Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Cliff Climbing

There were three movie theaters in Mason City while I was going up, The Park, The Palace, and The Strand. The Park movie theatre was high class. It was built originally as a vaudeville theatre and was situated in the Park Hotel. The audience was seated in push seats on the main floor and in the balcony with special alcoves on each side facing a large stage. Towns people went there to see all the first rate movies. The Palace was built as a movie theatre and was also quite nice. It also played first rate movies but in addition had many second rate movies. It was more for your everyday movie going public and its prices were significantly lower than the Park. The Strand was where all the B rated movies ran. Although it was on the main street, it was further from the downtown area in area that did not have the best stores. It was a smaller theatre with a main floor and small balcony. It also had the cheapest tickets, 25 to 50 cents. This was a bargain even in the 40s and 50s since most of the time the Strand ran double features usually Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tom Mix or other cowboy features. And it was usually packed Saturday afternoon with kids.

I don’t remember just when I started going to the movies, but I assume it was in the 5^th or 6^th grade. I remember once running into the husband of my 6^th grade teacher on the way to the movies. At the time it seemed very strange. My teacher’s husband could actually have a life beyond my teacher? In my childhood years, Mason City was considered quite a safe place to live. There was a relative low crime rate, usually just burglaries. I don’t ever remember a homicide. Drugs were no where in sight. It was, therefore, common to let kids out on their own at an early age. Transportation consisted of city bus transit. My folks did not have a car until I was in high school. Buses passed our house once every 20 minutes or so and headed to the center of town. From there you could transfer to other busses to anywhere throughout the town. And the price was right, 10 cents. For the cost of less than a dollar, I could go to the movies, usually have popcorn and a drink, and be entertained for the afternoon with a couple of hundred of other kids.

Saturday afternoon movies were great. As mentioned before they were usually cowboy movies. The great discussions of the day were who was a better, stronger, a more exciting cowboy, Gene, Roy, Tom or others. Gene and Roy could sing but who was faster on the draw? Who had the best horse? And later who could get the girls? It didn’t seem to matter if the movie was in black and white or color. It was always action packed and filled high drama with the highest professional quality. Although I do seem to remember that those bad guys shot dead still seemed to be breathing and one time there was this guy who seemed to start to get up. At any rate they held one young Iowa boy held to his seat. Many times the second feature was a serial; that is, it continued from one week to the next. It always seemed to end with the hero in a situation that was impossible to get out of. For example, the hero would be in a car chase in which the car he was in would end up going over a 1000 foot cliff and exploding in a ball of flames. There was no way Black Jack could survive that fall. The movie the next week would reveal that just before going over the cliff Black Jack forced open the door and jumped; enabling him to have another adventure in which the ending had him in a plane that did not survive a dive to earth.

Saturday afternoons seem to go by so fast. It never seemed that it was possible the afternoon was over and I had to go home. This was particular true when the first movie came on right after Black Jack could not survive his latest disaster. Maybe I could just watch the beginning of Roy Roger’s latest exploitation. Sometimes Roy’s exploits would wiz by again and suddenly Black Jack would be back again. At these times I would rush out of the theater to find it was night. It would not be good when I got home. A lecture would follow about how worried my mother was and that I would have to explain to my father what I had done. The ultimate threat in my house was, “wait till your father gets home!”

There would be times when I got out of the theater to find that I had spent all my money on candy and did not have enough money to take the bus home. This was not necessarily a problem if I had not watched the first movie for the second time. The route home was fairly straight forward. The Strand was located on Federal Street, the main street separating the town east and west. On the corner of Federal and East State Street, the street we lived on was my dad’s bank, the First National Bank. It was the tallest building, 7 stories, in town with a giant 1^St sign on the top that could be seen for twenty miles at night. So up to my dad’s bank, make a right, and I was 12 blocks from home.

Along the way were some the most elegant homes in town. Many of them built around the turn of the century. Probably the most interesting homes were those built by Frank Lloyd Wright and his devotees. These homes were built along both sides of Willow Creek on Rock Glenn. East State Street crossed Willow Creek at this point with a arch-type bridge. The bridge was probably 30 feet above the creek. On one side of the creek the homes were built on a bluff while on the other side the back yards of the homes swept down to the creek. Many times I would sneak between these homes, across a shallow dam on Willow Creek, and climb along the ledges of the bluff. The ledges led under the East State Street Bridge. It was then possible to follow the creek all the way to East Park, a large city park across the street from my home.

One memorable time of crossing Willow Creek accrued after viewing a double feature just a little too long. It was not dark out yet so I thought I had plenty of time to get home. I decided not to climb along the bluff ledges but to make a little adventure by walking along the outside of the bridge over the creek. The bridge had a cement railing with a small 2 foot ledge on the outside of the bridge. I was walking along the ledge when I spotted a woman I knew. It seemed I was later than I thought I was and my mother had walked up East State to find me. She found me half way across the bridge. Again I heard something to the affect that my punishment would wait until my father got home.

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