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I have always been a big movie fan. When I was growing up in Princeton the father of my best friend, Sonny, owned a movie theater and soda shop in downtown Princeton. We'd buy a large fountain pepsi (5 cents) in the soda shop, a ticket (10 cents) from Sonny's mother at the ticket window of the theater, and then inside buy a box of fresh-popped popcorn (5 cents) from Sonny's sister, Ann. Often Sonny ran the projector. Inevitably the film would break during the movie and we'd have a break while they spliced it back together.
Nothing compared to watching a movie while eating popcorn soaked in pepsi.
In the back of the theater was a cry room with a big window where a mother could take her crying baby. There was also a balcony but we never got to sit there because it was "reserved" for black people.
Several times I begged off from church to go with my friend and several others to clean the theater; a free ticket for an hour's work.
My first date was with Sonny's sister, Ann. I took her to see a movie at her parents' theater. Ever the gentleman, even in those early days, I insisted on paying for everything though we could have gotten free pepsis, popcorn, and tickets.
On Wednesday evenings In the summer, Sonny's uncle operated the "free show"; an outdoor movie shown on a big screen set up in the blocked-off street beside the railroad tracks. Almost everybody in town would come; even my parents. We'd sit on the ground and watch advertising slides of local merchants with commercials read by Sonny's uncle, a chapter from a serial such as "Flash Gordon", and then the movie.
One of my fondest memory was walking home from the movie and, as I came down our street, smelling incredibly exotic fumes of tobacco being cured in the barn across from our house.
When I was in the first grade I was obsessed with cowboys and insisted that when I grew up I would move to Texas and be one. I loved to try to draw pictures of cowboys like those on the posters at the theater. One day I told mother I wanted walk to the theater and copy one of the posters. She said, "absolutely not". So I told her I would take my crayons and paper into the yard and draw from memory. But as soon as I got out, I sneaked off to the theater about 7 blocks from our house. Later my father appeared as I sat in front of a poster drawing a picture of Gene Autry.
Another time, when I didn't arrive home from a Saturday afternoon western, my father came and found me still in the theater. They played the movie twice and, naturally, i wanted to see it again.
I went to a several movies with my parents.
Sometime around 1944, when I was about 7, my father took me to the Princeton theater to see a very realistic American-Japanese war movie: "Beyond the Rising Sun". I'm sure my father had no idea of how graphic it would be.
In 1948, when I was about 10, mother, Chloe (my younger sister), and I took the 12-mile bus trip from Princeton to Goldsboro for shopping. The Paramount had a movie with Ava Gardner, who was born about 6 miles from Princeton, and Clark Gable. The movie was called "The Hucksters". I had misunderstood and though it was "The Musketeers" as in "The Three Musketeers". I was quite disappointed when I saw that there would be no swords and horses. The movie was really boring for a 10-year-old and we left about halfway. I thought we left because it was boring but more likely mother thought it was too steamy for her two young children.
One night, Mrs. Braswell, the Princeton postmaster who gave my mother a job at the post office when my father was battling alcoholism and thus made it possible for us to live a much better life, took mother, Chloe, and me to a drive-in to see "Gone With The WInd".
Sometime in my early teenage years, we took one of our two two family vacations; this one to Atlantic Beach near Morehead City, NC. A hurricane kept us inside most of three days we were there. The last day we decided to go to the movies. We saw "High Noon". "Do not forsake me, oh my darling, on this our wedding day" still lives in my mind.
When I was in high school, my friend Jan (the principal's son) and I would camp out in a tent in his backyard on Saturday night. After his mother had said goodnight and his parents were safely in bed with the lights out, we would sneak off to the midnight movie several blocks away. We racked up a lot nights for the Boy Scout camping merit badge and saw some good movies. His parents were never the wiser.
In 1966 Anna and I took mother, Aunt Lissie, and Chloe to the Paramount to see "The Sound of Music".
Anna and I were also big movie fans. In our senior year of high school, we went to drive-ins and the Paramount in Goldsboro, then while at the University of North Caroline to the two theaters there. Later, when we lived in Arlington, MA, we would go to Harvard Square every Friday night for a movie. At one point early in our college days, we decided that movies were sinful and declared our intention to stop going. Mercifully we came to our senses in a few months.
On my first night out with Donna (who would become my second wife), we went to a horror movie. Even though we were just friends at the time, at the first scary scene in the movie, Donna asked if she could hold my hand. I never let it go for the rest of the movie.
Soon E, on the other hand, only saw a handful of movies growing up in Korea. There was no money for anything other than absolute necessities.
One time, when she was a teenager, a male cousin came to visit. He took her to see an action movie with "Ah-rang Du-rang". (It took me weeks to figure out she was referring to the French actor Alain Delon). Soon E remembered that, "he was shooting at people and running on top of a train".
When they were first dating, Hak-kun and Soon E took the two-hour bus ride from Seoul to Soon E's hometown of Taejon to visit her family. Hakkun took her to see a Korean movie about two brothers.
In Seoul he took her to two other movies: "The Godfather" and "The Sound of Music" Soon E can still hum the theme from "The Godfather" and sing songs from "The Sound of Music".
She was also familiar with the American actor "Charl-soo Bron-soo" (Charles Bronson) who did commercials on Korean TV for men's makeup.
Donna had one of the earliest video tape recorder and after we married I decided to start a movie collection so I could great movies to the girls. I continued the hobby after Soon E came. By the time she had been here for five years, I had taped more than 800 movies: two per VHS tape.
With the girls no longer around I figured I could still use them to teach Soon E about American culture.
But we ended up watching very few of the tapes. There were a lot of movies on TV. The tapes were eventually packed into boxes in 2000 when we moved from the condo to our house and were consigned to the basement.
Soon E has never gotten over the tape fiasco: how I had her pick up boxes of tapes BJs, how we lavished money on HBO and Showtime, how I was forever searching the TV Guide for movies we really needed to have and setting the VCR to record them while we slept, how she had to pack them by herself for our move.
When it became obvious with the advent of the DVD and the purchase of our new wide-screen hi-def TV that we would never be watching the tapes, Soon E approached the Korean store about buying them for use in taping Korean soaps for rent. They weren't interested.
Finally, in the summer of 2004, she decided that she would take them, a box at a time, to work and give them to whoever would take them. Since the tapes had only been used once, they were still in good shape.
The tapes are gone now but whenever Soon E is miffed at me she still fumes about them to me and her friends. Like an elephant, she never forgets. |
