DRIVE-IN DOWN MEMORY LANE
Charcoal Oven is part of a rich Oklahoma City dining legacy
Police Saturday, moved in on taverns, pool halls and troublesome drive-ins “to get at the breeding grounds” in curbing rampant teenage hoodlumism in Oklahoma City.
— Aug. 17, 1952, The Sunday Oklahoman
Northwest Expressway, specifically between May Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, hasn’t seen traffic snarls nor smelled as strongly of charcoal as it has the past week in three decades.
All in an effort to get one more Chick-a-Doodle-Doo Sandwich or Theta Burger with an order of Suzy-Q fries before 84-year-old David Wilson closes Charcoal Oven, which he opened in 1958, to make room for a new Discount Tires location.
Nostalgia might not be sustainable enough to curb
another tire shop from sprouting, but for one week it’s been able to pack the immaculately landscaped grounds of the Oven like it was the summer of 1965.
Wilson’s Charcoal Oven is the last of the original class of drive-in restaurants born in the 1950s. It wasn’t the first to open in the golden age of drive-ins, and it won’t be the last thanks to the existence of Shawnee-born Sonic, which has called Oklahoma City its corporate home since 1987.
Drive-in restaurants began popping up before World War II, but took off shortly after the end of the war. After Order-Matic was born in 1956, it was an all-out assault on the restaurant industry.
Breeding grounds for hoodlums
According to The Oklahoman’s Information column on June 30, 1959, the U.S. was home to “About 30,000” drive-ins “with new ones being added constantly. It is estimated that three out of every five new restaurants today are drive-ins and that drive-ins get about one-third of the money spent in the country’s restaurants.”
At that time, Charcoal Oven was just another statistic, but soon it would stand out.
In the fall of 1957 Wilson decided to take a friend’s advice. Wilson already owned Quick’s, home of the 19-cent hamburger, but his buddy Bob Fellers had made a small fortune opening a Dairy Queen drive-in inside a drive-in movie theater in Manhattan, Kan. Fellers told Wilson that Oklahoma City would be a prime spot to do something similar.
Wilson’s Charcoal Oven opened May 8, 1958, with an $8 neon sign not fit to maintain its stature in the prairie’s long-standing war with wind. And business was slow at first.
“People said I was crazy,” Wilson said in a 2008 interview. “And they still do!”
Wilson said the Oven didn’t really pick up until the next year when the brand-new Penn Square Shopping Center opened a half-mile to the east. That allowed him to replace the sign with the iconic one everyone hopes will fall into good hands once Wilson’s crew flips its last charbroiled patty.
Once it found its footing, the Oven was one of several dozen stops for teenagers around Oklahoma City.
The pioneers Garland’s Drive-In
opened across the street from what is now Byron’s Liquor Warehouse in 1939, NW 22 and Broadway. Owner Garland Arrington had just finished a stint running the Capitol cafe during the Marland administration. The art deco building featured a tower and popular corner entrance. Walls covered in floral paper adorned the dining room outfitted with wrought-iron furniture. But it was the curb service, delivered by car hops in sailor outfits, short skirts and white boots, that kept business brimming enough to open a second store.
Arrington got out of the drive-in business about 1950 to concentrate on his new restaurant, which was part of another booming dining trend. He found business even better at his Boulevard Cafeteria, which opened in 1948.
Hollie’s Drive-In opened in 1947 at the corner of Sheridan and Western, now home to a McDonald’s. Edmond and Evonne Hollie served Big Bacon Burgers beneath a sassy swine in pinstriped overalls who leaned over the neon Hollie’s sign. The big pig first appeared in 1955, beckoning restless youth with its puckish snout and crossed porky ankles.
Hollie’s attracted the postwar teenage clientele with gas to burn and an itch to mix.
“I’ve seen it so bad with the smog in the night when the wind wasn’t blowing and they all had their motors running and cars stretched around the block, you’d have to wash things down there was so much soot,” Hollie said in a 1980s interview.
When Evonne was diagnosed with cancer in 1970, Edmund leased the drive-in to up-and-coming operators Dick Stubbs and David Egan, who had successfully operated similar concepts in Stillwater and Oklahoma City. Today they own and operate Cattlemen’s Steakhouse.
Don Coit opened his first drive-in named Weber’s in 1954 at 2500 S Western. It was exclusively a curb-service establishment. Coit changed the name of the drive-in to Coit’s Root-Beer Drive In and added similar stores at 5001 N Portland and 4101 N Pennsylvania.
Coit’s closed its last drive-in in 2012 but still operates a food truck.
J.R. and Rosamond Holt opened their first restaurant in 1959 at 3300 S Western Ave., calling it the Ranch House but eventually renamed it Del Rancho. The idea for the Del Rancho Steak Sandwich came to Holt in a dream that woke him at 4 a.m. in 1961.
That dream began a three-year experimentation process that led to the Steak Sandwich Supreme’s unveiling in 1964. That sandwich is still a mainstay of Oklahoma City diners at nine locations across the state.
Gone but not forgotten
Once the trend proved it had legs, dozens followed suit. Kids in south Oklahoma City who couldn’t connect at Coit’s near Capitol Hill might run over to Potter’s in Midwest City. On the northeast side was Carp’s or Cherry’s. Bixler’s, on NW 23, was convenient coming from many directions. There was Fred’s in Del City and the Delta Drive-In, which reincarnated itself as a Coit’s. Then there was Goode’s, Flying Chicken, and Mainey’s. Bruce’s Drive-In, 6101 N Shields, was ordered shut by a judge for a spate of drunk and disorderly behavior that led to 1,999 arrests between March 17 and March 21, 1953. Owner Bruce Norman protested the closing despite having been beaten over the head with a bottle by patrons he refused entrance to a dance only months before. Others included
the Tower Drive-In, Wood’s, Valentine’s Drive-In, Gardens Drive-In, and the Rancher’s Daughter with its randy sign at 4433 NW 23.
The trend was so successful, Gene
Wade opened Cattlemen’s Drive-In Cafe at 2022 Exchange Ave. Marsh’s Pig Stands, which dated to
1924, turned into Marsh’s Drive-In on Broadway. Marlow’s opened at 1600 N Broadway in 1955 and would become
Broadway Drive-In by 1964.
Renaissance leads to Sonic boom
As Oklahomans know well, booms rarely occur without busts, and that was the fate for the majority of driveins as the more convenient drive-thru window proved a more efficient way to turn a profit.
But thanks to “American Graffiti,” “Happy Days” and “Grease” in the 1970s, nostalgia for drive-in culture created new opportunity.
No one took better advantage of that opportunity than Sonic, which started out as Top Hat on a small acreage outside Shawnee by Seminole native Troy Nuel Smith Sr. in 1953.
Smith partnered with Charles Pappe to open Top Hat locations in Woodward, Enid and Stillwater by 1958. The name changed to Sonic the next year to better fit their slogan, “Service with the Speed of Sound” then focused on small towns in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Missouri and Arkansas for expansion through the 1970s.
Sonic grew to 41 drive-ins in 1967, 1,000 by 1978.
Stephen Lynn was hired as president in 1983. He hired Cliff Hudson to head the legal department the next year. Lynn and a group of investors completed a $10 million leveraged buyout in 1986.
After Hudson became president and chief executive officer in 1995, Sonic opened between 100 and 150 new stores annually. Today, the company has more than 3,500 locations nationwide.
Famous last words?
When Charcoal Oven closes next month, it leaves Del Rancho as the last member of Oklahoma City’s 1950s class of drive-ins. Classic 50s in Norman began as a Sonic in 1958 but went independent in the late 1980s.
But Oklahoma City’s relationship with drive-ins is far from over thanks to Sonic.
As we prepare to say goodbye to the Oven, we would love to hear from you. Email your favorite memories of Charcoal Oven or whichever driveins you frequented most to dcathey@oklahoman.com. We would love to include them in our farewell-coverage of Charcoal Oven.