Category: Movies

I grew up watching movies on TV on weekday afternoons.  One of the stations in our area had a good catalog of films to draw from and showed classics in their time slot from 3 until 5.  Another channel in our area tried various afternoon movie strategies to varying degrees of success.  The worst of these times is the focus of this story.

My earliest memories of their weekday afternoon programming included the Sherriff Big Jim Show.  Groups of kids like Scout Troops would appear on the Sherriff Big Jim Show where they would drink Big Red Soda, eat McDonalds hamburgers, and watch Roy Rogers and Gene Autry westerns.  After a while, they dropped Sherriff Big Jim and the kids and just showed the westerns.  This was always fun to watch.

It was January of 1978 and I was a sophomore in high school.  One of my closest friends had just turned 16 and had his driver’s license.  Another friend had his permit and a car. The guys were ready to get out for the first time on our own.  I told my parents that we planned to go out on Friday night.  Our plans were sketchy at best.  We might go see a movie.  We would definitely ride around town.  One of the big activities for a lot of teenagers my age at that time was to ride down the main drag in our small city of Alamo.  The house where I lived was on this main drag so if my parents were wondering what I was doing, they could usually just wait a few minutes and see us ride by the house.   Riding the strip as high on our agenda and that took up some of our time.  At some point, we decided to go to Jackson to the movies.  When we got there, we were late to see the early showing of Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety. We decided we would hang out until the late showing. In the meantime we went to a bowling alley and hung out.  We didn’t bowl.  We were trying to cram everything into this night that we could like we would never be allowed to hang out together again.

It was late 1979 and I was a senior in high school.  Most weekends my buddies and I decided to go to the movies and there were a couple of films that we were considering. I was driving so I took the lead in deciding we would go to see Apocalypse Now. It had been released earlier in the year but had just made it to theaters in our area.  My friends were not as excited about seeing it as I was.  I didn’t really know that much about it, but I knew there was a lot of buzz around it.  I knew it was a war movie so that was the angle I would use to sell the idea to my friends.

When I was in high school, my friends and I went to the movies a lot.  Almost every weekend, we went to see something.  Part of this experience was getting popcorn and a soft drink.  I liked getting the biggest popcorn and drink they offered.  This was in the days before they had the combo deals on popcorn and a drink.  I began noticing that when I would order the large popcorn and drink, they would always go over and pick up the popcorn container and ask, “this one?” just to confirm that I wanted the largest one they had.  I could see this being their default response to asking about it because there would be no reason to dirty up one of those largest containers unless someone truly wanted that size. So, I because familiar with their routine.  I also thought I would try to make my desire for the largest size clear so they wouldn’t have to get clarification from me.  On one visit I tried this out by declaring I wanted a “GIGANTIC” popcorn and a “GIGANTIC” Coke.  The young lady behind the counter replied in a snarky voice, “We only have large!”  I told her to just give me the large and I mumbled my own snarky comments to my friends. They weren’t loud enough for her to hear but she knew I was talking about her. I got my snacks and didn’t think anything else about it until my next trip to the movies.