Chapter 2. The Last Picture Show Note: Its been so long I dont really know if all of this is true anymore. But this is the way I remember it, and this is the way I wrote it years ago. So this is my story and Im sticking to it. Hubbard was special. We had a picture show. Hubbard was the only town in Hill county, except for Hillsobro, that had one. Saturday nights were for Frankenstein, Mummy and the Wolfman. The show was run by a man named Bogie Bedell. I doubt if Bogie was really his first name but half the people in Hubbard had names that weren’t really theirs. It cost a quarter to get in but I always seemed to have one. I don’t know exactly when this was but I was old enought to walk “to town” and go by myself. I must’ve been at least 5 or 6. Things were different then and most people didn’t even lock their doors. Of course, I wasn’t really by myself, I would always meet friends there. We’d buy or tickets and enter through either of two front doors on either side of the booth. There was also an “outside door” that went up to the balcony. I never went up there. It was for the “coloreds”. But more about that later. If you had at least 50 cents you could really have a time. Ticket, drink, candy or popcorn and most important of all... a slingshot. You could get one for a dime at Gayde(?) Blount’s next door. Naturally, the candy of choice was either milk duds or whoppers. A whopper possessed amazing aerodynamic qualities and therefore was the ammo of choice. When the monster jumped out, half the audience would open up on em with the slingshots. That old screen had holes all over it. The good thing about a whopper was that it was hollow and being round it would fly straight. The laws of physics (being hollow) prevented us from adding even more holes. Rumor had it that some of the grown-ups had shot rocks in the years before us and made the holes. Ocassionally, the projector would go beserk or the movie wouild just stop for no reason. The tradition was that everybody in the show would shout “Boooooogie!” until it was fixed. Needless to say this was a weekly thing. As I’ve already mentioned I could walk up there by myself. That was no problem. But walking home after two hours of Dracula or the Wolfman... that was a problem. I didn’t really believe in monsters but my house was almost two blocks from main street. I always felt safe going by the Baptist church but by the time I got to Bob Bailey”s house my step would quicken. Sure enough, every Saturday night by the time I got to my yard I was in an all out race... a race for my life. Within a hundred yards I had convinced myself that monsters were in fact real and one of em was gonna get me right before I got to the front door. Lucky for me they never did. I always made it. The last picture show was the night James Brown came to town. It wasn’t really him of course but it was a movie about him. The Godfather of Soul would finally just collapse from his performance. A man would come out and wrap him with a cape and try to help him off stage. JB would suddenly come to life and throw that cape off and bust out with more. The black kids in the balcony went wild and started throwing stuff on the white kids below. This was just too much. It qualified for an all-out race riot... right here in Hubbard City. The town fathers put an end to that. They just closed down the show. Little did he know it, but the “hardest workin’ man in show biz” had put on the last picture show in Hubbard. Chapter 3 to come soon. Stay tuned.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 00:48:10 +0000
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