Like any new kid on the block I investigated everything at hand. It was fun to sit on the bank across the street from the White Castle and watch the people come and go. You could see the cooks frying the burgers and serving the customers. That was when everyone ate at the counter on those neat seats you could twirl around on. I loved going there, which we got to do now and then.

The floors were black and white small hexagon tiles with a pattern that was fun to visually trace while I waited for my treat. In the winter I would order chili and a hamburger. We always drank water with our orders but mom and dad had coffee. We didn’t know anything about soda pop (which my dentist says accounts for my good teeth). I can see those small round heavy white bowls of chili yet. Best of all you got a little package of oyster crackers which I thought were grand. I well remember the smell of onions on the back of the grille while your burger fried. When it was finished the cook would scoop up the onions with the burger and put it in a bun. Louis and I thought there was nothing better in the whole world than burgers at White Castle.

When we were finished dad would announce we needed to hurry to get to the show on time. It was usually at the Town Theatre which was kind of a blue collar theatre. Dad liked to go there because we could see a matinee of two shows, see the evening shows and then settle down for the midnight shows. All this for the price of one ticket. When you’re a kid it was a good life. Incidentally, at our house, they were not “movies”……….they were “shows” or “picture shows”.

At that time they would usually have a stage show between the afternoon and evening movie. I remember one time a man led a white horse onto the stage with a pretty lady in a long red satin dress, long blonde hair and a large brimmed red hat. I thought she was the most beautiful lady I had ever seen. She was sitting side-saddle with her dress all spread out on the back of the horse. She sang a couple of songs before moving off the stage. My dad was not musical at all and he would always suffer through that to get back to his favorite…either comedy or Western’s. I saw every cowboy on a horse from the time I was four until we left Omaha for Missouri. We saw a lot of Abbot and Costello, Bob Hope, Burns and Allen……..it gave dad a lift from after a week of hard work. Mom, as always, liked anything dad did………..and I guess Louis and I did too. Sometimes dad would go to a musical because he knew mom loved them so.

I’ll never forget one time at the midnight show, it was “The Were-Wolf. I didn’t want to see it because I knew it would be scary. Of course there was no hope of avoiding it because dad always wanted to see everything. Most of the time I kept my eyes shut because as the movie progressed a fortune teller saw a star with a circle around it in the palm of his hand which she knew was the mark of the were-wolf. She ran from the wagon and in no time his teeth started growing and his hands turned to paws with claws, he was the scariest thing I’d ever seen. Of course the beautiful damsel was his target…….in his real state he loved her…when he was a wolf he wanted to kill her. I know…….you’re thinking Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde…..with Spencer Tracy and poor Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. I also was privileged to see the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and later Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man with Lon Chaney. I saw every horror movie any of them made and their sons as well. I should say I “heard” them because most of the time my hands were over my eyes.

Don’t marvel that I remember all that………I couldn’t FORGET them. I’m like dad. He could recite what everyone in the movie said and with the actions implied. Sometimes a good memory isn’t a good thing…….especially on things you would like to forget.

During the war years we saw wonderful movies of strength and courage so that we had a steady diet of morals in the right way. Since we didn’t go to church at that time it was almost spiritual to see some of the movies we did.

I digress. Talking about movies made me fast-forward a few years but since I got caught up in them you got a preview of things to come. Right now, chili and burgers at White Castles is where we shall stop. I hope you got to eat some of them back when they were ………..REALLY good………..from a kid’s standpoint.

Until tomorrow,

Essentially Esther