Just after the Charleston SC Post and Courier wrote about the drive-ins of South Carolina, the Greenwood SC Index-Journal reported a financial victory for one of those three, the Auto 25 Drive In there in Greenwood.

That drive-in opened in 1945, and its electricity provider used to be the Greenwood County Electric Power Commission. In 1966, South Carolina lawmakers allowed Duke Power to buy that provider, but with the condition that its then-existing customers would have their electric rates locked in forever.

Fast-forward to 2009. When Tommy and Carolyn McCutcheon purchased and reopened the 25, it still enjoyed that same old wonderfully low rate on its electric bill. In the spring of 2015, some power outages led to Duke Energy (Duke Power’s successor) insisting on a service upgrade that would negate that old price break. The McCutcheons hired an electrician who said that Duke’s neglect of its equipment was responsible for the problems.

It’s a long story with a fair amount of drama, but I’ll jump to the spoiler for you. In 2017, state regulators ruled that Duke had acted improperly and restored the old rate. Duke appealed that decision to the courts, repeatedly, losing every time. (Utility companies, amiright?) Finally last week, the South Carolina Supreme Court reaffirmed all of the lower courts’ rulings, and Duke announced it would stop fighting this particular case.

“I spent a lot of money fighting them,” Tommy McCutcheon said. “More than I’ll ever recoup, probably.” But he told the Index-Journal that he was glad to be able to turn his attention back to running the drive-in. For many more details on this battle with a happy ending, you really should go read it!

Last weekend, the Charleston SC Post and Courier ran a very nice article about the three active drive-in theaters in the state: the Highway 21 Drive In in Beaufort, the Auto 25 Drive In in Greenwood, and the Monetta Drive In Theatre (“The Big Mo”) in Monetta, of course.

The article starts with Joe Barth, the owner of the Highway 21 Drive-In, who bought the place in 2004 when it was run down. “My wife would tell ya I was stupid,” Barth said. He cleaned up the joint, added a second screen and a playground, and now he’s enjoying the simple life of running a successful drive-in.

The “25 Drive-In Auto Theatre” was the next drive-in in the article. Its owners, Tommy and Carolyn McCutcheon, bought the 25 in 2008. Tommy came from the restaurant business, so the concession stand is a special treat, particularly the Barbecue Bacon Burger. “This is my 11th year, and I’m thrilled every time I look up there and see the big screen,” he said. “It still takes my breath away after all these years.”

The last stop of the tour is the Big Mo, set behind rows of peach orchards. Richard and Lisa Boaz bought the drive-in in 1998 for $10,000 after it sat idle for 14 years. They had been at a West Virginia drive-in the year before, and Richard suggested to his wife, “This is so cool; we could do this.”

The article includes plenty of wonderful photos of folks having a great time at each of the three South Carolina drive-ins, and there’s more story and details than I mentioned here, so you know you really ought to go read it!