The Traverse City Film Festival is coming back to town next week. Let's celebrate with three folk poems about early movie venues, theaters and promotional gimmicks in the 1930's.
Another summer homecoming of a different sort occurred 68 years ago. In early January, my column ended with a young bride, Betty Bowden, heartbroken as her lonesome husband sailed off to war. (Read Terry's January colum here.) Phil ended up serving under Patton in North Africa.
Two years later, on a warm, starry July night, Phil returned. The last poem continues their story, and lights up an Oscar quality film sequence in the theater of my imagination.
Floyd Webster
I always liked the outdoor free shows
in Kingsley
on Saturday nights.
On the side of the building
that's now the auto parts store,
you can see a white square.
That was the movie screen.
So everybody could sit down,
they put posts in the ground
every few feet,
and cut them off.
Then they spiked wide boards
to those posts.
They built a bandstand below
the white square.
Kids in the high school band
would play before the movies.
Next morning I'd go there
and look underneath the boards.
Ooh, there was a quarter.
There was a dime.
There was a nickel.
Ooh, a dollar all crumpled up.
Once I made more money
on Sunday morning
than dad made all week
at the tater house.
Don Bellinger
The early part of my life
in Charlevoix
was during the Great Depression.
A nickel was a nickel,
and a dime was a dime.
For a penny we could buy
a lot of candy.
Saturday matinee movies cost ten cents,
and were westerns
or adventure serials.
Each week was a different chapter.
There was a brand of bread
called Wonder Bread.
If you saved ten wrappers
from Wonder Bread loaves,
you could take them to the theater
and get a free ticket.
So kids ate lots of Wonder Bread.
Adam Schuler
The first movie I ever saw was Snow White.
It was at the Community Theatre
in Elk Rapids
where the Town Club is now.
The Community Theatre
had lots of cowboy movies
for Saturday matinees.
I watched them all;Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers,
but Walt Disney's Snow White
made the most impression on me.
The State Theatre was built in 1940.
(Now The Elk Rapids Cinema.)
It had a black light ceiling
and was three-dimensional.
Cooley Loomis, the owner,
always advertised air-conditioning.
The air-conditioning was
Schuler's Elk Lake Ice.
We'd deliver about a ton
of ice there.
In the back of the theatre
to the right was a room
made out of cement blocks
and covered over.
You'd put ice in there
and turn on the fans.
The air went out
through a duct system.
It was remarkable
how it would cool the theatre down.
Phil Bowden
I was wounded at the first battle
of Kasserine Pass,
and in a hospital for seven weeks.
I had shrapnel in my chin
and was bruised up in the shoulder,
but the scars are all gone.
I got a Purple Heart.
I came home on a Liberty Ship,
rode a train
from New York to Detroit,
and a bus to Kingsley.
Getting home on leave
was the best
feeling in the world.
It was July 1943, about midnight,
clear with a lot of stars
and real warm.
Everything was happening so fast.
I needed time to think.
I didn't have time to call.
I walked home to Summit City
to get my thoughts straight,
and knocked on the door.
I surprised my parents.
After two years dad didn't recognize me.
It shocked him.
Everybody was pretty excited,
and mom fixed lots of good stuff to eat.
I thought Betty was up here,
but she was in Detroit
living with her sister,
and working at Ford.
I called her that night.
She came home on a bus next morning.
We stayed at my parents'
over a month.
That was a very romantic time.
I failed my physical to go back
into combat,
so the army sent me to Ogden, Utah
to guard prisoners of war.
Betty followed me out there
on a train
just before Christmas.
— Terry Wooten
Poet Bard Terry Wooten has been performing and conducting writing workshops in schools for 27 years. He is the creator of Stone Circle. Learn more about him at www.terry-wooten.com.
