The El Rey Theater took on a timeless quality.  It had always been there.  It would go endlessly on, before the war began and after it would end.

I spent either Saturday or Sunday there–sometimes both!  With luck it became a total experience, the determining factor being how much money I was given.

The movie itself cost a dime.  I’d always angle for 25 cents.  That bought, in addition to admission, lunch.  A burger at the small cafe next to the El Rey cost 15 cents.  I’d order and then, as I ate, contemplate the various signs on the walls.  One especially never failed to hold my attention:

The skunk sat on the stump.  The skunk thought the stump stunk.  The stump thought the skunk stunk.  Who do you think stunk, the skunk or the stump.

The enigmas of the universe arrayed before me on the walls of the cafe!

If I’d been given a nickel extra I bought candy.  Hershey bars were always high on my list. I’d sit in the darkened theater, breaking off two segments at a time.  On my tongue I’d let them dissolve until they filled every nook and cranny of my mouth.  Milk Duds often won out, though, because they lasted so much longer.  Sometimes until the middle of the double feature.

The movie experience had a stately, almost formulaic sense about it.  I always tried to be as early in line as possible.  That meant I would get into the theater and be able to claim my favorite seat:  the fourth row in the right (the first three were reserved as loges) next to the aisle.  Once there I’d wait until the lights dimmed.  As they did, a curtain would be drawn to the sides of the screen, clacking along as it went.  Then came in orderly sequence the newsreel, the cartoon, the previews of coming attractions and then the double feature, the first usually in color and the second often black and white.

While the newsreel regularly featured “The March of Time,” I was partial to MovieTone News.  I liked the voice of the narrator.  Lowell Thomas.  The gridiron!  New inventions!  The war!  Celebrities!  Politics!

I likewise was partial to Disney cartoons.  Loony Tunes & Merry Melodies.

Still, I was a cartoon omnivore, uncritically consuming anything, from  Woody Woodpecker

with his maniacal laugh to Little Lulu.  

I always like it when the cartoons were about the war.

 The second film of the double feature often was a comedy.

I paid special attention to previews.   The El Rey featured all sorts of movies:  mysteries, adventures, westerns.  My preference though was war movies.   I always enjoyed movies about the war in Europe.

Still, they were never quite as entertaining as those about the war in the Pacific, especially when they starred John Wayne.

I could never quite understand why there had to be so much kissing in them.  I’d much rather see him single handedly destroy the hated enemy.

So, after four hours I’d stagger drunkenly from the theater into the light of day, the afternoon sunlight hurting my eyes.