Children amuse themselves differently from when I was a child. In the 1940's, there was no TV, skateboards,CDs, DVDs, Instead, We would listen to the radio. It was our "at home" entertainment. I think I am lucky to have been a little child then because it was the golden age of radio. I listened to stories with sound effects. My imagination set the scene, colored it and peopled it with the characters. You can get a similar effect by reading a good book. I would lay in bed, or on the floor on the rug in the living room and listen to someone on the radio, relay a wonderful adventure. I was transported. I would go to sleep listening to The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Green Lantern, Buck Rogers in his space ship of tomorrow, Dagwood and Blondie, Fibber McGee and Molly. Saturday mornings, I would listen to Let's Pretend...a program devoted to fairy tales. It was wonderful. Those same characters were also found in comic books that I bought for a dime. Wish I had comic books today. I taught myself to read, by reading comic books...and little Golden Books.
Once a week, I would be given a quarter and allowed to go to the movies with my friends. Our parents never went, because a neighborhood of children in a movie theatre is something awful to experience. We were noisy and rude. We also loved the story on the screen. The projector was at the back of the theatre. A projectionist would wind the movie tape through the projection machine. We could see light coming from the projection room to the curtains on the stage. Now a days, a laser would be used to project the image. No light escapes from the side of the beam, so no light chord is seen coming from the projection room.
I thought the curtain because transparent. You could see the movie start right through the curtains. The curtains parted . There was the screen. Later I learned that the movie started with the curtains closed. They opened slowly so I saw part of the movie on the screen and part on the curtain, giving an illusion that the curtain was transparent.
We always went on a Saturday afternoon. We stayed the whole day. Our parents were rid of us! The show started with at least two cartoons and a "short". It was either a newsreel or a serial, like "Perils of Pauline" or "Buck Rogers in the 21st Century". We saw all that before the main feature came on. If the projectionist was slow to start, We children would stamp our feet and shout, "We want the show. We want the show." We were brats. Sometimes We got so noisy in the middle of the movie, that the projectionist would stop the movie and turn on the lights until every one got relatively quiet. When Abbott and Costello met a monster, We would all scream.
If I went in the evening with an adult, there was an usher with a flashlight to escort us to our seat. The movie theatre was packed. All the seats were taken. The usher wore a uniform, like a bell boy, complete with a hat. The adults often got a premium for attending the movie. It consisted of a piece of china. If you attended often enough, you could collect a whole set of dishes.
No movie experience was complete unless I had popcorn, soda (called "pop") and several pieces of candy. When We left the theatre, the floor was a sticky mess. So were We.
The theatre was a wonderful experience of escaping our rather drab lives.
In the summer time, We would go to the drive-in movies. They were even better than the neighborhood movie theatre, which We called affectionately, "The Dump".
Our parents had to take us to the drive-in movie. The whole family would go. The ticket man would charge by the car, so the price was the same if there was only one person in the car, or 10 people squeezed it. It was summer. The car had no air conditioning. We would drive onto a field that had been plowed into parallel rows. The purpose of this was to be able to drive the front wheels of the car up a slight incline, so you could see the screen better. Dad would find a spot and drive our Plymouth up the incline. He parked next to a speaker. He unhooked the speaker and hooked it onto his window. That is how We heard the movie.
The movie wouldn't start until it got dark. To keep all the kids busy, the manager had installed swings , rings and teeter tauters at the front, at the base of the screen. The play ground was swarming with kids. We would play there until the movie started. Then We would go back to our cars . Playing at dusk outside in the summer, is a guarantee for a lot of mosquito bites. I got my share. If this experience was available today, I think most of the play equipment would be removed because of liability exposures.
Watching a movie, in our own car, with parents was a wonderful experience. We could fall asleep on the back seat. So comfortable.
There was an intermission. The lights would go on and an ad would be shown on the screen, inviting us to enjoy the snack stand. The ads are similar to what you see in movie theatres today. The ads...and the lights...stayed on much too long. The theatre owner wanted to be really sure that you spent some money at the snack stand. We got restless, but eventually, the lights went out. I don't remember if the intermission was between movies or between reel changes for one movie. Memory fails me on this one.
The only time I remember my mother taking me to the drive-in, was as a reward for my eighth grade graduation. She invited a lot of my class mates. We packed into one car. The price was the same no matter how many people were in the car. When We got to the drive-in, some of my friends got out of the car and watched the movie sitting on the hood of the car. We thought that was cool.
Going to the drive-in movie is a treasured memory. As I got older, I met Richard who was destined to be my husband. We went to the drive-in movie as a date. Richard could drive. I think that drive-ins were past their prime, but there were still some around. We did the same things as when We were little, like visiting the snack stand. The only difference when watching the movie, is We rolled our windows up.