By: Paige Cline
Sometimes on our way to Randy’s numerous hospital and therapy sessions, we would pass the time and entertain ourselves remembering the magical places that were so much a part of our growing up years,
One of those places had to be the Pine Theatre. There were movies every night but the truly magical day was Saturday. Kids waited all week for the Saturday afternoon double feature. For ten cents children could see two shoot-em-up westerns, a serial and a cartoon.
The theatre was unrivaled as a place to meet friends and to see people that you usually saw only at school. The Morgans from the Welch Road, the Brooks kids and the Coopers and Stewarts from Skin Fork were frequent visitors to the Pine.
Holloway Drug was also a place where folks met for a fountain drink or just to visit if you were broke. A big 12 ounce root beer was a nickel back then–if you had a nickel.
We would smile as we recalled Woody England telling about dressing up on Saturday in his dungarees which were laced up the back with a white shoelace. Snazzy!
Living down on Route 52, Woody and his brothers had to decide if they were going to laeger or Pineville to see the “horse opera.’ That was our idea of a catchy name for western movies.
Lordy, how we would ride along with the Durango Kid, or dodge bullets with Hopalong Cassidy, or shoot from behind a rock with Johnny Mack Brown, or help Tim McCoy keep an eye on the dirty rats in a saloon as he won every hand he ever played at the poker table.
All week, after the Saturday feast of westerns, we would gallop around town on our magnificent stallions which looked to ordinary folks like a broomstick or a fishing pole with a string tied to the end for halter and rein.
Sometimes we played at the Wilkinson’s who had a back porch with a railing that made a great mount with a throw rug for a saddle.
Such adventures existed only in the minds of of youngsters with little more than their imaginations to keep them entertained. Still, as senior citizens, those days are not so deep in our memories that they cannot be recalled at the drop of a hat.
Or a hint.
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