I remember way back when I went to the movies on a Saturday afternoon.
The movie cost ten cents and for 25 cents more I could get a drink, a box of popcorn and a candy.
Our nephew and grandnephew were here and went to see the new star wars movie over the Christmas holidays in Springfield.
They paid $12 to get into the show and spent $18 for a big box of popcorn and two drinks.
All I can say is, what happened?
When I was a teen a group of us would go to the drive-in movies and hide two or three in the trunk of the car to save the dollar per person charge to get in.
Joyce and I used to go to the Pacific drive-in on Point Loma in San Diego when we were married and several times the fog would roll in from the ocean and blot out the screen and we would get a free pass for another showing. Sometimes we did not even realize it had happened and I will leave it to your imagination as to why we did not notice the screen was no longer visible.
There was a time when I worked on TV sets and I would get calls to repair sets and the woman calling would tell me not to come until after the soap operas were over, even though the screen was rolling or not visible at all because they could at least hear the show.
More than once I was called to very nice expensive homes to repair TV sets.
They seemed to always have the little fru-fru dogs and when I would get behind the big TV consoles I would find bones the inhabitants had given the dogs (who never left the house) had left there for future gnawing.
Once I went to a home that had a roof antenna someone had installed.
The cable coming down from the roof allowed the rain to flow right down the cable and behind the TV set.
The owners had a plastic Cool Whip container to catch the drip behind the console TV.
Once I was on a call with the guy I worked for at the time.
The housewife who sent the call had gone to high school with him and evidently her then marriage was not going well so as I was behind the TV trying to repair it, she was making out with the boss on the living room couch.
I must admit seeing that going on made it difficult to concentrate on my work.
Another time I remember going to a lake house to fix a TV.
The set needed a new picture tube.
I had to get it from the house to my van and it was too much for me to do alone.
There were two teen-age girls there and it was summer so the two of them grabbed one end of the console while I took the other side and we carried it to the van.
What was odd about it was the driveway was all rocks and the two of them were barefoot.
I could hardly manage those rocks with shoes on me.
Another call took me to a home of an old woman.
The house had cages all along the living room wall with cats and dogs stacked half-way up the wall.
The house reeked of animal waste.
As I was working on the set I asked her, "well what do you think?"
She replied, "I don't think you know what you are doing!"
I did fix the set and was happy never to have to go back there.
This was long before we thought about animal rights or anything like that.
Today is just one of those days when memories are triggered by Joyce and I sitting and talking.
