Bethel Drive-In continues summer tradition

BETHEL —When Kolleen Scaff worked a summer at the Bethel Drive-In back in the ’90s, her friends would often show up a couple hours before the film started to hang out and eat a dinner of fried food from the since-closed Onion Flats, the takeout spot down the road.

“It was really fun,” Scaff, who turns 59 on Saturday, said of her summer job.

Things weren’t that different last Saturday night when Scaff visited the drive-in, which is nestled in a grove of trees off Route 12, about a 5-minute drive from the center of town. This time, Scaff went with her 17-year-old niece, Rowan Leary, to watch “Jurassic World Rebirth,” the seventh installment in the science fiction franchise.

By 7:45, several cars had already claimed spots close to the tall movie screen in preparation for the 8:55 p.m. viewing.

South Royalton residents Rayven Hersey, 28, and Elliot Thompson, 27, reclined on red folding chairs a couple rows back. Saturday marked Hersey’s inaugural trip to a drive-in.

“It’s really great,” she said. “It’s fun to have community in a movie theater.”

By the time the original “Jurassic Park” transfixed audiences back in 1993, drive-ins, once a ubiquitous form of entertainment in the U.S., had been in decline for a couple of decades, done in by the rising cost of real estate and advances in home-viewing technology.

The Bethel Drive-In opened in 1954, when drive-ins were at their height. Today it is one of around 300 in the United States, according to the New York Film Academy.

This summer, while the Fairlee Drive-In Theater is closed as its co-owner recovers from an illness, Bethel Drive-In is the only one in the Upper Valley.

But just as audiences flock to the latest “Jurassic Park” film, or the live action remake of DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon,” the second movie of Saturday’s double-feature, the Bethel Drive-In continues to draw a crowd.

“It’s nice to see some are still around,” Adam Schertzer, of Chelmsford, Mass., said at the drive-in on Saturday.

He and his 12-year-old son, Ben, had rolled into the drive-in in search of something to do during their trip to Killington.

“It’s cool to see the old posts,” said Schertzer, referring to the wooden stakes that held up the speakers patrons used to hang on their car windows to hear the film.

“You can just picture the old cars of that era,” Schertzer said.

In a somewhat modern upgrade, moviegoers can now tune in to the film’s audio on their FM dial. A sign tacked to the side of the blue snack bus at the back of the lot assures patrons that “We have battery packs if you need a jump.”

Husband-and-wife David and Tammy Tomaszewski took over the drive-in in 2015, but their time in the movie business dates back decades earlier, to 1988, when they resurrected the Playhouse Movie Theatre in Randolph, which had fallen into disrepair.

“It called to (David),” Tammy said. “It needed to be rescued.”

The cash-only drive-in screens double-features on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The Tomaszewskis usually arrive around 6 p.m. to set up for showtime at dusk.

David runs the ticket booth and the digital projector, while Tammy handles concessions.

The pair used to have a cook who helped before the coronavirus pandemic, and, later, a friend who worked the cash register, but these days it’s hard to find someone who wants to work nights on the weekend, Tammy said.

For now, it’s just the two of them.

Tammy might have “no desire to sit down and watch movies anymore,” but she still enjoys working with David.

After about 40 years of marriage “you pretty much know what the other is thinking,” she said.

The open-air format of the drive-in might help foster a sense of community, as Hersey pointed out, but it also creates built-in distance between moviegoers.

“You’re in your own space,” said 19-year-old Joseph Thibodeau, of Sharon. “You’re not packed in like a regular movie theater.”

Thibodeau and his girlfriend, Evelyn Murawski, of Randolph, are seasoned patrons at the Bethel Drive-In, and the two have their routine down pat.

Murawski brings blankets from home, “as many as I can grab,” she said, and the two lay them out in the bed of Thibodeau’s white 2002 Toyota Tacoma, which he bought on Facebook Marketplace earlier this summer.

Thibodeau was a little skeptical of “How to Train Your Dragon,” he said, but Murawski felt the lineup had promise. “You need two good movies,” she said.

Chelsea couple Liz and Mike Appel were excited , too. “I love ‘Jurassic Park,” Mike said.

A couple rows away, right in front of the screen, friends Angus Harrington, 15, of Barnard, and 14 year-old Owen Helm and James Rich lounged on seats Harrington’s parents had detached from their minivan.

Maria Harrington, Angus’ mother, noted that drive-ins are “more for the experience,” than the movie.

She likes the Bethel Drive-In because “it’s a good place (for Angus) to be with his friends,” she said.

By 8:30 the lot, which Tammy estimated could hold about 100 cars, was nearly full.

While waiting for the film to start, Eric Holmquist, 64, cleaned the windshield of his white Ford with Windex to ensure he and his wife, Charlotte, got the best view.

He said he was “amazed” to see such a large turnout.

About 10 minutes before the first movie started, Tammy was busy filling buckets with popcorn and ringing up soft drinks and boxes of candy for the seven or so patrons standing in line at the snack bus.

Lebanon resident Garrett Rappazzo waited with his labradoodles, Lilly and Lester. Being able to bring his dogs was part of the drive-in’s appeal, he said.

He’s visited Bethel before but was holding out for “Jurassic World Rebirth,” which had a “summer blockbuster feel,” he said.

Now 32, he’s been following the franchise since the ’90s and the films hold nostalgia from childhood.

Minutes later, it was showtime, and the movie screen lit up against the dark blue sky. An advertisement for Babes Bar, the popular queer-friendly gathering spot a short drive away in Bethel’s town center, glimmered as patrons got settled.

Soon the sky turned black, and a red moon appeared above the tree line. The lot, which had been abuzz with chatter and movement not long before, hushed.

Half way through the film, Tammy was still stationed at the snack bus, in case any moviegoers came looking for a refill of popcorn. Bugs drawn to the blue light of a zapper dangling from the bus’s porch sizzled and hissed.

Now 61, Tammy noted that drive-ins were “a big part of my generation.”

“My parents never took me to an indoor movie theater,” she said.

The same goes for David Tomaszewski, 69, who grew up near Niagara Falls.

Tammy’s parents divorced when she was young, and her father would often bring her to Peter Sellers movies like “The Pink Panther,” while her mother preferred the “Billy Jack” franchise about a war veteran fighting crime out West.

“We saw what they wanted to see,” she said.

The Tomaszewskis managed the Playhouse until 2018, but even today, they make an effort not to show the same films as the theater on a given weekend.

After a decade of running the drive-in, they’ve gotten pretty good at predicting what their own audience wants.

“Anything ‘Minions’ and people flock here,” Tammy said. Blockbusters like “Jurassic World Rebirth” are hits, too.

As David approaches his 70th birthday, Tammy acknowledges that “(We’re) getting too old for these late nights,” she said. She suspects the pair has about four years left at the drive-in.

When the first film ended, David waved to cars as they rumbled out of the lot, and a few new ones rolled in for the second feature.

He planned to get some sleep in the car once the next film started.

“I loved it,” Scaff said of “Jurassic.” She and Leary planned to stick around for the next feature.

Others were less enthused. There was “not much closure,” said Murawski, who pointed out the reoccurring product placement, including two scenes with Altoids in them. Thibodeau slept through most of the film.

Liz Appel was also unimpressed. “It had dinosaurs,” she said, shrugging.

“But the next one is great,” Mike Appel said.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.