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CHESTERTON — Diners circled the block last month hoping to get a parking spot at the Port Drive-In one last time before Terry and Beth Gassoway served their final chili dogs and root beer.

“It’s like pulling into the 1960s,” owner Terry Gassoway said last week as he and wife, Beth, gave the vintage eatery its annual year-end scrubbing.

The Port Drive-In Family Restaurant has been a fixture in downtown Chesterton since 1950. But the Gassoways served their last burgers and shakes Sept. 30 as they closed for the season. The business has been for sale for several months.

History

The restaurant at 419 N. Calumet Road was originally called Studmans, but was purchased in 1957 by Elsie and Virgil Gassoway, who renamed the business the Snack Shack before a second name change to the Port Drive-In.

Terry and Beth Gassoway bought the business from Terry’s parents in 1978 and have been running it since.

The Gassoways decided to retire from the drive-in restaurant business and have put the property up for sale.

It was a decision based not on profits, but the desire to make a change in their lives.