Jan. 27: Town & Country Drive-In Theatre, Abilene TX

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It’s Day 27 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, starting with another hour and a half or so to drive from Graham to the Town and Country Drive-In Theatre in Abilene TX. Here in Texas, I’ve seen brand-new drive-ins, and over the last two days, I’ve seen ancient, pioneering drive-ins. The Town and Country is somewhere in between.

The Town and Country wasn’t really a pioneer. When it opened in 1956, there were already six other drive-ins in Abilene: the Chief, Crescent, Elmwood, Key City (two screens), Park, and Tower. What the T&C offered was size; its 1500-car capacity was more than half of what the other seven screens in town could handle together. The T&C had two screens of its own, plus a playground with an electric Ferris wheel. It closed in 1981, but was resurrected in 2000 and has been rolling along since.

The T&C sure isn’t like the Coyotes I visited earlier this week. There were no alcoholic beverages to be found at the concession stand. On the other hand, the prices felt reasonable again; a bacon cheeseburger and the largest fountain drink they offered were only $3.50 each. This place felt a lot more like the drive-ins I visited when I was growing up.

After two dark nights, I was happy to return to a drive-in that’s showing movies in January. Of the four early movies, the only one I hadn’t seen was Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, so that was my Friday night show.

Miles Today / Total:  94 / 3158 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter / 19

Nearby Restaurant: I found another chicken dinner house a lot like the one I visited two nights ago in Granbury, but this one is called Belle’s Chicken Dinner House. Same deal though, great chicken (or chicken-fried steak) and unlimited green beans, mashed potatoes, and other fixin’s. Yum!

Where I Virtually Stayed: There were several close hotels along I-20 of the inexpensive, expedient type that didn’t match what I was looking for. It was only another mile or so to a cluster of my type of lodgings at Lake Road. I picked the newest, the Hampton Inn, because the only thing more reliable than a Hampton Inn is a brand-new Hampton Inn.

Only in Abilene: There are several sculpted items of interest clustered near Business I-20 as it runs through central Abilene. There’s the world’s largest (really) paper airplane, a flat buffalo for photo-op rides, the second-largest faux animal skull in town, a park full of Dr. Seuss character statues, and the world’s largest faux buffalo skull.

Next Stop: Stars & Stripes Drive-In Theatre, Lubbock TX.

PA Man Applies to Revive the Moonlite

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The Moonlight Drive-In marquee, overgrown with weeds

The Moonlite marquee as it looked five years ago. Photo by Mike Kerick from the Carload Flickr pool

The drive-in revival continues to build. According to The Citizens’ Voice of Wilkes-Barre PA, a man has applied to the local county zoning hearing board to be allowed to renovate and reopen the Moonlite Drive-In of nearby West Wyoming PA.

Eric Symeon of Exeter said he is negotiating to buy the property from the West Wyoming Borough, which owns the vacant site, contingent on zoning approval. The borough council seems willing to cooperate with the necessary variance to the otherwise residential area.

According to his application, Symeon wants to show movies on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights between May and September. He wrote that he plans to repair the concession stand, ticket booth and screen. Based on Mike Kerick’s Flickr album of Moonlite photos from five years ago, Symeon has plenty of repair opportunities.

The slow decay of the single-screen Moonlite site has been well documented online. To watch nature reclaim the vacant lot, compare an aerial photo from the Moonlite’s heyday with this 2011 Google Earth photo and the latest from 2016. For ground-level narratives with lots of photos, check out this July 2008 post from Forgotten PA and this May 2013 entry from the Drive-In Theater Adventures blog.

When did the Moonlite open? Exactly when did it close? I could only find a few clues from Carload World Headquarters. It wasn’t listed in the 1955 Theatre Catalog, my most recent edition, so it probably opened after 1955. (It was definitely open by 1967.) I found another TCV article from 2010 that said the Moonlite’s former owners sued the borough, alleging that “sewer installation in the early 1990s caused increased water-retention issues that thwarted potential sales of the property in 2005 and 2006.” A borough solicitor said the site suffered from flooding before the sewers were installed, and that the Moonlight “has not shown a movie since the 1980s.” A PDF from that lawsuit says “the Moonlite Drive-In operated until approximately 1991.” (Hope that Symeon has a good drainage plan!)

Back to Symeon. “This is something I always wanted to do since I was little,” he told The Citizens’ Voice. “Every time I’d drive by, I’d see it just sitting there. Everyone in the valley knows about it.” The projected opening is Summer 2017. I look forward to hearing more about this project.

Jan. 26: Graham Drive-In, Graham TX

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It’s Day 26 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, and it only took about an hour and a half to drive from Granbury to the Graham Drive In Theatre in Graham TX. For the second straight day, I experienced an old-time classic single-screen drive-in that happened to still be closed for the season. The Graham’s web site says it will reopen “TBA in February.”

The Graham was one of the first five winners of Honda’s Project Drive-In in 2013, scoring a digital projector to help future-proof the place. Back in 1955, it was part of a Life Magazine feature on Blondie, a local pet lion, and her adventures in Graham. Graham’s CinemaTreasures profile says it was opened in 1947 with a capacity of 180 cars, but the Graham first appears in my Theatre Catalogs in the 1949 edition, in a listing noting that it can hold 300 cars. It also ran 12 months a year, so there’s another change.

Miles Today / Total:  86 / 3064 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 18

Nearby Restaurant: The closest restaurant is the Dinner Bell Cafe, right across from the cemetery. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but I always love great biscuits and chicken fried steak.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The Wildcutter Ranch is supposed to be the best hotel around Graham, but it seemed a little far away. So I settled for a more convenient location and a better rate at the Best Western Plus Graham Inn. A good bed, a mini fridge, and a microwave make almost any room the best room in town.

Only in Graham: South of Graham, near the entrance to Possum Kingdom State Park, is a large, homemade steel wheelbarrow in a field. Next to the wheelbarrow is a sign proclaiming it to be the “World’s Largest Wheelbarrow“. But it isn’t. Consider these larger examples from Australia and New Zealand. Sorry, Possum Kingdom.

Next Stop: Town and Country Drive-In Theatre, Abilene TX.