Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
back to a time when moviegoers could watch
from their cars on nice summer nights.
I bought the drive-in,
Luverne, Minnesota in 1966.
Ken Sergeant was the original owner and he
built the Verne Drive-In Theater.
We live right next to the ticket booth and we built
the house 35 years ago.
[music]
We walk everyday.
Every morning a mile and at night a mile.
One time we had one car that said Deliverance and
when we played that show it was a canoe we had on
top of our car and we drove around town and
other towns just for the advertisement. [laughs]
There's one time we had a Chainsaw Massacre movie
and I took a chainsaw and I took the chain out of it
and there was a bunch of girls in the car and I
took the chainsaw out of the car and started it up
and I'll tell you, they piled out of that car and
just rolled out and they just laughed and the owner
of the theater that's got it today,
he seen that happen.
I'm noted for that, I've been doing that for years,
even yet today.
[Laughing] I sold the theater in 1983.
It was real, real hard, but we thought it would be
a little easier than it was.
After we got out of it, we wished we
would have had it back.
Now we're close and we're sort of involved
real big in it yet.
I just love people, I like when they come in at the,
I take their tickets and I just love taking tickets
and half the people used to come to the show when I
had it and they bring their kids now,
and that's what's fun about it.
Whenever we see the crowd come if they need help I
just watch when the line gets big I just run out
and I help the cars in and then I come home and I sit
here until they line up again.
ś Ride of the Valkyries ś
ś Ride of the Valkyries ś
I bought the Verne Drive-In Theater 13 years ago.
We opened up in July the first year.
Probably one of the more noticeable
changes in the theater since we've opened is
there's, there's no speaker post sitting on
the humps of the theater with the speakers on.
Modern theaters nowadays they play their sound for
the, the movies comes through the car stereo.
The ticket building was built by us and the
concession building was built by us.
[music]
I realized there was a whole generation of
families and kids that were not ever able to go
to an outdoor movie theater cause they,
they had closed and I thought it would be fun to
bring that back for the young families and the
teenagers that never got to go
to an outdoor movie theater.
[music]
We kind of pride ourselves with our movie prices.
We're five dollars for adults for two movies.
Children 11 and under are free.
We haven't changed our
movie prices since we opened.
When I bought the theater I kind of vowed to never
change the prices, admission.
And I like five dollars, it keeps a lot of
customers coming back to the movies
'cause of our prices.
I think it's unique, this theater's unique in that
it's very affordable for the young people,
young families.
There's not many drive-in theaters left in Minnesota
or for, in the whole country actually.
So it's, it's kind of special and lot of the
people have told me when they're driving here from
a distance, they're with their children and it's a
good time to have one on one with their family and
when they're at the movie it's the same thing.
It's totally worth it for the months that you're
open just being around the people and having the
people thank you for keeping the theater open
and doing a good job and having a nice clean place,
affordable place to go.
It's a family affair.
Grandkids, my boys that live in Luverne,
they all work at the theater since they were
old enough until they went to college.
I have some of the best employees you could ask for.
On probably five families I'm on their third sibling.
Pretty busy already for ten to eight.
Oh yeah I'm sure we will be out to the nosebleed.
My, my son Evan run the theater the first year.
My daughter Stacey, who lives in Nebraska,
she still actively helps.
She does our Facebook and some of the website stuff
as does my wife Julie helps a lot so it's still
pretty much a family-run business.
I talk to Glen pretty near every day and we get along
real well and everything's great with us and like I
can do just about anything we want over there and he
don't complain.
You know the kids, the people,
my employees, its fun being around the younger
people as you get older.
I probably don't really care to ever grow up.
[music]