Drive-ins near the end of the road

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By DREW KERR / Lincoln Journal Star

In a tiny, gray wooden shack cooled by a portable air conditioner, Ralph Neesen is busy exchanging bills for tickets. His customers, it seems, are almost all neighbors and friends.

“So what is this, like a date?” he jokingly asks a young man who picks up the $18 tab for himself and two friends.

“Don’t be parking in the back. I don’t want to have to spotlight you later,” he tells one of many young couples to pull in to the Starlite Drive-In just outside of Neligh.

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The marquee at the Starlite Drive-In in Neligh lists the night's movies on a Saturday in July. (Jill Peitzmeier)

At least 350 more people will get similarly well-humored greetings before Neesen packs it in at one of just three spots left in the state to offer outdoor movies.

Like the milkman and the poodle skirt, the drive-in theater is fast becoming a relic of the past, a casualty of what those running the final three collectively boil down to a single word: progress.

As multi-screen chain theaters grow in size and breadth, DVD rentals and cable television become the norm, and development swallows the acres necessary to hold hundreds of cars, the number of drive-ins in Nebraska has plummeted from more than 50 to three.

If trends continue, there’s no guarantee any will survive.

Lincoln itself long has been devoid of a drive-in, but three once called the Star City home.

As business and housing moved out from the city core, land simply became too valuable to justify a seasonal operation.

That’s what happened with Russell Brehm’s 84th & O Drive-In, which opened in 1955. Tickets cost 60 cents, and the place drew crowds of 700 people.

The theater was sold in 1989  to make way for apartments, town houses and single-family residences.

“Time goes by and you do other things,” said Brehm, who also owned drive-ins in Iowa, Omaha and Texas, all now closed.

Paul Geissinger, president of the United Drive-In Theatre Association, says the scenario played out repeatedly across the county.

During the 1950s, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins nationwide, most of them built where no one expected residential or commercial development, he said.

“There were no Wal-Marts sucking up the land gap,” said Geissinger, who owns the oldest drive-in operating today, the 74-year-old Shankweiler Drive-In in Orefield, Pa.

It was the second to open in the country when it began showing movies in 1934. The first opened in 1933 in Camden, N.J.

But the seemingly indefatigable zeal for cars, film and family has faded.

Fewer than 400 drive-ins operate today, according to Geissinger’s group.

Although their futures are uncertain, the people who run drive-ins in Neligh, Kearney and Alliance say they’ll make the ride last as long as possible.

These are their stories.

Kearney Drive-In: Cautiously optimistic

The drive-in theater Richard Smith manages here has survived floods that have brought water up to the countertop three times in the past 35years.

A clan of six preachers upset about R-rated movies took their case to the city in 1975 but ultimately lost their fight.

So did health inspectors upset the restroom didn’t have hot water.

And, despite the nights when no one shows and the rising costs of showing first-run movies, the business continues.

But Smith, who has run the drive-in for all of those 35 years, has no illusions the 500-car, one-screen venue may eventually meet a challenge it can’t survive — or a buyout offer it can’t refuse.

“If someone came up to you and offered a million dollars for your home, what would you do?” the 70-year-old said on a recent Thursday night at the drive-in. “You’d hand them the key and say, ‘Thank you very much.’”

Although Smith’s devotion to the theater runs deep —  “They’ll find me sitting at the desk, then I’ll have them sprinkle the ashes over the drive-in,” he says — its fate isn’t ultimately in his hands.

The drive-in is run by St. Cloud, Minn.-based CEC Theatres — a company that began with a drive-in and was called Drive-In Theatres Inc. Kearney is home to the company’s only outdoor movie theater.

If not for the $70,000 it would take to tear down the 40-by-60-foot plywood and tile screen, Smith said, it probably already would be gone, cleared for apartments or some other year-round moneymaker.

The company’s vice president, Tony Tillemans, says no decisions have been made about the theater’s future but that “nostalgia only goes so far.”

“It comes down to whether or not it makes sense anymore.”

A new eight-screen theater is going in downtown, an addition to the fourplex and a twin screen already in place.

“That just may fix it for us,” Smith said.

And on this calm, clear night when just 37 people pepper the gravel lot to see “Transformers” and “Disturbia,” it’s easy to see the paint may not be the only thing beginning to fade.

“I think we do take it for granted because it’s always been here,” said Kip Ingram, who brought his 8-year-old son Brendan and three of his young friends to the movie. “But I know we’d miss it if it were gone.”

The Starlite Drive-In: Community hub

Because her parents ran drive-ins in West Point and later Neligh, Sheri Neesen became something of a concessions connoisseur.

It’s a job she was ready to abandon after high school, but today she operates Neligh’s Starlite Drive-In.

“Now I look back at it and I don’t know what I was complaining about it,” Neesen said on a recent Friday night at the theater. “The drive-in is where everybody was anyways. There certainly wasn’t anything else to do.”

Time wears on, and the drive-in still provides a rare entertainment venue for folks in rural Antelope County.

Neesen’s parents — who live next to the drive-in — handed it off to their progeny and hoped it would stay alive.

It has.

In fact, the crowd swelled to more than 350 people on a recent night in this town of 1,500.

The larger-than-usual crowd descended on the grass field to celebrate the eighth annual “Summer Bash” with games, costume contests and a double-feature of “Ratatouille” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”

Normally the theater, which opened in 1952 with a 60-cent showing of “Cripple Creek,” is more relaxed.

Children wear pajamas, parents come in work clothes.

If there’s a storm or bad weather, the former proprietors simply invite the crowd inside. Campers and truckers may stay the night if they like.

It’s just that kind of place.

“If you’re sitting in a movie theater for two hours, your bum’s going to get tired and you’re going to want to move around,” said Lincoln resident Brian McCarthy, who sat with his shoes off and legs stretched onto the dash of his four-door.

“Here you can do that and not miss a thing.”

Deb Branstiter of Neligh enjoyed the show with her 11-year-old son, Brett.

“Oh, this is summer,” said Branstiter, who took  her first trip to the drive-in as an infant 47 years ago. “We’re so glad we can be a part of this.”

Laroy Dexter was, too.

“There are so many things of the past that our next generation will think of and say ‘You did what?’” the Neligh woman said from her seat in the back — “away from the skeeters.”

Although the Starlite’s owners have seen drive-ins close in neighboring Long Pine, O’Neill and Fremont, they hope the gates here stay open for years to come.

Neesen knows firsthand how a theater can slip away. The West Point drive-in her family owned was destroyed by a tornado, and insurance couldn’t cover the bill.

“Oh, so many memories, and they turned it into a trailer court,” she said. “I’m not going to let that happen here.”

The Sandhill Drive-In: New in town

Gerald Bullard was tired of hearing people wax nostalgic about the “good old days.”

So Bullard, who worked at a drive-in during college in 1949 and 1950, brought them back.

In 1994, he built Nebraska’s newest drive-in from the ground up.

“People were always talking about how great they were,” said Bullard, of Alliance. “We happened to have the equipment, so I just built one.”

Remember that line from the venerable film “Field of Dreams” about building a baseball field amongst the corn?

Yeah, it applies here, too.

Try to tell Bullard he’s something of a pioneer, though, and you won’t get very far.

“Really, to tell you the truth, I haven’t given it much thought,” he said.

On Saturday and Sunday nights, as many as 125 people will show up to take in a movie on the 85-by-36-foot screen.

But depopulation is a major theme in Alliance, and as the population goes, so goes the theater.

“It’s pretty hard to keep her running,” Bullard said. “I don’t know that I’d recommend anyone go out and build one of their own.”

Drew Kerr was a summer intern at the Journal Star through the Lee Enterprises Scholar program. He has taken a reporting job at The Post-Star newspaper in Glens Falls, N.Y. His e-mail is dkerr@poststar.com.