1938 Yonkers, New York

John Dedyo

1931

Yonkers, New York

Interviewed on February 5, 2023

by Johnny Dedyo

Oh, I must’ve been maybe ten years old. The Lone Ranger, it was always a series. So, every week you see a different part of it. It was pretty good! It’s a Western about the Lone Ranger, who’s a good guy chasing bad guys, and he’s got a companion who’s called Tonto. So, they always catch the bad guy, and then they ride away saying “Hi-yo, Silver!” It means he’s just—he’s going away! It’s his farewell cry.My favorite character is the Lone Ranger, himself. I don’t know what his name was, just the Lone Ranger, that’s all I remember. The villains are always either bank robbers or people that are stealing, holding hostages, things like that. Action! Lots of Western action! Cowboys and Indians, horses, stagecoaches, bars, men in cowboy hats and six-shooters—always in a bar drinking. Don’t know what they do for a living, but they’re always in a bar drinking!

I remember there’s always at least two bad guys that are preying on innocent people. And then, somehow or other, the Lone Ranger always finds out about it. Then, he and Tonto show up, get rid of the bad guys, and everybody’s happy. The scenes are all pretty much the same. Somebody comes in, tries to hold up the bar, the Lone Ranger happens to be there, and he breaks it down. That’s it. It was a very, very important scenario, right? And he rides away saying “Hi-yo, Silver!” That’s what I remember!

I was by myself at the Terrace Theater on Ashburton Avenue in Yonkers, New York. Joe, my brother, was older than I was. My sister, Helen, was younger. Mom wouldn’t let her leave the house by herself or with us. It was just my brother and me. And my brother, Joe, apparently didn’t like movies very much because he didn’t go. Even as a kid he did woodcarving, and that became his profession. He became a cabinet maker. A real, real great cabinetmaker. Beautiful work that he did.

We lived on Croton Terrace, which was maybe a fifteen minute walk from the theater. The theater was air conditioned. The seats were padded. The bathrooms were clean. There were no concessions. Sometimes I brought snacks. If I had an extra nickel I’d buy a candy bar. Chocolate forever! It was a very small theater—cost a dime to get in. And they chase you out after seeing it for the first time. In this particular theater, the owner wandered around to make sure that us kids weren’t watching the movie twice. So, what you do is hide in the bathroom, and then when the movie starts again, you go out. You had to be very careful!

It was a small theater. I would say it was for maybe a couple hundred people. It was almost full all the time because they were so cheap. Especially weekends. And if you went on a Thursday night, you’d get a free dish for an extra quarter. A dish like you cook on or eat from. Just chinaware. Oh, my mother has a whole collection—or had a whole collection—and now Helen has a lot of those dishes at her house. She’s still using them! They last forever. For twenty-five cents.

The Terrace Theater was basically the only movie theater that I went to until I was over ten years old—eleven, twelve years old. There was a theater opening in an area called Getty’s Square in Yonkers. And that was one that we never got into because when we got there with our ten cents, they wanted twenty cents! So, instead of crying about it, we went next door and had some hamburgers. They cost a dime. Everything was very cheap. This was eighty years ago!

I was a bootblack. The money that I made, I gave to the house—to the family—so that they could use it to buy whatever had to be bought. And I’d sneak off a dime or whatever and then use that to go to the movie. I treated myself. In those days, my route happened to be the Alexander Smith Carpet Company route, Nepperhan Avenue. And there were about a half a dozen bars along the way that, on Thursday afternoon, Friday afternoon, I’d go into each one of the saloons and say, “Shine? Shine? Shine? Shine?” Some people would say yes, some people said no, some people paid me a nickel, some people paid me a quarter. But there was never a bootblack in the bar with the Lone Ranger. That was a whole different environment!