History of Hull's Drive-In Theatre:
Hull's Drive-In has been part of our local heritage for over fifty years. The theater opened on August 5, 1950 as Lee Drive-In. Owner was Mr. Waddey C. Watkins of Roanoke. In August 1957, Mr. Sebert Hull of Buena Vista assumed ownership. Mr. and Mrs. Hull ran the newly renamed Hull,s Drive-In for the next four decades. When Mr. Hull passed away before the 1998 season, Mrs. Hull sold the business to Mr. W.D. Goad whose Auto Body Shop is adjacent to the Drive-In on Route 11 North of Lexington.
Thousands of movie fans were thrilled when Mr. Goad kept the drive-in going that summer, much the way Mr. Hull had all the years before. The following season (1999), the high cost of needed technical improvements discouraged Mr. Goad from opening the theater. That summer, the big screen remained dark as Mr. Goad searched for a buyer who could not only fund the necessary upgrades but also run the business in the affordable, family-friendly way of Mr. Hull.
The closing of Hull's Drive-In was a great disappointment to many moviegoers, including area couple Eric and Elise Sheffield. In June 1999, they convened a public meeting of more than fifty concerned fans. Coming from all walks of life, this group found common ground in their fondness for Mr. Hull and their love of his outdoor theatre. The group resolved to form a non-profit group called Hull's Angels and dedicated themselves to find a way to re-open the drive-in. The group first operated the theatre on a lease agreement. After more than a year of significant fundraising, they were able to purchase the business in May 2001. Since that time, the Angels have successfully operated Hull's Drive-In as America's only non-profit community-owned drive-in.
Other Notes of Interest:
Starlight Memories: The First Fifty Years
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The Early Years
a 1999 interview with Mr. Eldridge Pultz (Rockbridge County)
Mr. Eldridge Pultz and Mr. Bootie Moore both were there the very first days of Hull's Drive-In. Mr. Moore in fact worked for the Drive-In even before it was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Hull. Before then a couple from Roanoke owned the business, a Mr. and Mrs. Atkins, and they'd drive back and forth from Roanoke every night.
Also back then the drive-in ran all week long in the warm months, and the weekends were usually sell-outs. The drive-in had mostly current movies, lots of westerns, and Roy Rodgers was a common face up on the big-screen. Mr. Moore worked at the concession stand with four or five others and they sold a lot of hot dogs, sodas, and popcorn, though he can't remember the price. His friend Mr. John Hostetter collected the tickets and admission was a dollar per carload; Mr. Moore remembers how after they started charging per person sometimes they'd have to check the trunks and everything else--sound familiar?
Mr. Pultz remembers coming to the drive-in a different way--on the back of a flatbed cattle truck. As he recalls, he and all the other young teens at Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church worked a deal with Mr. Mason Hostetter, who owned a farm behind the drive-in. On the night of the Grand Opening, all the teenagers that could fit climbed onto the flatbed and got hauled to the drive-in over the hill and down to the brand new screen. Who else was on that wagon? He remembers a bunch of Hostetters and Womeldorf s and a bunch more--I wonder how many of these kids took their kids to the drive-in and how many of those kids, in turn took theirs?
At The Drive-In
an essay printed in The Rockbridge Advocate (July 1999)
by Elise Sprunt Sheffield
On the long hot nights of summer, I go to the drive-in. I get in the car with my husband and baby and roll down all the windows. While the cicadas sing and the sun sinks low, we breeze through the muggy honeysuckle air over to Hull's.
Built on a hill, surrounded by cow pastures and an auto body shop, Hull's is owned and operated by Mr. and Mrs. Sebert Hull, whose ways of business and personal values are as retro as the refreshment stand prices. Red Man chewing tobacco costs almost two bucks a pouch, but snowcones are just fifty cents, french fries, sixty, hard-working civility, no charge at all.
The Hulls have worked here since the fifties. Telephone poles prop up the wide screen. An old Farmall tractor still mows the grassy banks. Probably the only thing to change since Eisenhower has been the movies: a slew of kung-fu, a smattering of Disney, an occasional second run thriller.
On a sell-out night, like last Labor Day, automobiles touch taillight to headlight all the way back to the double highway. They're big roomy cars, mid-eighties sedans, high-riding farm pick-ups, a few mini-vans. Beneath the bright bug light of his outdoor ticket shed, Mr. Hull works the line like a pro. Single feature or double it's three bucks a head, with kids in the car free till they're twelve. "Hope ya'll enjoy the show," he says, always, as he palms back the bills, car after car after car.
Then the cars ease onto the worn and grassy banks and the doors pop open and buckets of kids bail out and packs of pre-teens and moms and dads and babies and dogs on short leashes. They drag out quilts. They drag out pillows. Sleeping bags, coolers, fold-up lawn chairs: everything gets spread on the freshly mown lawn.
It's a nice time, this pre-movie nesting. The cars keep filing in, crunching up the gravel drive one after another. Dusk settles. The earth cools. Up front, little kids in pajamas swoop beneath the big screen like bats at twilight. At the center of things, the screen doors of the canteen just slam and slam and the sweet smell of popcorn drifts across the lawn.
This evening, my husband and I settle in our usual spot down on front row. We pull our speaker over to the blanket we have spread and stare up at the sky-high screen. We lie on our backs, listening to Parton and Twitty as the night closes in. When finally the projector fans out its blue beam, the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park loom over us as large as life. I edge closer to Eric who shelters our dreaming first-born in the crook of his arm.
In the darkness, a soft wind blows over us like a breeze at the beach. A waning moon glows behind a fleet of papery clouds. Heat lightning flashes across the distant mountains. The drive-in is quiet. Even sounds from the interstate fade away as the big reels of film wheel us back to primordial times.
Soon the lumbering dinosaurs rear up and roar. They thrash through the wet jungles and grab a lawyer. Torrents of Hollywood rain slash across the screen as the hapless lawyer kicks and screams.
I know what's coming.
I get up from the blanket and swiftly retreat for popcorn and Pepsi just as the T-Rex starts shaking the lawyer like a limp rag doll. Dipping into the blue night, I scramble up the hill. Just ahead, rows of automobiles gleam in the darkness like wet-backed alligators on a moonlit bank. Nothing moves. I press forward, feeling like I'm the only person alive. Carefully I weave a path between the low-slung cars, the shadowy clumps of kids, the cast-off cigarette embers glowing like fireflies in the dark and dewy grass.
So I grope along, thinking about that warm box of popcorn in a mindless animal sort of way, when suddenly a wild feeling wells up inside me like tears. Straight ahead sits a family by front fender of their old Chevy: a sweaty passel of kids, a heavyset mom, a toddler in diapers leaning against a lanky and bare-chested dad. Clumped tight, they gaze up at the big screen still as fawns. Necks arched. Mouths agape. Eyes pushed wide, unblinking. Instantly I recall a black and white photograph from The Family of Man. I look at this family at the drive-in but I see a cave in the African Kalihari and a campfire and a clan of !Kung bushmen gathered around. I see them packed close, bare-limbed and lithe, eyes fixed on an elder who fling up his arms and spreads his hands wide. I see them spun breathless, speechless, taut. And across the face of every man, woman, and child is a look of pure and total surrender.
In a flash, it's the same across the drive-in rows. The same huddled families, quiet beyond time, the same unguarded faces. It is a pathetic scene in the original sense of the word and it takes me down to my heart. I shed judgments, drop labels. See us all as fragile-winged as the moths flitting in the light of that blue movie beam. Here we are: little tiny humans perched on a little tiny hill deep in the boonies of Virginia beneath and immense and starry sky.
I don't know what moves me more: our terrible vulnerability or our equally terrible triviality. While the dinosaurs rage across the screen, I steady my young feet on this old Earth and press on toward Mrs. Hull's popcorn canteen. Far above, the unwatched stars shine down upon us in a cascade of infinite tenderness and grace.
