A Trip Down Memory Lane Through Drive-In Theaters

Smith, the barber, agrees. "The worst thing that could happen was to get there early, choose your space, and then find out that the speaker wasn't working," he said. "You'd have to move."

Manassas got the first of the four Virginia Piedmont drive-ins, with 250 spaces for vehicles. "It was the biggest because it was closest to Washington, out Route 28 just west of town. The rest were for 200 vehicles," Quaintance said. Warrenton's was next, on Bear Wallow Road near old U.S. 17. Culpeper's drive-in was on Bradford Road close to old U.S. 29-211. Orange's was just south of town on U.S. 15.

Quaintance and his crew of three or four built them all in a year and a half, he told me. They were relatively easy jobs. "None of the Virginia [Piedmont] drive-ins were paved. You trenched down 15 inches and put in the wires," he said. "Pitts used the best eight-inch speakers -- good sound. The only lights were on a wooden pole next to the snack stand."

The snack stand was always cinderblock; it housed the camera and sound system and two restrooms.

"They first charged a dollar a car or pickup, but after a few years it went to $1.50 a person, kids free," Quaintance said.

Smith told me that the new fees didn't sit well with some. "Once things quieted down, you'd see car trunks popping open and people popping out of the trunk," he said.

Quaintance told me that the feature films shown at drive-ins were always black-and-white in the 1940s and '50s. The first show began at dusk, around 7 or 7:30, the second about 9:30. Daylight Saving Time had not arrived. A vehicle could stay for both shows, but families with children left after the first feature.

Pitts could never crack Loudoun County. The spreads around Leesburg were large, and farmers wanted too much money for the land, more than $1,000 an acre, even in the late 1940s. To make money, Pitts needed land he could buy for less than $500 an acre or lease reasonably. Virginia drive-ins, unlike those in the North, didn't have heaters and were closed from Thanksgiving to April. On rainy nights, the cars were few.

A drive-in also needed at least 10 acres so the lights wouldn't bother neighbors too much and so the three- to five-acre theater area would be buffered to discourage "hilltopping" -- people off the property watching the show.

None of the counties Pitts picked for his investments had zoning, and Quaintance didn't have to worry about electrical inspections. There were none. He checked the wiring of each theater every few months, "but I never saw a movie. Most of the time I was too tired to stay up to watch them. I still don't watch them on TV."

I asked Quaintance if any of the drive-ins he built were segregated. "Only Emporia [near the North Carolina line]. There was a fence separating the black from the white section."

Quaintance's wiring talents led him north to far larger drive-ins in the 1960s. "All those states made me take an exam. Maryland even said I didn't have the qualifications to take the exam, but Old Man Ward ran interference," he said, using an old expression for a well-connected politician. "I got a 96 on the test."