New San Antonio drive-in theater boom evokes memories of watching movies under the stars – San Antonio Express-News

Laura Hernandez Aplin remembers waiting impatiently for her dad to come home from work on summer nights so the family could pack the car with blankets and snacks and head over to the Mission Drive-In.

If they didnt leave the house at just the right time, Hernandez Aplin said, they would end up stuck in a slow-moving line to get in.

I remember the urgency of Come on, weve got to go!, said Hernandez Aplin, 45, a San Antonio-based public relations consultant. The lines would start and you would have to wait down the street, and so youre waiting in the car for a good chunk of time.

She kept going to the Mission Drive-In as a teenager, whiling away many evenings there with her friends. When it closed in 2000, it felt like a big loss. So the recent revival of drive-ins, a trend that took off during the period when indoor movie theaters closed as part of the effort to combat the spread of COVID-19, delights her, especially since it means she can share the outdoor movie experience with her family.

Shes not alone. Many San Antonians who grew up during the heyday of drive-ins have fond memories of those times, and many have taken advantage of the chance to see movies outdoors with their little ones.

My children are 6 and 10, and I remember being that age and seeing the movies with my parents, and now, to think, Im the parent, getting my kids together and ready to go, its so neat to be helping them to create those memories, Hernandez Aplin said. When youre looking at the stars, looking at the movie and feeling that energy and the weather is really nice, its magic.

San Antonians looking to recapture that magic for themselves have several options these days: The Mission Outdoor Theater near Brooks City Base, the Rooftop Cinema Club at Fiesta Texas, EVO Entertainment in Schertz, and the Stars & Stripes Drive-In Theatre in New Braunfels.

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In addition, Walmart is offering a series of free pop-up drive-in screnings at three of its San Antonio locations later this month. Details can be found at thewalmartdrivein.com.

If you think about it, theyre almost made for coronavirus, said Nick Hensgen, who runs the online resource driveinmovie.com. You can literally go and never have to interact with anybody. You never have to get out of the car.

That was the idea from the start.

Drive-ins date back to 1933, the brainchild of Richard Hollingshead, who wanted to do something for his mom. The plus-sized woman found the expansive seating in her car much more comfortable than the seating in movie theaters, Hensgen said, so her son hit on a way for her to watch movies without ever leaving her vehicle.

The first drive-in opened in Camden, New Jersey, followed a year later by one in Pennsylvania that is still in operation.

They kind of took off from there, and started gaining in the 40s and 50s, said Hensgen, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. They hit their peak in the 60s and have been on the decline ever since for various reasons.

It took a few years for drive-ins to reach San Antonio. The first, not-so-creatively dubbed the Drive-In Theatre, opened in 1940 just outside the city limits on Fredericksburg Road, according to a 2013 post on the UTSA Librarys Top Shelf Blog. It could accommodate 482 cars and was the only game in town until 1946, when several more opened, including the Alamo Drive-In Theater on Austin Highway.

The much-loved Mission Drive-In opened in 1948 and was the last in the city to go dark before the recent revival, screening what appeared to be its final movie in 2000. It reopened the following year, closing again a few years after that. It is now a community event space overseen by the citys World Heritage Office. Those events include occasional movie screenings.

According to the Cinema Treasures website, at least 18 drive-in theaters operated in San Antonio at one time or another, including the San Pedro Outdoor Theatre, on the North Side where the Santikos Embassy is now located; the Judson 4 Drive-In at Judson Road and Interstate 35; and the little El Charro Drive-In on Merida Street on the West Side.

The Mission has a special place in the heart of writer April Monterrosa, who publishes Live from the Southside magazine. Like Hernandez Aplin, she first started going with her family when she was a child, later going with friends.

In high school, it was the cool date night spot to be with your boyfriend, said Monterrosa, 43. I had strict parents, they didnt let me go out to most places, but the drive-in was considered safe at that time.

Whatever was showing almost didnt matter, since it was sometimes more about socializing than it was about the images on the screen.

It was a place to hang out and meet different people and see your friends, Monterrosa said. Its kind of like a happy hour without the alcohol, really. Youd go and youd socialize. That was the thing to do."

I remember one time I dont remember the movie, but we went to see a scary movie, and there was a guy walking around in a trench coat with a scary mask, and he was popping up and scaring everybody. I think people would be terrified of something like that now.

Kathy Hassenger, 66, a retired teacher, grew up going to the Kelly Drive-In on Frio City Road not far from what was then Kelly Air Force Base.

I loved that drive-in because when youd go there, after they paid, everybody would get a sucker, she said, laughing at the hold those lollipops still have on her memory. Mom didnt buy a lot of sweets for us at the time. The lollipops were a big deal.

Any request for concession stand fare got a swift no, since her mom, like many other parents, would prepare her own snacks for the evening, serving her youngsters popcorn and Kool-Aid she had whipped up at home. The seating came from home, too: Mom would take a blanket out, and we would sit on the hood of the car. Thats where wed watch the movie.

Kelly, she remembered, was the spot for families. The Mission was more of a hangout for teenagers, and thats where she started going with her friends when she hit that age. She remembers seeing The Graduate and Shaft, among other movies, there.

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Girls would arrive in one car, and boys would show up in the other, and there were sometimes more boys than met the eye.

Theyd pay for two, and the other two or three would go in the trunk, Hassenger said.

Arriving via trunk wasnt the only way that some folks tried to cut costs, recalled Jerry Watson, 69, who worked at the snack bar of the Mission from 1969 to 1971. Some drivers tried to come in through the exit to avoid the ticket booth and ended up with shredded tires because of the spikes put in place specifically to thwart that sort of thing.

Watson, a retiree who now teaches acting at the Boerne Community Theatre, also remembers that patrons conduct often reflected what was on the screen,

If it was a gangster movie, people would come and yell at us, he recalled. If the movie was a love story, everyone was very nice. If it was a horror movie, we would scare them!

It was possible to see the movies if not hear them without paying a dime, since the screens were often visible from a long way away. Pages for the long-gone Bandera Road Drive-In and the Alamo Drive-In on the Cinema Treastures site include memories from folks who lived nearby and remember watching movies from their backyards. One wrote about watching through binoculars.

Taffy and Scott Nelson both grew up going to drive-ins, and they took their two sons to the Mission regularly when the boys were growing up, often going with neighbors.

There would be three, four, five different families that would all go together, said Taffy, 61, a recruiter for Robert Half, a finance and accounting staffing firm. We would bring a bucket of chicken and a six-pack of beer, pizzas, whatever, and line up our Suburbans, all facing backwards. We would pull out our lawn chairs and just enjoy the movie and have a great evening.

They remember that the Mission had a little playground the boys would go to during the intermission between double features.

The couple sought out family-friendly fare lots of Disney and Spider-Man movies but youngsters could still get an inadvertent eyeful of R-rated content on one of the drive-ins other screens, recalled Scott, 59, a software developer with CenturyLink: Wed be taking the kids to some nice family movie, and theyd look over and, Oh! Look at that!

Glances of other movies without leaving your seat is one of the many things that make drive-ins special. Its a very different experience than catching a movie indoors, Hernandez Aplin said, because of the social aspect and the fact that the collective energy is different.

She remembers seeing the 1996 movie Independence Day at the Mission. When Bill Pullman, as the president, gave his rallying speech right before the big battle between Earth and the aliens, the place erupted.

Everybody was honking their horns at the same time, she said. It was amazing.

Deborah Martin is an arts writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Deborah, become a subscriber. dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN

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New San Antonio drive-in theater boom evokes memories of watching movies under the stars - San Antonio Express-News