Video: PA’s Point to reopen for 2023

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Maybe it’s not perfect news, but it’s still good. David Renn, owner of the Point Drive-In in Northumberland PA, had said last year that 2022 would be the Point’s final season. Renn doesn’t own the drive-in’s land, and the landlord was planning to install a solar farm in place of the Point, which had just celebrated its 70th anniversary.

This week, several nearby news organization reported on Renn’s Facebook post in which he said that “the solar farm is no longer happening” and the Point will open again in 2023. I first noticed the story at NorthCentralPA.com, but I’m glad to include a video report from WNEP, Scranton’s News Leader.

What makes this news less than perfect is that the Point’s existence is still tenuous. Renn said he won’t be selling season passes, suggesting that the landowner could change his mind any time.

Any reprieve is worth something. Now the Point’s fans have at least one more opportunity to head over and experience a movie at this 70-year-old drive-in, carved from the woods overlooking the Susquehanna River. And if you can’t go, at least there’s a video to show you how it looks today.

New drive-in coming to Mississippi

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Since I don’t have any pictures of the construction site, here’s a photo of John Watzke’s current gig, the Ocala Drive-In, from its web site

Here’s some good news for the New Year. Veteran drive-in operator John Watzke, currently running the Ocala Drive-In in Florida, is building another ozoner west of Bay St. Louis MS. Work actually started a few months ago on the still-unnamed drive-in, but last week we were treated to a full story about the project and Watzke in the Mississippi Free Press.

In reverse of how this usually goes, the new drive-in is being built on the site of an old trailer park. The 10-acre plot has been vacant since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and did what hurricanes do to trailer parks. (Seriously, living in a Gulf Coast mobile home seems to me like walking to work across a busy interstate highway. But I digress.)

Watzke said his drive-in should open by April 2023 with a 60×34-foot screen 45 feet up. If all goes well, he’ll add a second screen a few years later. The concession stand will include an arcade, and the menu will have such Ocala favorites as muffaletts and po-boys.

The article has much more, including plenty of Watzke-provided photos, history of his family’s involvement with theaters, and a mention of controlling fire ants. (And you thought mosquitoes were the most annoying insects.) So now you know you need to go read it!

Video: Delta CO’s Tru Vu changes hands

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There’s big news on Colorado’s Western Slope. George Rodriguez is the new owner of Delta’s Tru Vu Drive-In, as reported by KREX, Grand Junction’s News Leader. Actually, there’s been a lot of Tru Vu news over the past five years, so let me get you caught up.

When we last left the Tru Vu Drive-In in Delta CO, it was an early stop in my 2017 Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. I’ve written a lot about it since then, but it’s all been in my book, Drive-Ins of Colorado. If you’re a Carload completist with a copy of that book, you can skip down a couple of paragraphs.

After only a cursory check on the Tru Vu’s history, I wrote in my Odyssey stop there that it opened in 1954. That may or may not be accurate. Another passage was extremely off the mark: “A lot of drive-in theaters have some drama associated with them. They add screens, they lose screens. They shut down for a while, and sometimes reopen. Not the Tru Vu.” I couldn’t have been more wrong – in its first 15 years, the Tru Vu had the most tumultuous life of any drive-in I’ve heard of. That section took up two full pages in the book, and it’s beyond the scope of this post. Everything quieted down in 1968 when Jeannie and Stanley Dewsnup bought it along with Delta’s other theaters.

Stanley passed away in 2008, and Jeannie continued to operate the Tru Vu until she died in April 2019. James Lane and his family stepped in to run the drive-in only to hit the headwind that was the 2020 start to the Covid pandemic. He will always have a warm place in my heart, not just for this unselfish work, but also for giving me permission to use a photo of the Tru Vu for my book cover.

Now that we’re caught up, here’s the news from December 2022. Rodriguez began working with Jeannie Dewsnup in 1997 and became her “right hand” according to KREX. His daughter Jessikah Rodriguez remembered getting on a crane when her dad was painting the screen. Now the family is planning to embrace a 50s vibe and stay open longer. Sounds great!

I’m always happy to have any excuse to embed a drive-in video, and good news from a Colorado drive-in makes it even better. I hope you’ll agree that this was worth the wait.