I recently acquired a vintage drive-in speaker that once called the Westport Drive-In in Wichita, Kansas its home. Of course I did. And I know this because …
Well …
The chassis casting SAYS it came from the Westport Drive-In in Wichita, Kansas.
See?
Thankfully … the speaker’s internals were actually in very good condition. The exterior, however, was troublesome.
The unit was painted in a white lead-based paint, so I needed to remove that and give the chassis a fresh repaint. Which I did.
But now what do I do with the speaker?
At that point in time, I had options. I could either:
- (A) throw it on my Etsy site and see if anyone would buy it.
- (B) keep it in my personal collection with the other restored drive-in speakers.
- (C) drive out to a functioning drive-in in my local area and try to wire it into one of the remaining junction boxes, hoping to test the unit’s ability to play Despicable Me 4 or something.
And in the end … I went with Option (D).
And Option (D) was to contact the Witchita-Sedgwick Historical Society, and offer them the restored drive-in speaker for their collection of Wichita memorabilia and iconography. They appreciated the offer, and yesterday the restored Westport Drive-In speaker made its final journey from New York to Kansas. If Priority Mail still works these days, it should arrive in Wichita by the end of the week.
And you know I chronicled the restoration process.
Because of course I did.
Oh, yeah. And I should note that the next time I do one of these videos, I’ll have a second camera so that I can film the “audio test” from the speaker. I’ll also work on a hand-crafted (ear-crafted?) royalty-free testing track so that these videos don’t encounter YouTube audio royalty strikes or something like that.
I gotta tell you … this drive-in speaker restoration project is a lot of fun.
Can’t wait to try more of these. 😀
Chuck The Writer 
You must be logged in to post a comment.