Puget Sound Journal: Drive-in offers flashback to the '50s

WHIDBEY ISLAND -- The weekend scene looked more '63 than '03. Kids hopping around in froggy p.j.'s between souped-up cars. Moms and dads piling blankets over themselves in the beds of pickups. Young sweeties sliding electric hands across smooth car seats and ... whoa-oh-oh-oh.

Even the snack stand at the Blue Fox Drive-In -- double feature "The Hulk" and "American Wedding" -- was jerking old heartstrings. Bubble gum slushies. Foot-long hot dogs. A "Candy Crane" machine with the sign "Play 'til you win." Sure.


		Grant M. Haller / P-I
	Before the feature film starts at the Oak Harbor Blue Fox Drive-In Lexie Black, 16, jumps up and down in her friend's pickup truck bed to set off the alarm in answer to all the other cars that had their alarms set off as the screen lit up with previews of coming attractions. She is a Coupville High School student.

As I waited for his big bad greenness to come onscreen and swell from man to monster, I found my mind wandering back in time, to my drive-in dates with Tom, the hunky tennis player, the steamed-up windows on his jacked-up Pontiac in the first long, hot summer of high-school love, before September's heartbreak. Ouch.

I can't remember a single movie. But I do remember the metal car speakers, hooked on the rolled-up car window, and the scratchy actors' voices that eked out of them, barely spilling over into the back seat.

The speakers are gone at the one-screen, family-owned Blue Fox. Only the forgotten metal stands are left, leaning this way and that, used to hang the occasional bucket with squeegee.

Like most '50s drive-ins that have survived Darwinian odds, the family- operated Blue Fox has moved on to a hair-raisingly good Dolby stereo broadcasting system that works through a vehicle's AM/FM radio. Owner Darrell Bratt keeps a booster pack on hand to recharge car batteries, in case.

"The little speakers ... they were like listening to a tin can," says the owner, who bought the drive-in in 1988, after scraping together money from family and parents.

"We were only 24-25 years old at the time, and we knew it was a huge risk," says Bratt. He laughs when he says "risk."

"I figured we were young enough we could always start over if we didn't make it."

Bratt, 41, has spent a lot of time in drive-ins. He worked at the Blue Fox for years before buying it. He remembers packing into his parents' car in Lincoln, Neb., and heading off to the drive-in with some, none or all of his six siblings. "I usually fell asleep," he says.

He occasionally has to wake up patrons now, at the end of a double feature, at 2 in the morning. "It depends on how good the movie is," he says.

The Blue Fox opened in May 1959, with Pat Boone and Shirley Jones starring in "April Love." The Blue Fox name had nothing to do with nature, or sly predatory mammals, but with a penny-pinching owner, who bought a used sign for the Blue Fox Drive-In Restaurant, cut the "Restaurant" off and added "Theater."

The '50s were the heyday of drive-ins, a time when the love of cars and love of movies were at their zenith. The drive-in wedded the two into a neat-o, daddy-o good time. By 1958, at the peak, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins in the United States.

Popularity skidded over the next three decades. Malls opened with multiplex theaters. The home video market boomed. People hooked up to cable and satellite dishes. Movie companies increased their cut of the box office (now 50-70 percent at the Blue Fox). The 12-14 acres of empty land needed to set up a drive-in became increasingly precious in high-growth areas, and development pressure on owners intensified.

United Drive-In Theater Owners Association statistics show that, as of July this year, there were about 400 drive-ins left in the nation, with a total of 635 screens. Eight of those are in Washington state, including the Puget Park Drive-In in Everett and the big six-screen Valley 6 Outdoor Theaters in Auburn.

A count of defunct drive-ins in the state shows that more than 50 have gone dark down the decades.

Some states have no drive-ins left, including New Jersey, the birthplace of the genre, where an enterprising sales manager in the '30s figured out that showing movies to people sitting in cars would save them from dressing up, hiring sitters and paying for parking.

But it's not time to nail the lid on the coffin yet. United Drive-In Theater Owners Association stats show that 40 closed drive-ins have reopened since 1990, and almost 20 new ones have been built. This minirevival is fueled in part by nostalgia.

Moms and dads want their kids to share early experiences of the great outdoors, cinema-style, and old romantics like me want to trip down memory lane as the night falls down and the screen lights up.

But dollars and cents also factor in to the drive-in U-turn. Go to the multiplex, and you may dole out $35 or more for a family of four. At the Blue Fox, you get two movies for $6 a head -- and kids under 11 get in free.

Bratt has had to work hard to keep his drive-in open, adding an onsite Go-Kart track, a game arcade and a miniature train to attract customers.

"There are good years and bad," he says. "It all depends on the weather and the movies."

This summer, the weather's fab, but the movies ... "not good," says Bratt. "They're overhyped, and not living up to expectations."

He works seven days a week, until 3 in the morning. His wife and four kids also work at the Blue Fox. So do his parents, who join the crew in the summer, and his friends, who pitch in on weekends

Unlike many surviving drive-in operators, Bratt keeps the Blue Fox open year-round. That's not easy. In the dead of winter, with rain snaking down windshields, he may have only 10 cars. Or -- true story -- he may have only one.

But, come dusk, the '50s projector starts rolling, pitching flickering images 400 feet away, onto a 40 x 90 screen in a near-empty lot.

The show must go on.

More headlines and info from Whidbey Island.

Editor's Note: Puget Sound Journal is a weekly column in which reporters on the P-I's regional team offer analysis, insights and personal views on issues, events, people and places. P-I reporter M.L. Lyke can be reached at 425-252-2215 or m.l.lyke@seattlepi.com

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