August 25, 2012

• Do you remember the Saturday matinees?

                     Saturday Matinee

   

      The Patio theater was first built when movies found their voice around 1930. The lobby with it’s rich, lush crimson carpet was now packed and stained flat. The walls once boasted gold crown molding and rococo designs in turquoise, but now it was mostly brown from decades of water stains. Inside the theater itself, the enormous crimson curtain that hung from the ceiling to the stage in pleated folds was now patched and faded and just kept open. In the day, the theater manager would stand on the stage every Saturday night to give away door prizes from the local furniture store or bike shop. Now in the 50’s, most of the seats had lost their ability to spring back in place and half the arm rest were wobbly or missing. But to me, it was Oz!

      Most every Saturday during the Summer, lil bro and me would go to the matinee at the Patio in town. It was about a three mile walk and we must of ran every foot of it to make sure we didn’t miss a single preview or God help us, the start of the movie! We always got there early and had to wait till they opened for business. Most of the time we were an hour early, but that was OK cause we would put our noses against the little glass windows on the doors and read the movie posters on the inside walls.

      We started the countdown when we first smelled the popcorn. We knew it was just a matter of minutes now and we were gonna make it! By then, there were over 50 other kids waiting to storm the doors like drunken Frenchmen at the Bastille. Then the loud clang of the door lock would disengaged and the swoosh of the double doors opening up would nearly blast you across the street with it’s fresh popcorn air blast unless you had a little brother to hang on to. The adolescent multitude would swarm in like a tight disciplined pack of army ants, pass the ticket guy with bad acne, pass the concession stand and we would all pack into the bathroom. I failed to mention that the other guys were already there waiting when me and lil bro got there an hour early and kids bladders are regulated on an hourly basis. Deed done, we all gathered around the concession area and called out our orders as if we were at an auction bidding on a new Schwinn bike.

      Concession food is as important at a matinee as dinner is to Mom at Thanksgiving time. It must be thought out like elements of a proper plan. Candy back in the fifties was a moon landing difference from today’s shrink wrapped “samples” you shell out a couple of bucks for today. I had my standards that I always got and rarely strayed from those basics. The “large” tootsie roll was so big you could repair a tire with it. You put it in your pocket right away to give it a chance to soften from your body heat so that in an hour it would be chewy perfect. Back then, they never referred to large or giant sizes of candy or any kind of food by the prefix “JUMBO.” All candy bars were behemoth in size and Jumbo was a term related to the circus and visions of the elephant Jumbo and his jumbo piles of do-do.

      Anyway…….another selection might be a Payday candy bar. It was a huge caramel bar rolled and totally covered in peanuts.  If ever stranded, and you were lucky enough to have one, you could live on it for days it was so big. A third candy bar was the Baby Ruth, which could be used as a leg splint if needed. The Ruth bar was caramel, covered all over with peanuts and then dunked in chocolate. These three candy bars were the most popular and most all the guys selected from this small food group. There were others of course like Hershey Bars, Mars Bars, Snickers and so on, but they were more for girls cause boys wore most of the chocolate home on their t-shirts.

      There were also bags of Mary Jane’s, boxes of Ju Ju beads, licorice bits, Sugar Daddies, etc. The candy boxes were so big you could raise a frog in one. The small Coke and small popcorn were a given. The Patio made popcorn with enough salt to cure port and keep you dehydrated for a week. Total cost for the trio of one candy bar, popcorn and drink…75 cents. 75 cents for the ticket and your allowance was shot for the week and your family would just have to starve if Dad lost his job.

      The type of movie also dictated what you got to eat. If a Roy Rogers, Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis or war movie was playing you would get Mary Jane’s or maybe a box of candy along with the popcorn and drink……but!…….if it was Frankenstein, Wolf man, Dracula or any kind of scary movie, you always got a candy bar. Here’s why. If I’m watching and waiting for the werewolf to jump out of the bushes and I look down to unwrap a Mary Jane and then look up at the very instance the Wolf man jumps out….I’m gonna scream and all my Mary Jane’s are gonna fall on the sticky floor and I’ll have coke and ice dumped all in my lap followed by a popcorn blizzard. Of course this hysterical reaction from me would scare the shit out of my little brother and he’d dump his goodies too, then cry afterwards. But candy bars, on the other hand, were held in front of your face at all times and served as a partial blind to impending moments of horror. To make the Pay Day and Baby Ruth last, you always nibbled off all the peanuts first before you ever started on the caramel center. If the movie was really scary, all around the theater kids would be peeking over their candy bars and it would sound like a pond of beavers munching on wooden candy bars.

      All the way home after a good spooky movie, I would keep stopping to ask lil bro did he hear something in the bushes…..by the time we did get home he would be a mess…I could really be cruel. Mom would look at my knees and see all the dirt and sticky bits and say, “Dropped your Mary Jane’s again?” Mom could really be cruel.

                                                                              Little Charlie

   

   

  　

   

   

   

  • 11:08 pm
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