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Aug. 6th, 2007 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogMy sweetie, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wooisme, and I were really fortunate as we were driving through the back roads of Sandusky, Ohio while looking for a place to get her oil changed. Though we never did find a house of lubrication, we found something even better.
(Cross posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rural_ruin)
On our right, in a smallish field marked by an overgrown gravel drive with a few guard posts on each side, was a huge gray and sky-blue square. Though rather the worse for considerable wear, the old drive-in theatre was unmistakable.
We were passing the theatre as I pointed it out, but we turned around and drove back to park on a patch of gravel nearby. I immediately dashed across the street to find a good vantage point for a picture or three. I ran back across with the intent of hiking around back for more pictures, but was met with the bane of my art; a "Posted: no trespassing" sign.
I was in the middle of discussion with my mate about whether to heed said signage when another car sidled up alongside our KIA and parked. The old man driving it got out and approached us.
As it turned out, he was the caretaker for the place. He started telling us that people aren't allowed to go anywhere past the rope that was cordoning the place off and that he keeps an eye on the place because of all the people who try to sneak onto the grounds.
But then, after saying how glad he was that we hadn't gone around back on our own (I thought it wise not to mention that I'd just been considering exactly that), he offered to take us on a little tour himself! I was floored!
This was the second experience (the first being talking to Dr. Evermore of The Forevertron) that made me deeply wish for a little pocket tape recorder to carry around with me. I do belive that I'm going to pick one of those up; small enough to carry in my camera bag so I have it everywhere I take my camera.
But I digress. My sweetie and I followed our guide back around the side of the base of the screen and into the field that once served as the parking lot for the theatre patrons.
The screen and the walls that flanked it formed a U, the closed end toward the road. The open end faced a large, rectangular field, littered with metal speaker stands and surrounded by a vastly overgrown wooden plank fence of the same sky blue as the walls facing the street. A simple wooden fence at the base of the viewing side of the screen formed a graceful curve that stretched from wall to wall and, I would imagine, kept patrons from parking their vehicles too close to the structure.
We walked toward the back of the field and neared the weather-faded wooden walls of the projector house, windows boarded and doors long barred. The projectors, our guide said, were all still in there. The owner had tried to find someone interested in them, and had even gone as far as trying to sell them on Ebay, but no one wanted what he told me were the original 1940s carbon arc movie projectors. If only I had the room for them myself.
Our guide, who's name, it occurred to me later on, I never did find out, told us a little about the history of the place as we walked. It was opened in the '40s and was a great success, but in the eighties and nineties, it grew tougher and tougher to get people in. Though the nearby proscenium theatre house, the State, was seeing a lot of money coming in in the form of restoration dollars, the Sandusky was left alone.
"It's just a bad location." Fewer and fewer cars filled the field in front of the great screen in later years. Without money coming in, the screen itself and the fences, box office, and projector house began to show their age. There used to be a concession stand, but that was long gone when we were there. A few years ago, the long-time owner had died, and with the decreasing attendance and deteriorating buildings, it was finally decided to donate the land to a conservancy group who owned a neighboring parcel.
The conservancy is going to demolish the screen, but will keep intact the projection house, which is going to be converted to a storage shed. Though it makes me sad to see another old drive in fall to the wrecking ball, I can't think of a use for the land it once occupied that would be closer to my heart than a nature preserve. It gladdens me that, rather than some faceless mega mall or cookie-cutter housing development, there will be beauty, greenery, and life here.
Before long, the great screen of the Sandusky drive in will fade into oblivion, like the thousands of movies that once flickered across it to the delight of six decades of couples out on a date in the comfort of their cars and families enjoying an outdoor evening at the movies with their children.
Good bye, Sandusky drive in. Thank you for the chance to get to know you, just a little bit.
wooisme, and I were really fortunate as we were driving through the back roads of Sandusky, Ohio while looking for a place to get her oil changed. Though we never did find a house of lubrication, we found something even better.(Cross posted to
rural_ruin)On our right, in a smallish field marked by an overgrown gravel drive with a few guard posts on each side, was a huge gray and sky-blue square. Though rather the worse for considerable wear, the old drive-in theatre was unmistakable.
We were passing the theatre as I pointed it out, but we turned around and drove back to park on a patch of gravel nearby. I immediately dashed across the street to find a good vantage point for a picture or three. I ran back across with the intent of hiking around back for more pictures, but was met with the bane of my art; a "Posted: no trespassing" sign.
I was in the middle of discussion with my mate about whether to heed said signage when another car sidled up alongside our KIA and parked. The old man driving it got out and approached us.
As it turned out, he was the caretaker for the place. He started telling us that people aren't allowed to go anywhere past the rope that was cordoning the place off and that he keeps an eye on the place because of all the people who try to sneak onto the grounds.
But then, after saying how glad he was that we hadn't gone around back on our own (I thought it wise not to mention that I'd just been considering exactly that), he offered to take us on a little tour himself! I was floored!
This was the second experience (the first being talking to Dr. Evermore of The Forevertron) that made me deeply wish for a little pocket tape recorder to carry around with me. I do belive that I'm going to pick one of those up; small enough to carry in my camera bag so I have it everywhere I take my camera.
But I digress. My sweetie and I followed our guide back around the side of the base of the screen and into the field that once served as the parking lot for the theatre patrons.
The screen and the walls that flanked it formed a U, the closed end toward the road. The open end faced a large, rectangular field, littered with metal speaker stands and surrounded by a vastly overgrown wooden plank fence of the same sky blue as the walls facing the street. A simple wooden fence at the base of the viewing side of the screen formed a graceful curve that stretched from wall to wall and, I would imagine, kept patrons from parking their vehicles too close to the structure.
We walked toward the back of the field and neared the weather-faded wooden walls of the projector house, windows boarded and doors long barred. The projectors, our guide said, were all still in there. The owner had tried to find someone interested in them, and had even gone as far as trying to sell them on Ebay, but no one wanted what he told me were the original 1940s carbon arc movie projectors. If only I had the room for them myself.
Our guide, who's name, it occurred to me later on, I never did find out, told us a little about the history of the place as we walked. It was opened in the '40s and was a great success, but in the eighties and nineties, it grew tougher and tougher to get people in. Though the nearby proscenium theatre house, the State, was seeing a lot of money coming in in the form of restoration dollars, the Sandusky was left alone.
"It's just a bad location." Fewer and fewer cars filled the field in front of the great screen in later years. Without money coming in, the screen itself and the fences, box office, and projector house began to show their age. There used to be a concession stand, but that was long gone when we were there. A few years ago, the long-time owner had died, and with the decreasing attendance and deteriorating buildings, it was finally decided to donate the land to a conservancy group who owned a neighboring parcel.
The conservancy is going to demolish the screen, but will keep intact the projection house, which is going to be converted to a storage shed. Though it makes me sad to see another old drive in fall to the wrecking ball, I can't think of a use for the land it once occupied that would be closer to my heart than a nature preserve. It gladdens me that, rather than some faceless mega mall or cookie-cutter housing development, there will be beauty, greenery, and life here.
Before long, the great screen of the Sandusky drive in will fade into oblivion, like the thousands of movies that once flickered across it to the delight of six decades of couples out on a date in the comfort of their cars and families enjoying an outdoor evening at the movies with their children.
Good bye, Sandusky drive in. Thank you for the chance to get to know you, just a little bit.
