cinema

This week the Denver Post reported on a plan to turn Civic Center into an open-air movie theater for 30 nights this summer. It's said to be the first such venture for any U.S. city.
Well, for the record, I have to say this isn't exactly a new idea. My old home town had open-air summer movies 70 years ago.
My home town? That's McLouth, Kansas, founded mostly by Brits and Germans in the early 1880's near the northeast corner of the state.
McLouth's population? Not much, even today. And in the days of the outdoor movies it was maybe 500.
Okay. So it's not a city. Never was. But I bet the patrons of Denver's 21st century cinema won't enjoy it any more than we enjoyed ours in the thirties.
In both instances, as is often the case, money was the motivator.
In the 1930's, when I was a boy, the U.S. midwest was being ravaged simultaneously by depression and drought. Merchants in crossroad hamlets were suffering right along with city financiers.
Like today, people were reluctant to spend money even when they had it. Like today, folks often just stayed out of stores.
Well, as these hard times continued to crawl by, someone in McLouth got an idea how prospective customers might be lured "downtown" (Union Street) at least one day a week.
Give them something for nothing. Oldest trick in the book.
And so it was that McLouth merchants made a deal with a fellow who had a projector and temporary screen and access to cheap movies.
Presto! Saturday night movies. For free.
Seating? No problem. Set a bunch of planks in rows on concrete blocks on a vacant lot across the street from the postoffice and the city bandstand.
Sure, there was lots of squirming on those planks, but hey, it was free, wasn't it?
It beat driving six miles to Oskaloosa or ten miles to Tonganoxie and paying a quarter for a ticket to a real theater.
And since it didn't get dark enough to start the show until 9 o'clock there was plenty of time for waiting townspeople and farm families to drop by Dutch Chapman's grocery store and Red Luse's appliance shop and get a hamburger at Ott Harding's restaurant (which also was the only place in towm you could buy a beer).
I never really knew how McLouth's plan worked out financially. We kids didn't care.
Of course the 2009 Denver project isn't going to be free at all. It requires a temporary grandstand and tickets will be $15 or $20.
Obviously with this sort of outdoor event you have to be concerned about rain.
In dust-bowl Kansas in the 1930s that wasn't much of a worry. It hardly rained there for years.