ONCE UPON A TIME IN SMALL TOWN MISSISSIPPI

Not long ago my three grown daughters and I decided to have a Ladies Night Out and go see a movie. My son-in-law was out of town on business, so we took my granddaughter along with us. My daughters reverted back to children and decided Momma could pay for everything. By the time we got into the movie, I had spent over forty dollars on tickets, popcorn, and drinks for a movie I didn't enjoy. (Need I explain further why we have not had another Ladies Night Out at the movies since.) Of course, on the way home, my daughters got serenaded by a "Once upon a time when I was a kid…" story.

Once upon a time, when I was a kid growing up in Sardis, Mississippi, we had a Saturday afternoon ritual. All the town kids met at the local picture show. Now I'm sure the theater had a name (probably even a cute one like they do today), but I don't remember it because we never called it anything but the picture show. Back in those days (the late 50's--1950's, not 1850's), Momma would give my brother David and I a quarter a piece to go to the show. Believe it or not, a quarter would buy a ticket to a double feature (two movies), a coke (they didn't sell Pepsi), and popcorn (or a candy bar). Sometimes we would stop at the ten cents store (we didn’t call the Ben Franklin Dime Store anything but that) and buy candy they didn’t sell at the show.

It really was a more trusting world then. David was four and I was six when we moved to town and started going to the picture show. We would walk by ourselves or with friends to the show. An adult never accompanied us. Later when we had bikes to ride, we never thought about having locks for them. Everyone just left his or her bike on the sidewalk in front of the theater. We knew that the bikes would be there when the movies were over. The only thing we had to be careful about was not blocking the doors. We knew to behave, but, if we were tempted to cause a problem throwing popcorn or making too much noise, we knew our parents would hear about it before we got home.

It was at the picture show that we were first introduced to Tarzan, Frankenstein, war, westerns, space, and many other places or ideas. Of course, the information we gathered there was far from accurate, but who cared. Whatever we watched on Saturday, was recreated in some sense the next week. Parents never checked the movie ratings. "R" movies were never shown for they didn't exist then. The people who made movies knew how to leave things to the imagination.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic