If you don't remember when Beverly's Electronic Drive-In was Cruise Central for thousands of area teen-agers, you're either too young or didn't live around Fort Smith between the late '50s and '70s.

Tom and Reba Fite opened Beverly's on June 1, 1957, at 4100 Towson – right about where Randy Blythe's Fine Car Center sits now. In fact, the building where Randy stores part of his fine, classic car collection boasts a lighted, painted mural depicting the Happy Days-like aura of the long-gone, but not forgotten, drive-in.

All four of the Fite's children –Tommy, Beverly, Danny and Debbie – worked various jobs at the drive-in – from car hopping to washing trays to appearing in radio and television commercials with their dad. The drive-in was named after the then 10-year-old Beverly. Tom Fite originally planned to have his carhops wear uniforms and roller skates, as California carhops were doing, but his employees weren't quite ready for that.

With its glitzy neon, great food, pretty carhops, electronic order speakers, and rock'n'roll-stocked juke box, the new brand-new drive-in became an instant gathering place for teens. Before they headed off to a movie or party, or to "drag the gut" (cruise Garrison Avenue) or drive by "The Y" (where Sagely & Edwards Realty is located on Rogers) and the Dairy Grand – Beverly's was where they went first.

Often they ordered the drive-in's food specialties, like Dippy Dogs and the double-decker Big Beverly, and novelty drinks like the cherry-lemon-lime-Dr. Pepper-pickle-Coke. But mostly they went there to see and be seen, and to check out the coolest and fastest cars in town. If you didn't immediately find someone you were looking for at Beverly's, all you had to do was park and wait awhile.

The King of cool cars the first year Beverly's was open was Atlas King, Jr. Heads turned every time Atlas eased his shiny, pink, '57 T-bird through the drive-in. He also had a Lincoln Continental equipped with what might have been the area's first in-car TV.

In 1984, when Beverly's was going to be torn down and I was writing a newspaper story about it, I tracked Atlas down for a phone interview. He had become a minister and was living in Tennessee with his wife and daughter, he said. But he still remembered that "57 T-bird, and admitted that the two cars in his garage in 1984 were a late model Cadillac and a new Chevy pickup with a 454 engine, "fixed up like the kids drive them."

One thing that was so much fun about going to Beverly's was you never knew what would be going on there. Tom Fite was a great promoter and was always coming up with new ways to draw favorable attention to his electronic restaurant. While Beverly's was being built, "Little John" Gregory broke the world record for flagpole sitting by staying aloft for seven months. I was too young to drive then, but my family only lived a few blocks from Beverly's and I would often go there with my parents or friends to watch Little John being weighed and interviewed by local radio station personalities. When Little John needed a shave and a hair cut, a barber was raised by a hook and ladder fire truck.

Gregory's goal was to lose a couple of hundred pounds from his hefty frame while he was flagpole sitting, and he slimmed down from 408 to 308 in the seven months he was perched on the flagpole. Fite carefully controlled Gregory's calorie intake with nutritious meals he sent up to the big man in a basket three times a day. But Little John probably would have lost a lot more weight if teen-age girls like my friends Betty Ben Clark and Peggy McAlpin hadn't sneaked extra food up to him.

After Little John's feat, another kind of record was set at Beverly's in about 1962, when a girl in a black, '59 Impala drove through Beverly's 100 times without stopping.

Many couples fell in love and married after meeting at Beverly's. Others broke up or got stood up there. Tommy Fite once told of girl standing him up one night to go for a ride with the guy driving the first 1960, 409 Chevy Impala "factory-made hot-rod" to hit town. Tommy was driving a 1955 Oldsmobile at the time.

And then there was Tom Fite's tradition of feeding free chicken dinners to Fort Smith High School (now Northside High) football players who made touchdowns or good yardage. Grizzly standouts Jim Grizzle and Phillip Plunkett "cost him some chicken" their junior and senior years of high school, Grizzle once boasted. He said he racked up 48 chicken dinners during the 1958-59 season and 16 the next year. When Grizzle went on to play for the Razorbacks, Fite continued the tradition when Grizzle was home to visit.

Although I only got to drive my parent's ordinary cars while I was in high school, and never was much of a "car nut," I did cruise Beverly's with my friends and dates. And you really didn't have to know much about cars to appreciate all the beautiful models that flowed through there. It was sort of like being in a drive-through, auto-art gallery.

There has yet to be another place around here like Beverly's, since the drive-in closed in 1979, due to fire damage. Many who were teens here in the 50s, 60s and 70s commemorated the end of an era with one last cruise through the drive-in before it was demolished in November 1984. Maybe the big classic car cruise in downtown Fort Smith this month in celebration of the retro-designed 2002 Thunderbird can rekindle that old 'cruisin' Beverly's" excitement.

Linda Seubold, editor of Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine, can be reached at lindaseubold@efortsmith.com. Read her archived columns and articles online.

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