My thoughts about the movies are full of memories of the 35-cent Saturday matinee at the Rex Theatre – “Coming Attractions,” Jungle Jim, Selected Short Subjects news and Roy Rogers.

To get ticket money, we kids would scour our neighborhoods for bottles to turn in for 3 cents each. Astride our bikes, with baskets between the handlebars, we’d set off to fill them up and then turn them in at the A&P for enough money for the movies. Maybe some extra for candy or popcorn we could all share.

We needed to get there early because we wanted the most coveted seats in the house – front row center. There we could look up at the screen and slouch down in the folding seats with our legs stretched out unobstructed. We’d howl at the antics of Bugs, Daffy and Sylvester and wonder why Porky could never say “The End” but could say “Th-th-th-that’s all folks!”

Selected Short Subjects would be next: black-and-white films telling of places and people around the world, narrated always by a staccato-voiced guy. We’d marvel at crumbling buildings and gasp as a daredevil would tumble over Niagara Falls in a barrel and come out with a big grin on his face. How could he do that?

Then … the next episode of the adventures of Jungle Jim in Africa. A short, loud cheer would go up, followed by silence. We did not want to miss a thing. Last Saturday, Jungle Jim was up to his neck in quicksand. We had to find out how he’d saved himself from sure death. At the last minute he’d grab a vine and slowly pull himself onto solid ground, to our encouragement and delight. It seemed as soon as he got himself out of one fix, Jim would end up trapped in a pit of vipers.

Always beginning with a screen that looked like gray corduroy under a magnifying glass, “Coming Attractions” would be carved out of the center. This was good news! The main movie was next: Roy Rogers with Trigger, what we had come to see.

We would be transported to the Old West. Despite the occasional gunfight with the bad guys, Roy always got the outlaw in jail and returned the money, and we got to see Trigger do a trick that would save Roy from disaster, to fight for right again.

When the movies ended and the cheering quieted, the lights came on and we all filed out the exit into the warm late-afternoon sun. Some of us would have to go straight home because that was Mom’s rule, but we all would leave with the sense we had had a great afternoon, and we’d look forward to next Saturday when we would see how Jungle Jim would pull himself out of another death-defying dilemma. “To be continued …”!

 

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