie Theaters by Curt Dalton (available online here), Levin Theaters opened the Dixie in July 1957. Unlike most drive-ins, the Dixie put its kids’ playground behind the concession stand instead of in front of the screen. It was an economic use of the land, since the building obstructed the view for about eighty feet.

The Levin Family Foundation site tells the story of the Dixie’s owners’ brush with Hollywood. In 1964, brothers Sam, Al and Lou Levin decided to produce their own movie. The result was The Girls on the Beach, shot in two weeks for a budget of $50,000 and released by Paramount the following year.Sam and Al Levin both had minor roles in the film, playing beauty contest judges.

In 1967, the Dixie took the then-unusual step of opening on Sunday mornings for a flea market, called the Paris Flea Market, which has become a Dayton institution. The Dixie became a twin in 2002 after salvaging a screen from the Sherwood Twin Drive-In.

The Dixie switched to digital projection in 2014. It had failed to earn a free projector from Project Honda the year before, but according to a story at MostMetro.com, “the Dixie received tens of thousands of emails, comments, calls and posts in an unprecedented show of support,” which inspired management to shell out for two brand new projectors. That was probably the right call. Greg Dove, president of Levin Service Company, said in a 2016 article in the Dayton Daily News that attendance and revenue were up 30 percent since the digital system went in.

“The initial fear that we had, that people would just be watching their little devices at home, really hasn’t panned out,” Dove said. “And we’re quite happy that it hasn’t happened.”

Today’s video is from WDTN, Dayton’s News Leader. It’s a 2011 interview with Ryan Levin showing the then-new Dixie marquee and its remodeled concession stand.

photo by Neon Michael, from the Carload Flickr pool

Did I mention that I was here last year? After a long traffic jam of people driving to watch a movie, I just stuck my phone out the window and got a pretty interesting picture of the marquee.

Back to this night – thank goodness the Dixie has two screens, because one had The Emoji Movie on it. I chose whatever was on Screen 2, which turned out to be Atomic Blonde, a movie I hadn’t seen yet. It was the kind of action spy thriller, with occasional steaminess, that’s just right for a drive-in.

Miles Today / Total:  14 / 26431 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Atomic Blonde / 130

Nearby Restaurant: You know I love quirky regional chain restaurants, and Skyline Chili definitely qualifies on both counts. Most of its locations are in Ohio, so it’s regional, and until recently, you couldn’t buy a bowl of chili from them, so that’s quirky. Their signature dish is their signature chili over thin spaghetti, or as a chili dog condiment. Cheese and onions are optional.

Where I Virtually Stayed: I haven’t had many opportunities to stay in the same place for two nights, and the Hampton Inn in Englewood is just about 15 minutes away from the Dixie. That’s how long it took for me to get back to the room last year.

Only in Dayton: Just up the street on Dixie Drive, in Abby Mausoleum in Dayton Memorial Park, in the final resting place of Agnes Moorehead, a fine actress who performed in everything from Citizen Kane to Charlotte’s Web, but who was best known as Samantha’s mother Endora on the 60s TV series Bewitched.

Next stop: Bel-Air Drive-In Theatre, Versailles IN.

It’s Day 213 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. It took just a little over an hour to drive from Hamilton OH northwest of Cincinnati to the Starlite Drive-In Theatre in Amelia OH, southeast of Cincinnati.

According to its Facebook page, the Starlite opened in 1947. World War II veteran Jerry Jackson from Williamburg OH built it and owned it “until about 1968.” In the 1980s, reference works suggest that it was owned by Holiday Amusements, which ran a lot of drive-ins in the Cincinnati area.

The Starlite converted to digital projection in early 2013, and The Clermont Sun interviewed manager Ken Aultz. “The picture is excellent,” Aultz said. “The image is brighter and sharper and the stability is perfect.” The article also noted that Debbie Brooks had owned the Starlite for about 20 years and was its third owner.

In March 2015, Brooks noticed that the previous winter’s moisture had highlighted problems with the original screen tower’s support timbers. (Did that have anything to do with the new screen they mounted on it the year before? I couldn’t find any mention of that.) With sadness, she had the old, doomed screen dismantled and a modern steel screen erected in its place just in time for a Memorial Day Weekend opening.

The YouTube video for this post is a nice change of pace from drone aerial photography. It’s a time lapse view of a busy night at the Starlite, including that gorgeous old screen tower still in the background. The new screen works just as well, but that old one had history!

It was Carload night at the Starlite, but not only did leave off the .com, that modern screen had The Emoji Movie. Entertainment Weekly gives the movie a grade of F, writing, “it looks terrible, but it’s fun to imagine how much more visually experimental your niece’s remake will be, when she borrows her mom’s iPhone and uses her crayons to draws expressions on leftover lemons and doesn’t feel the need to include constant product-placing references.” So it’s not just me. But the Starlite itself is a great place to watch a movie, whenever there’s a movie worth watching.

Miles Today / Total:  57 / 26339 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Emoji Movie / 128

Nearby Restaurant: With a short drive, I had plenty of time for a late breakfast (or breakfast for lunch, however you want to put it), so I stopped at Poochie’s Place. This little place is where the locals go for their down-home cooking. I tried a peanut butter cup pancake with my egg white Western omelette. And lots of coffee. Great stuff!

Where I Virtually Stayed: There don’t seem to be any hotels in Amelia per se, so I went just a few miles up the road to the Best Western Clermont on the fringes of Cincinnati. It’s just across a parking lot from a White Castle, so that’s a plus. My comfy room had the full set of amenities, and breakfast was especially strong. On top of all that, I paid less than for most chain hotels.

Only in Amelia: At the end of the shortest path from Amelia to the Ohio River, you’ll find New Richmond and the Cardboard Boat Museum. You see, New Richmond holds its RiverDays Celebration every third weekend of August, and that includes a cardboard boat regatta. There have been so many interesting entrants that the museum was created to show them off. You’ll see ​the Bat Boat, a Delta Queen paddlewheel replica, a John Deere tractor, a coffee cup, the Miss Mudwiezer HydroPlane, and many more.

Next stop: Melody 49 Drive-In, Brookville OH.