The author, John Marek, is executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
The COVID-19 pandemic has delivered many businesses a gut punch. Gyms, restaurants, hair salons; all suffering tremendously. Arguably, no industry has been hit harder, though, than movie theaters. Theaters across the country have been shuttered since early March, and there is no end in sight. Even when they are given the go ahead to reopen, they will be dealing with capacity restrictions and social distancing requirements that will drastically impact their profitability throughout the normally lucrative summer “blockbuster” season.
The one exception to the movie theater slump is drive-ins, which are seeing renewed interest and a possible summer windfall as one of the few entertainment options that readily support social distancing. A study conducted by the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association indicated that fewer than one-third of Americans under age 35 have ever attended a drive-in movie, and the majority of those over 35 have not attended one in the past 10 years. There are only five active drive-ins in North Carolina and just over 300 in the entire country. (There’s one in nearby Badin – pictured above – that’s reopening tomorrow.) Given those numbers, it’s probably worthwhile to take a walk down memory lane and describe exactly what a drive-in movie is.
The small town where I grew up had a drive-in called the Ottawa. It was located in the middle of nowhere between a couple of large campgrounds, so there was a built-in audience during the summer tourist season. For most of the 1970s, my family made at least one trip there every summer. The standard bill was a double-feature that offered one current release and another film a few months past its first run. The main feature was usually a horror film or a comedy/action flick.
Or maybe that’s just my perception because almost all of the movies I recall seeing there were one or the other: “White Lightning,” “Hooper,” “Piranha,” “Smokey and the Bandit,” “The Fog,” “Blood Beach.” That last one was particularly memorable. Remember a few months ago I wrote about a girlfriend and her father’s garden? That’s the movie we went to see that night!
At many drive-ins you paid by the car, not the person, so if you had a big family and a station wagon, it was a very cost-effective night out. In addition, you were allowed, maybe even encouraged, to bring your own refreshments. In those days, the sound was provided via big metal speakers you attached to your window. The sound quality varied between marginally decipherable and mmmmmmffmmfmmmfmfmmmfmmmfmmmffmfmmf.
I said that the Ottawa Drive-In was in the middle of nowhere. That’s an exaggeration. It was actually in the middle of a swamp, and right around the time the first movie started a swarm of mosquitoes that blackened the skies for miles descended upon the theater. As frigid as the other three seasons are in northern Ohio, summer is blistering hot and humid, so you couldn’t just roll up your windows to keep them out, and the vast majority of cars in those days did not have air conditioning. There were two possible solutions; cover yourself from head to toe in the Agent Orange-ish chemicals they sold as bug spray, or light a mosquito coil. The mosquito coil was essentially a spiral of citronella-scented incense that burned for a couple of hours and, in theory, kept the bugs away. Like the speakers, they worked just well enough that you didn’t demand your money back.
Fundamentally, there were three different categories of drive-in theater goers: friends, families and lovers. The first could generally be identified by smoke rising from the windows which was definitely not citronella incense; the second by the cries and screams of young children; and the third by the fogged-up windows, and in some cases the gentle rocking motion of the vehicle.
At their peak in the 1950s, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins in the United States. By 1980 there were fewer than 1,000. Anson County once had two drive-ins, the West 74 Drive-In, which was originally called the Anson Drive-In when it opened in 1949, and S 52 Drive-In which opened in 1954. The West 74 was closed and demolished in 1980 and a church was recently built on the site. I couldn’t find any information on when the S 52 closed, but it is an empty field now.
Are we headed for another golden age of drive-ins? Probably not. Even with the renewed interest caused by COVID-19 and social distancing, there are still a lot of things working against the drive-in concept. Land costs remain a limiting factor and the cost of the modern digital projection equipment necessary to show today’s films is prohibitive. Starting from scratch, it would likely cost upward of $250,000 to open one. Still, those drive-ins that have managed to stay afloat over the years will almost certainly be packed this summer, and some of the more recently mothballed ones could conceivably reopen.
Do you remember going to either of Anson’s drive-ins? What do you remember most about them?