it was during the Depression and the Saturday
matinee was for children and we stood in
long lines a good hour before the theater even
opened.
there was always a double feature but one
was an adult movie which they
featured first before we got to see our
Buck Rogers space movie.
the movie houses in those days were imposing
and clean with high curved ceilings and
fancy columns and the seats were big
and soft and the rugs in the aisles were red
and thick and there was always an usher or
usherette with a flashlight as we sat with jawbreaker
candy in our mouths and waited.
the adult movie was usually pure agony and
at the time there was an endless series of films
featuring Fred and Ginger, we saw movie after dreadful
movie of them dancing for hours, it was really
terrible, headache bad.
he wore shiny black shoes and a fancy coat
with long tails, the coattails flying
as he pranced and tap-danced.
he would leap on tables or dance along the
rail of a balcony far above the street below
and he had this little fixed smile on his
face, and she danced too, the blonde with
curly hair, she followed him in lockstep and
now and then he would toss her in the
air while she maintained a pleased and adoring expression
on her face.
there was always a minor plot in the movie, little bits of
trouble would arrive and to cure every-
thing he would begin dancing with
her, that was the answer, the solution.
sometimes they even kissed and we would
all look away and groan in disgust.
he was somebody to despise with his
sunken little face and thinning
hair and weak chin and sharp nose, always just
dancing, dancing, dancing
like someone gone mad.
I had never seen any man like that living
in our neighborhood;
our fathers would have run him off!
the lady wasn't so bad, she was
kind of pretty but stupid to fall
for a fellow like that.
sometimes those movies got so bad
that just for relief a couple of the boys
would get into a fight but the ushers
always quickly stopped it.
yes, it was agony watching those dancers
especially when they kissed
but it would finally end and then there
was a cartoon, Popeye, he'd eat a
can of spinach and punch out some
big ugly guy.
the ugly guy looked more like our fathers
than that dancing freak ever did.
our movie would come on then and
we'd really start to live! space
machines, space wars, the evil
Villain of Space and also his evil
Sidekick and Buck Rogers would
be captured and chained
in a dungeon somewhere
but somehow he always finally got
away.
some of the space guns were
terrific, they'd shoot rays
and people would just vanish
in a flash
and the beautiful rocket ships would
shoot through space and there were
tremendous battles between
Buck Rogers and the Villain
space ships (they were terrible like
hungry sharks and evil looking).
there was tension, fierce tension,
and then some new and horrible
development would suddenly take place
which Buck Rogers would some-
how overcome.
Buck always survived.
although he really had us worried
at times-like when he was
chained to this metal table with a
giant circular saw creeping closer
and closer.
there were many such narrow
escapes.
and then it would all be over
and we'd have to go back to our own lives,
to our parents, to whatever Depression dinner
they had managed to prepare.
but during those Saturday evenings
after the movies
we all felt different somehow,
strange, a little unreal, watching
our parents eat and converse,
our parents,
those people that had never experienced
anything exciting or real,
who seemed hardly alive,
the were almost as boring as
that kissing dancer with his flying
coattails
but not quite,
nothing could ever be
as bad as
that.
(2003)
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