1960 Winchester, Tennessee

Interview of Carolyn Bowen (Grandmother)
Born in 1939
Pelham/Winchester, Tennessee
September 23, 2019
by Hope Newberry

Although I did have the opportunity to interview my neighbor, with whom I know very well, I wanted to also interview my Grandmother, as I knew it would be a nice opportunity to learn more about her life. I always enjoy calling and visiting her, although it’s hard because of the distance, and because times get busy.

To my surprise, my grandmother did not see a motion picture until she was grown. She grew up in the country, on a small family farm in Pelham, Tennessee. She had told me in the past how she despised this farming lifestyle, as I found out quite vividly when she refused to go to the fall festival with all of the animals and dirt when I was younger. This reaction was only stemming from her memories toiling in the barn and in our field’s, racing to complete all the tasks with which her father had bestowed upon her. Well, on this farm, as it turns out, there was no electricity. In fact, she spent much time recounting to me the experience of getting electricity at the farm, and her father pushing back against her mother’s distaste for change. Excited, though, my grandmother was, he delighted them with lighting, washers and radios now antique to the eye. While she grew up, she didn’t own a car, and didn’t leave her home too often. It wasn’t until she enrolled in a local nursing program, and started to meet other friends and eager boys, that she had the means for which to travel and pay for the movies. This was in the late 1960’s, as she recalls.

Her first experience seeing a movie remains a fuzzy memory, but my grandmother does remember the drive-in theater that she steadily began to frequent at different occasions. Located just down Monteagle Mountain, atop which her community rested peacefully, was the roaring new theater and all the buzz of young socialites.  The theater, though remaining nameless, hosted a wonderful restaurant to which she and her friends would travel before beginning their movie. You could get all sorts of meals and snacks alike, from pizzas to salads, to ice creams and sodas. These delightful desserts were the reason she liked to go out with the local boys who worked hard and had a dime to spend. She worked, too, of course, but she was still a student and why not enjoy the gift of another?

In regards to the very first movie she watched, those also fell into the category of fuzzy and forgotten memories. However, she definitely remembered Elvis Presley’s swinging moves in Love Me Tender, James Bond’s adventurous and thrilling travels in From Russia with Love, and Rock Hudson’s bellowing voice and striking stature in any film they could get into. Even fifty years down the line, some things you never forget! However, one of the little details that I did find charming was her description of the bingo sheets everyone received with their ticket, and played throughout the movies and intermissions. For my grandmother, the movie era ushered in a new life that showed her the world, brought her close friends, and foreshadowed the city-goer lifestyle in which she would eventually settle down, though this city, through today’s eyes, is known a quaint and charming small town with one single, two-screened theater of its own.

Interview of Anne Ford Melton (Neighbor)
Born in 1932
Charleston, South Carolina
September 20, 2019
by Hope Newberry

*For this interview, I directly asked my neighbor this series of questions, to which she responded the following text. She’s an author herself, and I’ve helped her with various poetry projects. Below is her unchanged text response.

“

I saw Bambi, the film in 1942, when I was 7 years old. I went with several friends to this movie, my first one ever. My grandmother, Sissie, dropped us off with a warning not to sit next to strangers.

I sat on the outside chair on the left side of the middle set of seats. I thought it was neat that the padded bottom of the chair moved forward when the chair was unfolded. I had to have a free hand to pull it down from its curved wooden back.

Neither I nor any of my friends bought a drink, because we would have thrown the liquid over the back of the wooden seat when unfolding it.  We only bought packaged sweets like Lifesavers.

We each took a place and began to strip off the colorful packaging that had Lifesaverson its glossy paper cover. Each of us then tried to tear off the circular paper by individual color. I passed all the reds, oranges, and yellows down the row. I kept the lime green strips. Each child took her special color and added the pieces to her pocket collection. The silver inner wrapper was balled up and put in the last person’s pocket. The wax paper was always too damaged to save; so we dropped it on the floor.

After settling in and kicking the chair in front of us continuously; so no one would sit there, we listened to the overly-loud music until the show began. I instantly fell in love with the mother deer, which I learned was a doe (when I went home and asked my uncle, who was a hunter). I then watched the deer family tip-toe four-footed through the forest. I met all of the forest animals one by one and then watched them gather together as a group.

I began to feel that I was also part of the animal group, just invisible, that’s all. I joined in their antics, hip-hopping as I called their gate,and then standing still with at least one relaxed bent-bone-brown-hairy- limb. I also related to their white speckled side coats or smooth forest-brown coats.

By the time Bambi’s mother died, I was completely caught up in the little family. And I immediately related to the sad event, because my own mother died 17 days after I was born. This little deer had experienced my very own life-event. And so I cried, but without a hankie, because I came to the movie not knowing its outcome. I did, however, see that my other friends were also crying  … and they did not have hankies either. But somehow we wanted to stay to see any and everything else that the movie had to offer.

When we left the theatre, The Gloria, in Charleston, South Carolina, to be exact; my grandmother was parked in front, waiting for us to come out. So Sissie asked: “How did you like the movie?” My answer, which matched my friends’ answers was: “It was too sad … I did not want it to end like that … can they make the movie over again, where both Bambi’s mother and Bambi live happily ever after?”

”

Thank you– I enjoyed this project!