Saturday Matinee

Recently, I went to the local cineplex to see a matinee movie. As a senior citizen at the early show, I had to pay $12 for a ticket, and a small bag of popcorn cost $6. (Apparently, adult non-matinee tickets there cost $19.) The movie wasn’t very good, and I left feeling ripped off, but this experience got me remembering going to the movies when I was a child in southern California in the 1950s. 

Once or twice a month, Dad would drive Mom, my sister, and me to the Saturday matinee at the local movie theater. (Mom wasn’t allowed to drive.) This was a super treat for us. Ticket prices were 25 cents for children, and I think about 50 cents for adults. I well remember the child ticket price, because sometimes Mom would give us each a quarter and let us purchase our own tickets. We’d feel very grown up. There was usually a fairly long line for tickets, full of parents, usually moms, and excited, chattering children. 

Once inside the air-cooled theater with its huge, shiny lobby and snack bar, we’d line up again to get popcorn, 10 cents for a cardboard box shaped like a paper bag with red and white stripes on it. Once in a long while, Mom would get us a candy bar to share. Usually that was a “Cup-O-Gold,” a round lump of deep chocolate flecked with coconut and almonds around a small white, marshmallow center. We never got drinks -- they were too expensive and there was no obsession with hydration in those days.

Inside the cool, dark theater, we lost ourselves in several hours of entertainment. It was always a double feature, with ten cartoons and a newsreel in between the two movies. We’d go to the restroom during the newsreel. Sometimes the main movie was a Disney, and the second movie was usually a Western. Our Mom would make gagging or scoffing sounds during any kissing, and sometimes she’d cover our eyes, not sure why. The frequent killing of cowboys and Indians was OK, though. We’d get very upset if a horse went down. And if a dog died -- oh, what a heartbreak was “Old Yeller.” 

We loved the cartoons best, because this was our only chance to see them. They weren’t shown on TV, and obviously there was no Cartoon Network. Disney’s were our favorites, but we also liked Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, and others. My personal favorite was Mighty Mouse, because I loved the opera music that accompanied them (did not know then that it was opera music, of course) and because I loved the idea that someone small and supposedly weak could save others (“Here he comes to save the day”). 

After all this excitement, we’d stagger out of the theater, blinking in the late afternoon sun, and Dad would be waiting to take us home in the car. How did he know when to be there? What did he do while we were gone? What could possibly be more interesting than the movies??? My guess is that he napped, but smoking, drinking, and sports on the radio or TV are possibilities.

A little research revealed that current movie prices are indeed a rip-off. Average income increased about tenfold between the 1950s and now in absolute dollars. If movie prices had increased similarly, an adult ticket now would be $5 and a small popcorn would be $1. After a good chuckle, I analyzed it a bit more. While income increased about ten times in absolute dollars, movie prices increased 24 times and popcorn 60 times. An adult movie ticket cost about 33% of the average hourly wage in the 1950s, but now it costs 135% of the average hourly wage. The change in movie prices simply reflects the general economic trend since the 1950s of the middle class losing ground in terms of purchasing power or inflation adjusted dollars, but that’s another long story. However, I think I will take this lesson seriously and stop going to the movies. After all, I still have my memories of those amazing Saturday matinees.

Gassing Up the Car

Going to the gas station with my father and sister was a big deal when I was a child in southern California in the 1950s (we didn’t lead a very exciting life). Though I didn’t know it then, we were poor and didn’t have money for family outings. But sometimes on a weekend when my dad was in a good mood, he’s shout, “Who wants to go gas up the car?” That’s how he always said it -- we went to “gas up the car.” We had only one car, and during the week he drove it to work, leaving my stay-at-home Mom stranded in her little tract house. On weekends, she still wasn’t allowed to drive it, so if she had an errand, he would drive her. Anyway, if he offered to take us with him to the gas station, my sister and I would leap up, since it was our one chance to spend time with him.

We’d jump up from whatever we were doing before he could change his mind, and we’d run to the car. Our mom didn’t go on these trips, but Jean and I always sat together in the back seat, as if the front passenger seat were hers only. Or perhaps we irritated Dad if we sat next to him in the front and we weren’t allowed in front. At any rate, I well remember us two little girls bouncing around in the back seat, without seat belts, of course. Often we stood up and hung on the front seat so we could see out the windshield. Sometimes our Dad would talk to us as we drove the few blocks to the station.

We’d drive into the gas station, often the only car there, and cute teenage boys in snappy uniforms would magically appear and attend to our car’s every need. (This part of the trip became increasingly interesting as we got older.) My father would pop the hood, and a cute boy would prop it up and check the oil and the radiator. He would pull out the dip stick, wipe it off, and carefully dip it back into the bowels of the motor. Then he would ceremoniously lay it on a towel and bring it around to the driver’s side window to show my father that the oil level was good or not. Often, if the result were borderline, Dad would make the young man measure it again. If he then decreed that some oil needed to be added, the teenager would get a can of oil, show it to my father for approval, manfully force a spout into it, and pour the oil in. He would also add water if the radiator needed it. 

Another cute boy would wash the car windows! They washed the windshield AND the back window, and they really scrubbed. Later I learned that if the driver were a cute teenage girl, they would even wash the side windows. One of the attendants would check the tires, measuring the air pressure in each one, and adding air as directed by my father. One of the boys would have already taken off the gas cap, inserted the gas dispenser into the tank opening, and started pumping gasoline into the car. There were no fume guards, and I well remember my sister and I sniffing up the volatile smell of gasoline deep into our sinuses, making us a little high. 

During all of these ceremonies, we three sat in the car like royalty, while the cute teenagers bustled about our car. They performed all of these services without charge and without tips, and they did it every single time we bought gas, which was 25 cents a gallon. Then we’d drive home, full of satisfaction that the car was well tended. That was the entire activity -- we got no snacks or drinks, nor did we run other errands -- and it took half an hour. It was probably the only thing that the three of us regularly did together.

The other weekend activity that I remember usually included my mother, and that was going to the pony rides. The pony rides were set up in one of the many dusty empty lots that were everywhere in southern California in those days, on a corner way past the gas station. Four or five parallel tracks were laid out with fences in a large oval. A parent would plop a small child on a saddled pony, without a helmet, without any belts, or a bigger child would be allowed to get on the pony by themselves. A cowboy would tell the child to grab the reins, lead the pony to one of the tracks, and slap its behind. That was our favorite part, because the pony would trot a little before it settled into its dull plod around the track. Sometimes it would speed up a little at the end of the ride, too. Sometimes we’d ask for a second turn, but we almost never got one. Again, there were no snacks or drinks or special treats involved -- just the drive to the pony rides, our one turn around the pony track, and the drive home. My sister and I loved our five minutes of pony riding, and going to the pony rides and gassing up the car remain happy memories.