Cascade Drive-In Dreams
All photos by D. Hoekstra
When spring opened its renewing arms for the first time last Saturday, I went to the liquidation sale at the Cascade Drive-In on old Route 64 in West Chicago, Ill.
I spent several summer nights at the Cascade while growing up in Naperville. And, as an adult a road trip from Chicago to the Cascade followed by a visit to John’s Buffet in Winfield made for a perfect Saturday night date.
As I wandered down Route 64 (North Avenue) I thought about the live Dixieland jazz behind the bar at John’s Buffet. John’s closed in 2017 after a 96-year run leaving nothing but ghosts. I also remembered staying at the Du Wayne Motel on Route 64 in West Chicago when my parents were looking to build a new life in the western suburbs.
My Dad loved the magic of the movies.
My parents finally built a ranch house in Naperville. It was near the old Skylark Drive-In off of Route 59 on the Naperville-Aurora border. When most of my high school classmates were going to sweet dances or nice movie theaters, a group of us would sometimes adjourn to Row Five of the Skylark, drink beer and watch bad horror movies. Or sometimes soft porn.
The Skylark closed in 1987 and was sold to real estate developers. The owner of the Cascade’s land also has put the 28-acre property up for sale but has not submitted any new plans to the City of West Chicago. The Skylark sat abandoned for a few years. Weeds grew around the speaker stands, the poles became full of rust and the Skylark sign fell into shadows.
There are no curtain calls at drive-in theaters.
In May of 1988 my Dad wandered over to the Skylark. He walked through the weeds and grabbed a drive-in movie speaker right off its post. This was awesome for a polite man of gentle intentions. This was the kind of rogue behavior I would have engaged in.
I know the date because he also took pictures. And he dated the pictures on the back. The whole drive-in thing resonated with him. He was born in 1920, so the idea of a family sitting in a car watching a movie through a drive-in speaker on a big screen had to be mind-blowing. Anything was possible.
The aluminum drive-in speaker sat in my parent’s basement for years until I donated it to the Theater Historical Society of America, then located above the York Theatre in Elmhurst. My Dad got a kick out of that. The society placed the speaker in a glass case with a brief history of the Skylark along with my Dad’s name.
So on the weekend before the fourth anniversary of my Dad’s death I was scrounging around a forsaken drive-in movie theater.
I later realized this was my untitled sequel to the Skylark.
I bought a roll of unused paper tickets. For $10 I bought a CD of drive-in movie pop songs that were played at the Cascade: Andy Williams “Can’t Get Used to Losing You,’ the Everly Brothers “Bye Bye Love,” the Dell-Vikings “Come Go With Me” and 26 others. A vintage popcorn machine was on sale for $175—even in the early 2000s, the Cascade had three popcorn machines going at the same time.
I went to my car and prepared to leave. But I had to go back to the projection booth/concession stand one more time. I bought a paper cup soft drink dispenser for $25. Emotion got the best of me. I told the owners they had an open invitation to drink Pepsi-Cola from paper cups and watch movies in my driveway.
The Cascade began its life in 1961with a screening of Henry Fonda’s “Mister Roberts” and Troy Donahue’s “Parrish.” The Cascade was opened by the Kohlberg Theatres chain. Late founder Stan Kohlberg was a drive-in visionary. He invented the cordless heater. He ran more than 50 outdoor and indoor theaters in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. He installed a small gas station at one drive-in. Stan even booked Elvis Presley at his old Starlite Drive-In (now the site of the Chicago Ridge Mall) but the gig was rained out.
Stan died at age 83 on Halloween, 1993–the same day horror actor and drive-in icon Vincent Price passed away.
In 1989 Stan’s son Jeff Kohlberg and daughter Poppy Cataldo purchased the Cascade. The website Cinema Treasures said the Cascade was the largest drive-in in Illinois with parking for more than 1,275 cars. “We always try to keep it the same,” Jeff told me in 2001. “Like it was in the fifties. My Dad used to book an X-rated with a G movie. We used to have a Woody Allen Festival. Then the next weekend we’d combo ‘Last House on the Left’ with ‘Don’t Look in the Basement.’ We were able to stay open year round. One Saturday night around Christmas there was snow on the ground. We had 550 cars.” The Cascade was an extension of the family. And that is why the Kohlberg family is heartbroken.
About 75 fans of the Cascade attended the sale on the warm and sunny April 6 afternoon. They were an extension of family, too. Everyone neatly parked their cars in between poles already stripped of the in-car speakers. It looked like they were expecting to see another movie. Traditions die hard.
No one wanted to leave.
People took photographs of the vacant screen. A couple of fans brought classic cars for drive-in movie portraits. One woman had her two sons with her. The boys looked to be 10 or 11 years old. Inside the concession stand, I encouraged the kids to get mom to buy them the nacho making machine. They sort of took me seriously.
Now in the hallway of gone away: drive-in pop dispenser.
A bit later I saw the mother looking at the vacant drive-in screen and wiping away tears near an outdoor picnic bench. She told me she didn’t know where she would take her family for a drive-in movie. I suggested the magnificent Sky View Drive-In in Litchfield, the last drive-in on Route 66 in Illinois. The Sky View began operation in 1950 directly south of a corn and soybean fertilizer plant. They open this weekend with a $3 throwback “Smokey and the Bandit” screening.
Like my father, I took away a few physical things from the deserted drive-in I may never use, but the family memory I saw at the Cascade will be with me as long as I think of outdoor movie theaters. Upon returning to my car for a second (and final) time, I noticed the two boys on the roof of their mother’s van. They were smiling and bouncing around. That’s what kids did at the drive-in movies: you’d wear pajamas and escape into an open space that was always full of dreams and magic. You could see all the stars in the world.
They were all within reach.
And you should never lose sight of that memory.
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