A Goose Hollow Memory
An Evening at the Movies
(This is a Goose Hollow Transition. By the time of this story, we had moved to the corner of Market Street and Harvey Lane. Not long after the event (or maybe a bit before) we moved to Tomb’s Subdivision. We left Goose Hollow the summer before I entered second grade and moved to Tomb’s Subdivision the summer after fourth grade.)
The Highlands Bank now sits on half a city block on Church Street between Charter Street (Hwy 10) and Erin Street. As a kid growing up in the 50s and 60s there used to be on this property a bar and a theater. Dudley’s bar and pool hall set on the northeast corner of the city block next to Charter and Church Streets, and Reason’s Theater had the corner of the block south of Dudley’s where Church crossed Erin. Both were old structures. Dudley’s building had probably been there since the turn of the 20th Century and the theater as well, but both buildings could have been older than I imagine. In the sixties the theater was long overdue a good coating of paint. Dudley’s was a little better kept, alcohol being probably more profitable than second and third run movies.
The automobile should be a good indicator about the year this photo was taken. By the time of my youth the gas pumps were gone, as were the buildings to the right of Dudley’s, the streets were paved, and there were sidewalks. The tall building on the far left, behind Dudley’s, would be the building that housed the beloved theater.
Photo from the collection of J. D. Kent.
The town was such then that parents had no fear of dropping their 7-year-old son with 6-year-old sister in tow and leaving them on a Friday or Saturday evening at the theater; each with two silver quarters. Twenty-five cents got you into the theater and another twenty-five cents got you enough popcorn, soda, and candy to make you sick. Every kid in town that at least had twenty-five cents was usually there.
Time has faded some of my memory of the building that no longer exists. After the passing of my generation, even the memory of it will no longer exist. I still see the glass-windowed ticket booth that was just a small projection on the front of the building nearer the street side. There were the wide double entrance doors. The ticket booth and doors had the look and style of what could be considered Art Deco. I probably can still picture them because they seemed oddly out of place on the immense wood structure. The projection screen was on the south exterior wall with a raised stage in front of it that was nearly as wide at the building. Doors at ground level at each end of the stage exited to the outside. As I mentioned, the building may have been older than the advent of movie projectors, and later re-purposed as a movie house with the ticket booth and front doors being a later addition. I believe there was an awning projecting the length of the building front extending from between the first and second floors. It afforded a bit of rain protection if there was a line at the ticket booth, or as we waited for our ride home.
Wide, wood steps rose steeply from the lobby eight or nine feet to the auditorium. A steeper, narrower set of steps wound their way to the (segregated) balcony and projection booth. The entrance to the auditorium was a not very wide section with no seating, then the floor curved down with rows of seats on either side. The floor had places that seemed always sticky from spilled sugary soft drinks or dropped, discarded candy. In places it took a little effort to unglue your shoe from the floor in the darkened hall. Many of the folding, wooden seats had their undersides plastered with many wads of chewing gum accumulated over the years, probably from the same patrons who would only sit in certain seats.
In mentioning the balcony, segregation of the races was something I did not think about, or really understand at such a young age. Not until I was approaching my mid-teens did it really impact me, and I had to deal with what it really was. I will save those memories for another time.
I watched many movies at Reason’s Theater. Still remember quite a few: Old Yellow, Big Red, No Man is an Island, even Psycho! Saw at least a couple Godzilla movies also, along with Rodan. There were many more that I can’t recall, but one I do remember that had an impact was Pirates of Blood River. It was a 1962 British film with, as pirates, Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed. That movie was my first exposure to piranha. What horrifying little creatures! And they were real! Psycho was nothing compared to being stripped of flesh to the bone. I guess it speaks very little of my adolescent intellect when an Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece of psychological horror had little effect compared to blood thirsty B movie piranha.
Another movie I remember well was Dr. Blood’s Coffin. It was a horror flick dealing with illegal, clandestine heart transplants from a living victim to revive the dead, complete with bloody, beating, out-of-body heart props. And it was in color, not black and white! It was scary for a ten- to eleven-year-old who had no inkling that such a thing could be possible, or even contemplated.
Many films featuring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr, and many others of the horror genera were shown at Reason’s Theater. War movies, westerns and science fiction flicks were staples. One memorable film was The Sundowners, with Debora Carr and Robert Mitchum. Sundowners referred to the itinerant work life herding sheep in Australia. They made camp wherever they were when the sun went down. We watched actors we did not know in bit parts of 1950s and 1960s movies who would become famous names a decade or so later.
The old Rogillio store across Charter Street from Dudley’s had two thin box frames with chicken wire double-doors sized for movie posters nailed to the outside wall facing Charter Street. The theater would post movie posters in the frames showing what was playing and what was coming. If I remember right the frames held two posters each, since each showing was usually a double feature.
When we still lived in Goose Hollow the teenage girl who sat with us while mom and dad were both at work was dating the oldest of the theater owners’ sons. Some afternoons she would herd my sister and me the three blocks up the hill from the house to the theater. While she and the son flirted, his mother would take us kids up to the balcony, where the projection booth was located, when they were previewing movies. We were treated to movie previews, sometimes getting to see a movie from start to finish — free of charge!
I, and I am sure many others, were heart broken when the fire marshal made the old place close. That was probably around 1966. Clinton still had a theater for a while after that, but we seldom traveled the thirteen miles to see a movie that would show up on television within a few months. We did go there to see Dick Van Dyke in “Lt Robin Crusoe, USN. If you wanted to see first run movies, that meant a trip into Baton Rouge. A friend’s parents took he and I to one of the theaters in Big B R to see Don Knots in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. That movie came out in 1966. It was, and still is, a funny movie. The kind of humor in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken never goes out of style. The next time I made it to a movie theater was in 1971 when a school mate whose mother was a bus driver took a bus load of us teenagers to see “Gone With the Wind.”
Yet, with all the good memories of this old movie house there is a not-so-good one that stands out above all. It is another one in my “most regrettable moments in life.”
At about age six or seven, a girl who was my sister’s age, came to our Vacation Bible School one summer at the Methodist Church. For a reason I could never understand she took a liking to me to the point of stalking. I found myself hiding from her in different places around the large, one-hundred-and-seven-year-old brick building. I would watch her walk by, out of sight, then knew I was free, for a while. She was a very cute girl, and grew into a pretty teenager. Had she been stalking me ten years later I would have found no problem with it, I think; . . . maybe not. But for first, second, third or fourth grade boys, mushy stuff hadn’t even made it to the list of things to do. At these ages, boys are more into dogs and frogs and fishing and hunting; not girls. At least for most of us kids at these ages. Yet, suddenly, in about the sixth grade, I started noticing how nice some of the girls smelled. I guess love and the sex drive starts as an olfactory function (with help from an increased dose of testosterone).
Somehow, about age ten or eleven, I found myself agreeing to meet this girl at Reason’s Theater one summer afternoon. I am really drawing a blank here, or I have blotted out the memory of how this came about because, subconsciously, it is too traumatic.
In small town America in the early sixties, it was not unusual for parents to drop their kids at a public venue and pick them up afterward. Ours was the kind of town where everyone knew just about everyone else. They looked out for each other, and older teens even had enough sense and responsibility to dutiful keep an eye out for the younger kids. Families with three or more kids might all be there, even the parents. America was a different place then. Sometime before Y2K I woke up one morning living in a different country, even though my address had not changed.
We met in the gravel parking area in front of the theater. We bought out tickets. I do not even remember what movie we saw. The ticket taker inside the doors tore the tickets in half and handed us back each a half ticked. I was nervous the entire time, not realizing the smiles we encountered might be because of how obvious it was. We got our concessions, or at least I did. I recall that she did not want any. At least my hands would be full if she wanted to hold hands. By the time we reached the top of the stairs to the auditorium I was a complete chicken. What if my friends were here and saw me?
Even though the evening showing crowd was sparse that day, down near the front sat five of the guys in my class. The lights had not been completely dimmed, and the silhouettes of my classmates were unmistakable. Two of them were a year older because they had been held back a year in second grade. And one of them was the class clown and prankster. His size and personality made him perfectly fit the stereotype. He was no bully, but he could be a bit imposing. Being the youngest of three brothers had a lot to do with Bobby’s attitude. He may have been little brother, but in a family of rowdy boys I am sure he got the short end of the stick at times. He was always cheerful, slow on his feet, and he was the catcher on our little league baseball team. And those older brothers had given him an education far beyond what I could have ever imagined in my short ten years.
As we move slowly forward down the main isle, I say, “I see some of my friends down front, let’s go sit behind them.” Beating my head against this keyboard, I still can’t remember why I suggested that, or what I was thinking at the time. My voice may even have been a bit shaky. She says to me, who has no idea what a date is about, “No. Let’s sit here.” And sits in the second seat of an empty middle row. I sit down beside her in the aisle seat. I offer her some popcorn, but she waves the bag off. Her actions and speech, or lack of, was impressively cool. By now my teeth were chattering.
This is the point at which the quantum fuzziness in my neurocircuitry draws a blank. The popcorn bag being empty, I make some kind of excuse to go talk to my buddies. I vaguely remember someone telling me to go fetch her and bring her down. She refuses the offer. I go back and sit with the boys.
Bobby looks up the aisle. He then looks at me, and says with his most serious face, “You better go sit with her.”
I look up the aisle. “She will be alright,” I say.
After this point, I can’t remember a thing of what transpired next. I still hang my head whenever this memory crosses my mind, and think, “You dummy.”
Even after this fiasco, she had not complete given up on me. Her married, older sister ended up being our neighbor. We had a friendly, but cool relationship. One of mixed feelings that affects kids going through puberty. One good thing though. Her family lived about three miles out of town at the Texas Eastern natural gas pumping station, and across the Parish line. She attended a different school. At least I did not have this memory following me around school every day.
ca. 1964 Jackson Red Birds summer baseball club (10-, 11-, & 12-year old league). Bobby is the guy with his hands on top of my head.
Photo from the author’s collection.