When I was 14 years old my Dad bought a new truck, a Chevy pick up. It was green. he took me to the port of entry between Arizona and New Mexico and I got my driver's license. From then on when I was with my dad, he would always make me drive.
When I first moved to Duncan I lived with Sis and Laurence and slept on the couch. Then Dad rented a nice little house. We stayed there for a month or so. Then Dad wanted to move to this junker motel with adobe walls and cement floors because he thought it would be cooler in the summer. It had one room, kitchen and bath, no closet. I was too ashamed to have anyone come to this place. If someone came to get me I would meet them outside. We lived there until I was around 16. Sis moved to Newell, South Dakota, at a large ranch. Dad married a 25 year old with 4 kids and moved to Clifton, Arizona.
When I was sixteen, Sis came to visit us. She now had Larry, Duane and Jeanette. I drove them back to South Dakota in Dad's Chevy car. Jeannette was a little stinker on the way to their home. She kept trying to throw one of her toys out the window. Finally she succeeded. She cried and cried because we wouldn't go back and get it. I had a long drive back to Duncan by myself.
I rented a room from Mrs. O'Neill for $10 a month, I had two jobs. Half time working at the movie theater and worked at the Texaco gas station. I was playing football, basketball and baseball. I quit going to church. I was supposed to have breakfast at Mrs. O'Neill's but she was so dirty I couldn't eat there. I ate most of my meals at a little hamberger place or a little Mexican restaurant.
When I was sixteen a half time job was coming available at the Duncan Movie Theater. This consisted of working every other night and half shift on Saturday and Sunday. The job paid $100 per month cash paid by Bill Sprouls, the manager. At the time a movie operator was making $500-600 per month. I think he was pocketing the difference. It was hard on me for sports because I had to stay up late and close the theater down and I never got enough sleep. It was an old fashioned type theater. Admission was .10 cents and popcorn was .05 cents. We had to cut the corners out of the bags or everyone would blow them up and pop them.
It had two projectors that burnt carbons. You had to watch the adjustment on the carbons or else the picture would start to look blue or some other color. The film came in reels and you would put a reel in each machine and when came close to the end (you could tell by a scratch mark on the film-then you had 10 seconds until the next scratch came up when you had to change machines). If you didn't switch the projector over the screen would go black and people would start to shout and stomp their feet.
I was a trainee for quite a while and was learning how to run the projectors. I didn't stay in the projector room too often, instead I would go in the balcony and just watch the movies. One day I was going upstairs to watch the movie and the projectionist was coming down. He had been fired. Bill Sprouls said take over. He was usually in the pool hall and not the show theater. I started threading the film in the machine and started it. I looked out the port hole at the movie and it was going okay for a little bit, but then it looked like the screen was melting. I stopped the machine and the film was all over in the machine. I took it out and rethreaded the machine. I threw out the broken film and I guess the next people who saw the movie missed that part of the movie because I didn't splice it back on the reel of film.
Finally I learned how to run the projectors properly. One day I decided to take one of the projectors apart to clean it before the movie. As I was putting it back together it wouldn't go back together right and it was time for the movie to start. I started to movie on the other machine and I only had about 15 minutes until I had to switch the machines. I sent somebody to get Bill Sprouls in the pool hall. He came running and started to work on the machine. He fixed it, but we had a ten second blackout between reels. He told me that when a projector was running, leave it alone, don't clean it, don't fix it unless it's broken.
My senior year a kid from school wanted to be a projectionist so I trained him to do that job. I would have him run the projector and I would go out in the balcony and watch the movie. He didn't get paid, but he got my job when I graduated.
The movie theater was the main form of entertainment when I was a kid. When I was 4 or 5 years old the movie "Gone with the Wind" came out. My mom was so anxious to see it, she stood in a long line with me. She didn't want to pay for me a ticket, so I was going to sit on her lap. She had an aisle seat and so she sat me on the floor in the aisle next to her. Bill Sprouse and the owner of the theater, who was wearing a white suit, came down the aisle in the dark theater. They both tripped over me and sprawled down the aisle. Mom grabbed me and put me on her lap. They got up and looked around trying to see what they had tripped over.
In those days they always showed a cartoon, a newsreel, then the movie. On Saturdays, they would also show a serial-Buck Rogers, etc. Sometimes they would show sing-a-long cartoons which I hated. I really felt cheated when they did this..
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