Al's Showboat: The restaurant that never was

My dad knew Al, Nate, and Belle quite well and use to be the guy up in the projection booth running the projectors.

There were times I got to go along with him and spend the night up there helping him. The car hops were always real nice to me and I ate quite well up there.  Belle, in her later years lived in the house due South of the drive-in next to the railroad tracks, off of Shortridge.  (Note: Belle also had a house in Broad Ripple. Reeves is referring to her brother  Al’s house on Shortridge.)  Al, and Nate owned a bunch of rentals downtown, and my dad did a lot of maintenance on them.  At one time Al had my dad get and build a model of the Robert E. Lee steamboat with the ideal of tearing down the drive-in and building a full scale replica of the steamboat and. He wanted to call it Al's Showboat. However, it never went any further then the building of the model.  My dad’s name was Robert (Bob) Reeves.

The picture is of a Revell model of the steamboat Robert E. Lee but is not the actual one my dad built to show Al.  When Al was done with the ideal of building the Showboat, the model came back to our house and set on the bookcase for years until my mother got tired of dusting it, and it was pitched.

Another thing I remember about the place, was the old projection booth was too small for all the movies that Al and Nate were buying, so my dad constructed a new wing on the North end of the booth, and doubled the size of the structure.

When I got to go there and spend the night if I didn't like the movie that was being played on the big screen, dad would fire up a little projector in the stored room and I would have my own private movie.

I graduate from Warren in 67 and will be turning 61 in a few days so I've seen a lot of changes on the Eastside.  It is a shame to see it going down, so much for progress.  I just read a book on the Eastside and I was a little disappointed that a lot of information on the Eastside in the 50's and 60's weren't even mention.

Like Dan Young Rambler, Robert's Drug store, Bell's and Shaw's Pharmacy, A&P, Pritchard Pratt and O'gradey bowling, Howard Johnson, Sky Harbor Airport, the National Drive-in, etc. etc. I could go on forever about all the neat stuff that was on the Eastside. Well, enough said what is the past is the past.

Rick Reeves
September, 2009