By 1956 they were called “The Movies”. Sophisticates might have said, “The Cinema”, but we knew little of what they were talking about. The first one I remember going to was that year, and I was four.
We were used to the grand buildings of Denver. We lived only two blocks from the Governor's Mansion. Our sidewalks were of red sandstone. The Museum of Natural History was ours, and so was the Denver Public Library and the Aviary at the City Zoo. The hills and mountains that surrounded us were placed there specifically for our exploration. They belonged to our world just like the next door neighbor's house because they were all rightfully parts of an enchanted childhood.
So when my father ushered us toward the large building with a fabulously decorated onion dome, lighted torch lamps, and exotic tiles suggesting what waited within, it was a certainty that this, like so many others we had during those years, would be a choice experience. He strode confidently toward the ticket booth in his Fedora hat, took out some bills, and our little family of five was admitted, a uniformed attendant opening the door as though we were royalty.
Wafting through the air was the enticing aroma of freshly popped corn. Treats were a carefully measured part of our lives, but that day required the purchase of a small paper bag for us to share. Mother quickly took control of it to assure it would last through the cartoon to at least the beginning of the movie. Something like Koolaid was produced in a Tupperware cup, also to be sipped and shared.
Within the walls of the Theater, the décor was plush as a Sheik's tent. Heavy crimson drapes hung over the screen. Ornate balconies hovered to the right and left, and behind, where gum-chewing, sometimes popcorn-throwing teenagers staked out their territory. But this was mainly a family place, and dozens of other families filled in around us as we took our places center front, my big sister and I well coiffed and dressed by our tall, slender, and fashionable mother. She murmured soothingly to our brother, just two. He happily took a seat next to her and the theater darkened.
A cartoon ran, I'm very sure, from all subsequent experiences, but it was this movie I would always remember. Beautiful orchestral music lilted as images of a pastoral Indiana farm unfolded. A male voice sang a hymn to everything beautiful in nature and wedded love. “Thee I love, more than the meadows so green and still, more than the mulberries on the hill, more than the buds on the May apple tree...” The pleasing farm before me now was a familiar reference to our grandparent's farm. The hay in the fields, the barns and the streams, the leaves on the trees, the same, the same, but on a scope permitting you to linger over every detail longingly and evoking the sounds and smells so basic to peace and order.
Then the parade of characters set in another time—a man, very much resembling my father in both looks and character, and a woman who was not unlike my mother spoke to one another in language that resembled prayer. Their handsome eldest son, clearly a hero in conflict, their daughter, though considered “grown”, a romanticist I could already relate to at my tender age, and a freckled boy, the youngest, harassed by Samantha, the pet goose. Too young to understand the story fully, I remember quickly loving Anthony Perkins, body and soul in his portrayal of Joshua. When the war overtook him, his tearful and dogged loading and shooting, loading and shooting set him apart as an actor for me, and I breathlessly waited for moments to see his lanky frame again on the screen.
In a while it was all over. There was clapping and cheering from a well-satisfied audience. The lights came on and we filed out past the crimson velvet, golden trim, and sconces resembling lighted torches. Murmuring voices spoke of praise and admiration, laughter tittered over the pants-nipping goose. My own mind ranged over the landscape, the fields, and rested on the people I had come to know in some way. In a different context than the line in the movie, I wanted to say, “Let's go back there soon.”
We emerged different, albeit still very little people. Through Aladdin's magic lamp we had found a new, profound world, not just a fabulous building. We had stepped across time, and had become sincere Quakers. We had seen both Edenic beauty and Hellish war. We had seen both innocence and brutality. And yet we sighed with satisfaction as though we had eaten a meal to satiate desperate hunger and quench dire thirst while we pledged in our hearts to the belief that man was basically good.
“Now, that was a good movie,” our father said. We nodded in agreement, and felt his equals in judgment. He and Mother glanced in the rear view mirror at us, smiling little smiles of approval. It was a short ride home.
We were lucky to have parents who pinched enough pennies to take us to the Aladdin several times over the years in Denver. When later we had moved to Pueblo, the drive-in became a staple for family fun when Ma and Pa Kettle or Tugboat Annie movies came into town.
Mother would make enough popcorn to fill a paper grocery bag, fill the gallon Thermos jug with Kool-Aid and make her version of Rice Krispie snacks with cheaper (and tastier) puffed wheat.
Once she had made a bed in the ample back seat of our red and white finned DeSoto, we piled in with pillows and blankets before sunset to head for the movie.
The drive to the edge of town seemed endless, but the sun was still up as we arrived, and Daddy paid the $2 to get his carload of kids in. We flung the doors open and poured out to get to the swings before there was a line, but usually we had to take turns anyway. As the sun sank behind the mountains and images began to appear on the screen, we hurried back to the car to bunch our pillows up for our perfectly comfortable seating. And even though we had eaten the customary hearty farm-hand style meal, we liberally ate from the sack of popcorn poured into Tupperware bowls that matched our Tupperware cups with lids to prevent spillage.
Two cartoons, usually Porky Pig and Popeye or Buggs Bunny and Tom and Jerry, played followed by the backward, clueless family we loved to not be--Ma & Pa Kettle. Their eldest son seemed to be normal, but the other kids were mainly a little off. They were named Clem and Slim or something along that line. Ma couldn't remember who she was addressing half the time, so after she had run through two or three names, the addressee would protest "But I'm not Clem!"
She would then shout back, "Which ever one you are!"--which also became a regular line our mother used when she started the litany of names at home and couldn't get it right because she, like every mother, was doing three things at once. Maybe we saw a little of the Kettle family in ourselves. I am not sure they had a daughter named Juanita, but it must have been only because the writers didn't think of it. I never understood with sisters with average mid-century names like Nina Bell, Betty Ann, Alma Jean, and Mary Beth, I got the Juanita Ruth one. Maybe those names were just a little before mid-century, but I digress...
The Kettles were good-hearted and good-natured,, prolific, and entertaining. They kept an Indian around (Native Amerian-not to be confused with our family's on Real Indian, Azar,) who had a lot more going for him than Pa Kettle. Pa didn't seem to have any visible means of support although Ma may have washed and ironed for their living. The eldest spoke normally and went to college. We were rooting for him all the way.
Our exposure to the cinema was not limited in Pueblo to the drive in. We also had the good fortune of having a mother who seemed in constant search of Something For Us To Do. For 10 cents, I kid you not, in the early 1960's you could go to a Saturday Movie at the Uptown Theater, across the Union Street Bridge and in front of the McClellan Public Library and next door to the Skating Rink.
Sponsored by KDZA radio, the movie was mobbed once or twice a month by children of countless grateful mothers who went off to shopping at Globe Discount City or J C Penny's, unfettered for at least 2 hours. The attendant in the booth who took our dimes did not ask what was in the large paper bag we carried in. We hurried to get seats toward the front, and after the theater filled, balcony included, we were often delighted to see a DJ in a Gorilla Suit do a short warm-up before the movie began.
We all clapped and cheered his antics, and then the lights dimmed, the heavy velvet curtains parting, and the cartoons signaled the beginning of the show. The movie itself was normally Tarzan, and there must have been ten or more different ones, a Swashbuckler with Errol Flynn, or less often a Western with Roy Rogers or Zorro. Hopeless romantic, I went for Errol Flynn over Johnny Weishammer any day. How I longed to be a pirate's wench! But we were landlocked, and the lights too soon came on and we were turned out to the bright sunlight and reality.
Across the street awaited reality and a fountain of knowledge: The McLellan Public Library.
