1942 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Wayne Loucks
b. 1934
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Interviewed on February 5, 2022
by Sam Gallen
It would have been 1942 that we moved to Philadelphia. We always referred to it as the “war effort:” When the war started, my dad applied for a job with the United States government, and they hired him. We moved to Philadelphia and were there for a year. He worked in electronics. That was a skill he had. Then we got transferred to Richmond, California.
What we used to do at that time was go to Saturday matinees. They were very popular at the time. That’s what kids did on a Saturday afternoon. And so, my sister and I went to Bambi. I was eight years old; she was nine years old. We walked there since the movie theater was probably two blocks from where we lived.
When we went into the theater, they gave us a ticket, the kind where you tear off one half and put it into the pot while you keep your half. And then they had a drawing. There was this small prize: It was a big deal at the time, though I can’t remember exactly what it was. But they drew my number, and I got the prize! And I remember saying at that time, “Wow, this is the first time I’ve ever won anything.” I was eight years old, and I felt like I’d been living a long time.
Then we saw Bambi. I remember Bambi’s mother being killed. It was very sad. And when we went home, and I told my mother, I cried. I could not tell the story without crying.
Another big deal in my life and going to the movies was when I was 11 years old. We were living in Richmond, California then and the big thing on Saturday afternoons was to go to the matinee. That was our activity every Saturday: My mother would give me 25 cents and we’d go.
This would have been at a movie theater in a little town called San Pablo. And at that one, we did have popcorn! It was my favorite movie theater snack. I loved it. Coke and popcorn. To get to that theater, the shortcut was to climb over the wall of a cemetery and walk through it. It was only about four feet tall. But one time after the movies—there were three or four of us that went together to these movies—the grave keeper didn’t want us going through there, so he chased us, and we all ran. I was always fast, so I ran faster, and I got away.
At that time, the big deal was westerns: Cowboys and Indians. They had these double features every Saturday, so we went Saturday after Saturday after Saturday to watch westerns with people like Gene Autry. He was my favorite. I had the Gene Autry holsters and cap pistols too. Then there was Roy Rogers and later his wife, Dale Evans. We knew these people so well. Westerns were everything. At those matinees—I’m sure they had other genres—but it seems to me we always went from western to western. If we saw two movies, both of them would be westerns.
Gene Autry went on to have a radio station in San Francisco after he left the cowboy movies. We learned all of his songs. His favorite one that I memorized was, “Ridin’ the range once more, Totin’ my old .44, … I’m back in the saddle again.”
