Hello All,
In case you hadn’t noticed, I can be somewhat nostalgic. Not dwelling on the past in a way that overshadows the present, or denies me future happiness. But the kind that brings me the joy associated with fond memories. I don’t dwell on the past, but a lot of my memories sure beat many of today’s realities.
Memory Reminder
Once a week I am reminded by an Outlook Calendar notification to “Repel and/or Make Fire”. A curious combo, admittedly, that has been prompting me once a week since 2010 to do as it commands. Literally, as in the literal sense. It stems from a time in which I was doing a fair bit of hiking and what seemed like adventuresome mountain climbing. Peaks like Mount Rainier and Mount Whitney. Today, living in Colorado along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, I would not utter their names in association with “real” mountain climbing. Any Boulderite worth their salt could tackle either one of these peaks between cocktails and dinner on any given day.
My wife Deborah helped me complete the first part of these To-Do’s. Learning some basic repelling skills by hiring a trained expert as a 60th Birthday present. We went out in the hills less than a half mile from our home in Ojai. Here’s a picture I took last week while visiting the area after a family wedding in La Jolla. The rock facings are about 100 feet high (10 stories). The first time I leaned back and baby stepped over the edge I was fully consumed by the exhilaration of the moment. Looking down ratcheted up a new awareness of all my senses while drawing my entire focus to the task at hand. It’s quite the rush.
Repelling would have been required if I were ever to have actually gone to the other peaks that Dan Collie and a few other friends had in mind. Like Danali (Alaska) and Aconcagua (Chile). Life got in the way. I still have a ton of the equipment I acquired along the way. Let me know if you need any climbing ropes, crampons or ice-screws.
The 2nd Must Do-Make Fire
If you’ve ever attempted it, you know making fire the most basic survival skill (cavemen could do it for God’s sake) is no easy feat. Here I am with a college degree and pretty decent computer skills, and yet, it still eludes me. That is why I allowed this notification to continue popping up, week after week. A reminder of unfinished business and a promise to myself.
By the way, I mean making fire from scratch. Not with matches, flint, or a sun assisted magnifying glass. But with the sticks, twigs, and kindling you find in the woods. The few times I tried making fire resulted in me drenched in sweat with very sore, bleeding hands. I ruled out the use of a bow that rotates a stick rapidly on a plank of dry wood surrounded by basically birds’ nest fuzz. It felt like cheating. It doesn’t anymore, and might be a good place to start.
Okay. That was my way of arriving at the actual memory I wish to share, which of course is preceded by a corollary. Ready?
Take Me to the Movies
My hometown of Batavia, New York, had a population of approximately 18,000 in the 1960’s. Interestingly, because of the baby boom explosion, about 37%, or 6,700 of the population was under eighteen. Roughly one out of three people you encountered on the street was a child or a teenager. Higher in my neighborhood no doubt, where it seemed every household had at least 4 kids plus a dog or two.
Given the nomadic nature of my generation, with that many kids wandering the streets, swimming the lakes and streams or engaging in massive snowball fights in the winter, it was difficult to maintain a safe and sane environment. What to do?
Enter…movie theaters. Built in child care on the cheap, at least on Saturday afternoons. Batavia had three movie theaters operating simultaneously between the late 1940’s through 1965.
They were Dipsons, Mancuso Theater and the *Family Theater torn down in 1965 as part of urban renewal. Collectively they had around 4000 seats. The Batavia Drive In with a 500-car capacity and the Genesee Drive- In that could hold 550 cars. For reasons that will soon be obvious, I excluded our two drive in theaters from our discussion.
Assigning four people to each car enables me to create a scenario where an additional 4000 drive in movie goers is achieved. Add that to the four thousand theater attendees and you get a whopping 8000 locals watching movies. Nearly half the city. Hypothetically. Greatly reducing the number of individuals that would be wandering the streets or throwing snowballs. But as I said earlier, we would not concern ourselves with drive in movie theaters. Why?
Popcorn. What do you mean popcorn? Both venues sell popcorn. Keep reading.
Even though all three movie theaters in Batavia featured movies, only Dipson’s offered double features- two full length movies. Tarzan, The Lone Ranger, you name it. Usually preceded by cartoons or the Three Stooges. All for like 25 cents. Add in a news reel and a few select short subjects and parents could keep their kids occupied for four hours or more in the relative safety of a movie theater. Assuming a thousand kids all in one place without parental supervision is safe or even a good idea. Remember the chaos, the noise, kids running up and down the aisles, and of course the weaponry– flying popcorn boxes. 10 cents purchase enough popcorn to give you a stomachache. I’m talking about the pre-liquid butter days when coating your stomach was not an option.
There was always a group or two of boys spread out across the theater (never girls) that turned their popcorn boxes into flying saucers. Free frisbees, if you will. It was as easy as one, two, three.
1-Dump the uncooked popcorn kernels at the bottom of the box onto the floor near your seat or on your seat or even onto the kid sitting next to you.
2- Push in the bottom flap and fold the carton flat, running your fingers over the edges to make it smooth and tight. Aero-dynamic.
3- Holding one corner, launch the carton with a backhanded flick of the wrist. Usually toward the movie screen. Or another kid running through the aisles. For added distance fling it sidearm.
Proving once again that anything and everything can be turned into a weapon in the mind of most little boys. Big ones too. In this case an inexpensive aerodynamic marvel.
For many the temptation was just too great. Here we were in a packed theater, unsupervised except for the usher named Leslie. And, we were armed to boot. You may find it hard to believe, but I never participated in this wild behavior. Not because I was Catholic, an altar boy, or holier than thou, but it just seemed disrespectful. Trashing the place and leaving, or whacking someone in the head or face was the folly of hooligans. At least that’s how it seemed to me at the time. That changed a bit a few years later. Stick with me for a bit of a surprise.
I almost forgot. In addition to all the craziness or perhaps because of it, there was the inevitable “sneaking in” which was anything but subtle. Every once in a while, the completely dark theater would illuminate with outdoor light, momentarily startling everyone, as two or three kids entered through an exit door without paying, disappearing into the audience. Forcing Leslie to shift into action as an enforcer of sorts. Usually without success.
Oops, I almost forgot. Remember my excluding drive-ins from the conversation? It’s because you really can’t throw popcorn boxes from your car window with much accuracy or success.
I wonder did the cinema industry change the shape of popcorn containers to round barrels and paper bags to effectively disarm teen and pre-teen American boys? What about their second amendment rights? More likely it was about cost savings.
*I bet many Batavians don’t remember the Family Theatre. It seemed old and was a tad musty. Also relegated to a side street. But I remember it fondly. Doehler-Jarvis, a large die casting factory, held their annual Christmas parties at the Family Theater. My father was an employee as was his father before him. Back in the days when retirement was accompanied by a pension and a gold watch. I don’t remember if they showed movies, but I do know they gave away amazing gifts. Like an electric train set. Or even a bicycle. A big deal when you’re ten.
I’ll skip the obvious comparison between movie theaters of the 1950’s and 60’s with today’s Cinema Plexes. But if your interested Click on Theaters- Today vs Yesteryear for a comparison.
| Movie Theaters Yesterday vs. Today | |||
| Old Movie Theaters—Typical Seats | Modern Multiplex Auditoriums—Typical Seats | ||
| Small neighborhood theater | 400–800 | Small screen | 70–120 |
| Typical town/city theater | 800–1,500 | Typical screen | 150–230 |
| Large movie palace | 1,500–3,500+ | Large-format/IMAX | 250–500+ |
Modern cinema design guidance, for example, describes about 200–230 seats as a typical larger auditorium, with smaller rooms around 70–100 seats.
By contrast, many old theaters were enormous. The historic Palace in Waterbury originally seated about 3,400, while Cleveland’s Palace opened with 2,530 seats. Even theaters in the 1,000–1,500 range were common enough to be considered substantial movie houses rather than extraordinary giants.
The important difference is that the old theater put everybody in one room. A modern 10- or 12-screen multiplex might still have 1,000–2,000 total seats, but they’re divided among many auditoriums. One current 12-screen example has 995 seats total, with individual rooms ranging from only 56 to 200 seats.
So, if the Family Theatre in Batavia really held around 1,000 people, imagine the difference: a Saturday matinee with perhaps 700–1,000 kids all in one auditorium. Today the same crowd might be divided among five or six screens.
That also helps explain why your memory of Saturday movies in the 1960s—with a theater packed with kids and flattened popcorn boxes flying toward the screen—could have seemed almost like a major public event. A single theater could contain a surprisingly large percentage of Batavia’s children at once.
Letchworth State Park
Remember earlier when I practically branded popcorn box throwers as terrorists? I said stick with me for the surprise. Well, here it is.
My best friend Dan Fragnito and I ventured south one day to Letchworth State Park. The “Grand Canyon of the East”. Less than an hour’s drive. If you ever visited, you know it as a magnificent 14,000-acre park featuring a seventeen-mile gorge carved over millions of years by the Genesee River, towering cliffs up to six hundred feet high, and three major waterfalls. If my memory serves me correctly, I was around nineteen at the time, and we went to Letchworth because that’s just what you do if you live in Western New York. See the sights that are important enough to draw visitors from around the world. This attraction was practically in our backyard. After wandering the park all morning, we found a picnic area near Inspiration Point, the most popular and scenic overlook in Letchworth. From there you can see both the upper and middle waterfalls at the same time.
Mrs. Fragnito naturally sent us off with a picnic lunch that would feed at least six. We provided our own beverages. A case of Genesee Cream Ale. Actually, 3 or 4 bottles left over from someone’s party. You’ll recall that eighteen was the legal drinking age in New York State at the time. You also are aware, courtesy of “TJ’s Big Adventure”, that according to Colorado’s beverage industry, you cannot become inebriated on 3.2 beer. Genesee Cream Ale was not much stronger. So we were good. Lunch concluded, we sat awhile taking in the air and the natural beauty before us. Then time for dessert. I thought it was anyway. Hey Dan, pass me the pizzelles. No response. It appeared Dan was guarding or perhaps hoarding the large tin of pizzelles his mother made. Impatient, I hopped to my feet and proceeded to make my way around the picnic table to the holy grail of Italian pastries (side from cannoli of course) when I caught my foot on the leg of the table stumbling forward onto the now empty case of Genny. It was now flat as a pancake.
We stared silently at what lay between us, mesmerized, attempting to come to terms with what we saw but unable to put into words what it meant. “Reminds me of the flying popcorn boxes at the movies when we were kids”, I said. Dan concurred adding, “Just bigger and heavier. “Think it can fly”? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
There was a steady warm breeze coming up and over the edge of the canyon, which in this area is hundreds of feet deep, with small trees lining the rim interspersed with bushes and several large boulders protecting a cliff. I later learned that the winds in the canyon are quite different from what we felt at its edge. Sun heated canyon walls create thermals. Warm air rising as it heats, producing upslope flow (Valley Winds as NOAA calls them). These winds can blow across the gorge deflect up the slope and over the rim to varying altitudes- Ridge Lift. the same forces that enable birds and gliders to soar ever higher and higher. The gorge walls can also channel rising air and redirect it along the canyon walls where it widens or bends. Slowing some of the winds as they then begin to circulate. Thermals can significantly alter ordinary wind patterns. The kicker- air passing over the rim and around a projecting cliff can curl back upon itself, forming something like a horizontal whirlpool of air. A light object can get caught in that circulation.
We of course knew none of this. We did, however, hear the canyon calling out to us: “Houston, we have a cliff, all conditions are go for launch”. How could we refuse a direct order from NASA?
All Systems…GO
It was a weekday and there was no one else around. I grabbed one of the built-in handles on the flattened case, high-stepped over a wooden fence and onto a cliff perhaps 30 feet across and 20 feet to the edge, devoid of any sizeable vegetation. Oblivious to the Warning, Danger, Danger signs. I gazed out at the vast canyon sprawling out beyond the cliff and without thought or hesitation, relying only on instincts, (ahem-watching others fling popcorn boxes as a kid) flung the carton, with one smooth underhanded motion as far as I could out and over the edge of the cliff.
As hoped, the carton caught a favorable current that sent it upward around five or six feet above eye level, while drifting left, away from the cliff enabling us to clearly watch its trajectory. The thing is it had none. It remained spinning in just about the same place, rising and falling only a few feet for, and here’s the crazy thing, for 10 or 15 minutes or longer. I used to tell people 20 but that may have been a stretch. 1 or 2 minutes would have been extraordinary. The reality is I do not actually know it’s flight time. After being stunned by the amazing performance before us, we became bored and left at about the 15-minute mark. By then other park visitors arrived and we became a bit self-conscious. Although they were as intrigued as we were at this oddity. Do they know we did it? Let’s just go.
Perhaps the Genny carton is still spinning in exactly the same spot today. If not, being made of pure, unadulterated cardboard, it is now compost. No harm or foul.
The moral(s) of my story:
Also, allow past experiences and the knowledge they bring to our repertoires to be put to good use. Connect the dots as Dan and I did. Our accidental experiment in thermal lift, ridge lift, canyon channeling and aerodynamic drag began at the Dipson Theater one Saturday afternoon. What happened at Letchworth upped our game. Who knows, if we had continued down this path we may have become astronauts.
Thanks for hanging with me.
TJ
I left my home in the small Western New York city of Batavia in March 1977 vowing never to shovel snow again. Never say never. Settling for 38 years in what was for me the "promised land" of Santa Barbara, California. I married, helped raise a family, started a business, traveled and live a wonderful life. We spent the last 10 years of our west coast journey in the small, quiet, picturesque town of Ojai. My oldest friends call me TJ.
My wife Deborah and I moved to Colorado in 2015 to be near our daughter, her husband and 2 growing grand-boys. Add 2 bulldogs (French & English) to the mix and our hands and hearts are full. We all reside in Niwot, a small quaint town 15 minutes north of Boulder. The mighty Rocky Mountains are at our doorstep.
I am a man, son, brother, cousin, friend, husband, father, uncle, grand father, in-law and mostly retired Coloradan. You can read more about me on the About Page. If you are curious about my professional life you can visit my Career at Venture Horizon.
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