Old Land, Dark Land, Strange Land by John F. Suter

Author:John F. Suter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

11

A Break in the Film

(1953)

The author’s first foray into the short story form won a special prize in Ellery Queen’s annual contest.

My family moved away from that town while I was still a kid. That was 25 years ago, and I’ve only been back once or twice since then. The place has changed, and I don’t much care about going back, even if at the time it did just about kill me to have to leave there.

Sometimes I wonder about change. Old Time itself is the main thing, I guess. Time and death. Slow death and sudden death.

I don’t want to go back, mostly because of the old Graphic Theater. Not that the Graphic made the town. Most of the town would have ignored the Graphic if it had been able to.

Every town has—or has had—a movie house like the Graphic. There’s one right here, only instead of naming it Hippodrome or Grand or Bijou, they simply call it the Travers after the fellow who happens to own it.

You know what it’s like: certainly not anything like a first-run or even like the best “neighborhoods.” Strictly one cut above a dump. Nowadays there are carpets on the floors, and lights on the walls, and the seats have some stuffing (they’re not plain hard wood, the way they used to be), but these places are all basically the same.

This was the Graphic, back when I was a kid: About the size of a large independent grocery store, but not so big as a supermarket. Hard seats, no wall lights, no carpets. So dark inside it hurt your eyes to come out into the street, especially because there wasn’t any lobby. You paid your ten cents to Bessie Hawes in the little cubbyhole by the front door, she tore off a ticket and dropped it into a can, and you went in. The screen was on the front wall, and you walked past it and Joe Stockton, the piano player, and found yourself a seat in the gradually rising amphitheater. Up at the rear there was a booth that doubled in brass: half was the projection room, the other half an office.

I was about nine when I started going to shows at the Graphic, and it was a battle to get started.

“I don’t know whether I ought to let you go to that place or not,” said Mom, staring at me as though she thought there was more to this than just my wanting to see a movie.

“Practically all the other kids go. Tommy Stewart does. If he goes, it’s all right, ain’t it?”

“Isn’t it. Well, now—It’s just that I’ve always heard it was such a dirty place. And you can’t tell what might happen there.”

But back in those days everybody in town knew everybody else’s business, and they couldn’t find anything to say against George and Bessie Hawes. Not then, anyway. And since George and Bessie ran the show, and since I kept at Mom, she finally gave in to me and I started going every Saturday.

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