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PatchWork by Joyce Whitis |
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PatchWork by Joyce Whitis |
The Strand Theater
It's Saturday afternoon, 1939. We're out in front of the Strand Theater in downtown Chillicothe and the event is a Gene Autry movie. Half the town and country folks are lined up on the sidewalk from the ticket office to the corner because the little theater has "standing room only" when Gene is on the screen.
The line begins to move and the sign at the box office reads, Children 5 cents, adults, 15 cents. We slip a buffalo nickel through the little window and it's picked up by Mrs. Myers, the blonde wife of the theater owner. We step inside the lobby.
The place is crowded with popcorn machine, candy case, Mr. Myers and customers. To sustain the body through two features, cartoon, two serials, newsreel, and previews of coming attractions, you may choose a generous bag of buttered popcorn or a candy bar for a nickel.
Restrooms on the right, stairway to the balcony on the left. Negroes sit up there where grinding of projector competes with Gene's songs for attention. Straight ahead, beyond that partition, lies a make believe world. Once more we'll have the chance to ride the range with Gene where everyone knows from the first reel who the bad guys are and folks old enough to worry, can forget about the scorched edges of the dust bowl where they live and the severe economic depression of the times. For a little while they can pass through to that other world of handsome cowboys, beautiful girls, and fast horses where the good guys (spoor folks), always win and the bad guys (rich bankers) always run afoul of the law.
The movie begins and everyone lucky enough to get a seat sits back in relaxation and those standing in the aisles lean against the wall because there is comfort in knowing that the plot will never change, If a man is shot down without a fair chance, his brother will track the villain to the ends of the earth.
The members of the audience take pleasure in poking each other and nodding. "I knew it", when a rope is stretched across a canyon trail to trip the horses whose riders are after our hero and everyone claps and yells when that most famous of all lines in western movies, "We'll head 'em off at the pass!" comes from the screen.
Once I read that Gene and his horse, Champion, made 95 movies and a 13 chapter serial. I believe I saw every single one.
June Story was the girl and the sidekick was Frog Milhouse (Smiley Burnett). As Gene rode across the desert, he would burst into song and the voices of the Sons of the Pioneers blended with his.
We knew that movies were entertainment, not realistic, and the fact that a six shooter could fire twenty or thirty times without reloading was OK as long as the gun was Gene's. We expected outlaw's guns to run out of ammunition, the villain to look at his gun in disgust, fling it into the river and try to run.
Gene would holster his own gun and after catching the coward in a footrace over rocks, subdue him with his bare hands. The sheriff usually rode up when everything was under control and Gene would turn the crook over to him.
Sometime in the early 40's Gene enlisted in the Air Force and went off to defend our country. His title, "King of the Cowboys" was passed off to a youngster we'd been watching for awhile named Roy Rogers and Champion, the black horse with the white blaze, gave up his position as the smartest horse in the movies, to that palomino, Trigger. June Story, the girl interest who never got a kiss, was replaced on the screen by Dale Evans, and Frog became Gabby Hayes but the Sons of the Pioneers kept on singing and playing as they rode through the sagebrush, never noticing that the hero's face had changed.
The old Strand Theater where we all liked to on the front row when we were seven and on the back row when we were seventeen.