Bob

Batz

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November 24, 2008

Saturday at the Movies: For Kids, and Grandparents

My wife Sally and I have a new leisure-time activity.

We take our grandchildren, eight-year-old Nick and five-year-old Morgan, to the movies.

We started doing it a couple of months ago and so far we've seen Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Beverly Hills Chihuahua. We usually go early on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and so far we've been able to avoid large crowds.

The first time we went there were two people already seated in the 200-seat movie house.          When we showed up for our second film, there were four others inside the cavernous theater.

Sally and I quickly discovered there is a prescribed routine for taking young grandchildren to movies.

For openers, we get out of bed early. Then, after hastily throwing on some casual clothes, I race out to the bank to get a loan so we can pay for the theater tickets, boxes of popcorn as big as Iowa and multi-colored and partially-frozen soft drinks. But I must say these outings have been successful and after three films it's hard to tell who's having more fun – Nick and Morgan or Sally and me.

I'm not surprised, though, because I've loved movies since I was a kid watching shoot-‘em-up westerns at the Michigan Theater in my hometown of Flint, Michigan. The best films were the ones they showed at Saturday matinees at The Michigan, an old and incredibly ornate movie house that dated to the early 1900s, and was only a few blocks from my home. On weeknights, the theater catered mostly to adults, but Saturday afternoons belonged to screaming hordes of children. If I remember right, a movie ticket back then cost a quarter, maybe 50 cents. Popcorn sold for 15 cents a box, soft drinks a dime. The best place to sit for western flicks at the Michigan was the balcony. Only a few adults ever ventured into the balcony and that was just fine with the kids.

Most of the black-and-white films that unspooled on Saturday afternoons at the Michigan Theater in the early 1950s were westerns and, like most youngsters, I had my favorite cowboy heroes. They included Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, Lash LaRue and Hopalong Cassidy. Gene Autry also was a popular movie cowboy back then but I didn't much care for Gene because he sang too much.

In those days, the "bad guys" in western films had names like Butch and Rocky and wore black hats and rode black horses.

On the other hand, movie "good guys" dressed in white and rode white horses.

Another thing that set the good guys apart from the bad guys were the revolvers the good guys carried in their holsters. Bad guys were all the time running out of ammo during gunfights, which made it a heck of a lot easier for the good guys to triumph over evil because cowboy good guys back then could get 12, 15, sometimes even 20 shots out of their "six-shooters," as they were called. 

Those western flicks we watched when we were children always ended on a happy note, too, with the bad guys being carted off to jail and the good guys galloping off into the sunset as the movie credits rolled.

Since we’ve been taking the grandkids to the movies, we’ve noticed that every one of the films we’ve seen has had a sad moment or two. You know they are sad because even though you’re an adult, you get the feeling tears are going to fill your eyes at any moment.

I mentioned that to Sally after we saw Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. We agreed that most of the sad scenes were too subtle for little kids to notice.

Then a few weeks later as the four of us were leaving the theater after watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Nick tugged on Sally’s sleeve and said “Y’know, Grandma, there were parts of that movie that made me feel kind of sad.”

After watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua, we made a stop at McDonald’s for two lunches and a pair of soft drinks and then a quick trip to Wal-Mart for a couple of toys the kids said they couldn’t do without.

That done, Sally and I were feeling pretty darned good as we drove home across the flat-as-a-dinner-plate rural Ohio landscape on a delicious autumn afternoon.

Time of the outing: Four hours and 10 minutes. Cost: $61.25. Satisfaction level for two grandparents: Priceless . . .

Contact Bob at bbatz@woh.rr.com  

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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