1940 Nuttallburg, West Virginia

Diane Jones
Year born – Never reveal a woman’s age
Nuttallburg, West Virginia
Alladia Patterson 1/24/18

I remember begging my mother to let me see the Flash Gordon movies. I was in love with Buster Crabbe.

Watching people in TVs was a new thing back then. Radio commercials about “the gold dust twins” and “brought to you by life boy”, stuff like that, is what we used to have to entertain us. Everyone would gather in the living room and listen to the radio, so when we saw movies we saw magic.

I grew up in a coal-mining town in West Virginia where people lived unhappy lives and died young from black lung disease. There was no indoor plumbing and women slaved over coal stoves to make dinner for their husbands in fear of being beaten if it wasn’t satisfactory. Even the kids as young as 3 or 4 were put to work wheeling out barrels to catch the rain-water for washing clothes. Since everyone led these hard lives they threw themselves into the magic of the theater as an escape.

We were so enthralled with the films because we could see someone turn on a faucet and water would come out or disappear behind a door, come out, and assume they had gone to the bathroom. I remember everyone thought the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments was real. It was just Jell-O but we didn’t know that. We thought it was magic. Even the adults new that this new medium was wonderful. Seeing that magic on the screen alleviated some of the pain from our harsh lives.

I would go to the theater with my mother or sometimes my grandmother, my brother was too young to come. Thursdays were colored night. Any other night we would have to sit in the balcony. But even when sat in the balcony they would call me down from the colored section to the stage to do a ticket winner drawing. That’s how I was first introduced to what it felt like to be on stage in front of a crowd. I also really enjoyed the drive-ins because there was basically no discrimination since everyone was in their cars.

Gas was 20/25 cents per gallon so you either walked or took the bus most of the time unless you loaded up everyone in the family car. Once you got there if you had been good with saving your money or you collected bottles beforehand to collect the refund money you could get fresh popcorn or a hot dog, and my personal favorite, the fountain soda pop. Most of the time my mom would sneak in our own popcorn cooked on the stove at home in a brown paper bag. I wasn’t much of a candy-eater but sometimes I would eat Jujubes and I always begged my mom for that fountain soda pop.

The theater was like babysitter. Whenever your parents didn’t want you around they would send you to the theater because for 20 cents you could spend hours hopping from screen to screen, watching the double and sometimes triple-features with the cartoons. It was a safe space that people could go to just to get away. My time in those theaters as a kid made me what I am today. As a committee member of the SAG-AFTA I was able to vote and ultimately deliver Ruby Dee, someone I admired in A Raisin in the Sun, the lifetime achievement award in 2000. I will always view the theater as a wonderful and magical place.