Jeff Mexico may not be saving America, but he is certainly salvaging a lot of Americana.

“You can tell just by looking at it the way it used to be,” Mexico said looking at the countertop of the Dallas Motor-Vu Drive-In’s snack shop. “You can tell that things just worked better the way they were.”

The owner the movie theater has put in a lot of overtime to pluck this relic from the past and reinvent it as a thriving family venue where nostalgia never takes a backseat to a Hollywood blockbuster.

It is a Monday night in late June, and about 100 cars, mostly vans, have rolled into their spots at the Motor-Vu Drive-In. As the sun sets over the Cascades to the West, the noses of the vehicles have turned east, towards the largest movie screen in Oregon. Families in lawn chairs crowd around cars as the lights dim, ever-so-slowly for a showing of Pixar’s Up.

The Motor-Vu first opened on July 22, 1953, with a double showing of the cowboy con flick Branded starring Alan Ladd and Mona Freeman and Meet Me at the Fair, starring Dan Daily and Diana Lynn. At the time, it was Oregon’s most modern movie theater.

But in the years that passed, as Drive-Ins popped up all around the country and television took over as the family medium of choice, the Motor-Vu, like so many others, fell into disrepair. By 1958, there were over 4,000 drive-ins lighting up summer’s starry skies across the country. Today, the Motor-Vu is one of only four remaining drive-ins in Oregon and one of just 376 n the United States.

“Drive-ins are a piece of the past that we long for, took for granted and now strive to recreate,” said Jennifer Janisch, CEO of Drive-On-In, Inc. “Parents, especially, want to give their kids something from the carefree childhood that they had.”

And oh, how they now have it again at the Motor-Vu. Owner Mexico, who quit his job in research and development at Hewlett Packard a few years ago to restore Stayton’s historic movie theater, is motivated to have things the way they once were at the Motor-Vu – only better.

When Mexico and his wife Robin acquired it in 2002, the drive-in had become a place for seedy goings-on and obnoxious patrons to hang out, throw their weight around, and overall, ruin the fun. With a team of helpers, he set to work jazzing up the place by making it look like it was plucked from a 1950s postcard.

He pressure-washed the white screen, he redid the plumbing. He fine-tuned the audio and updated it with digital sound that runs on the theater’s FM station. He made a pledge to enforce all of the rules that had been lax for too long: no drugs, no alcohol, no monkey business.

“We had to get rid of all the stupid obnoxious people,” Mexico said.

He fixed the fence and laid black and white tile in the snack shop. Then he outfitted the stand with nostalgic items like Milk Duds and Lemonheads, in addition to popcorn, pizza, and real White Castle cheeseburgers. Between the two flicks, he runs a couple of reels of decades-old “Let’s Go Out to the Kitchen” – type cartoon ads make the adults go all glassy-eyed with nostalgia.

The theater’s marquee may be a sign of the past, but its listings certainly aren’t. Recent showings have paired Night at the Museum with the Will Ferrell vehicle Land of the Lost, Pixar’s Up with Sam Raimi’s campy PG-13 horror flick Drag Me to Hell.

Motor-Vu always runs double features starting at around 9:30 p.m. – just as the sun sets – and charges $18 a car for the price of two flicks.

“We didn’t have a limit on the passenger size for a while, but we capped it at eight after kids kept coming in 20 on the back of a pick-up,” Mexico said.

Despite gas prices and concerns about driving distances, the theater has been doing a brisk business of about a hundred cars a night during the week and 300-400 cars on the weekends.

The owners expect to sell out all 500 spaces each night when the latest Harry Potter hits the screen on July 15.

And if you’re not coming with a family and want to partake of that other classic Drive-In activity – namely, nookie – you’re safe in your car.

“As long as we don’t know what you’re doing,” Mexico said, “that’s fine.”