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How to make an entrance

Have you been spending time thinking of things you used to do — things you’d like to do again but can’t or won’t? I have.

Tom Brindley’s recent column about small town movies and small town dreams together with our community’s discussion of projected changes to the old Maltz, now State theater, got my memory sorter clanking away. It doesn’t work nearly as well as it used to: threw off a file of unrelated stuff having to do with teaching, farming, and sailing.

But tucked in that old memory file — misfiled there among those earthly pursuits — was a State theater movie memory being toted by a beaming smile. Here’s the contents of the entire file:

There’s a memory of teaching at ACC in there. I’d like to do that again. I mostly taught vets. Good folks vets, they made teaching fun and interesting and taught the instructor a thing or two.

I’d like to drive my old tractor again. It’s there in connection with a memory of pulling a 3-bottom plow turning straight furrows. I can still hear the engine of my Allis Chalmers D17 snort and see its exhaust pipe turn cherry red in the gloaming. There’s also a recollection of me mingling with a herd of cattle on summer pasture, peering into their eyes seeking validation — observing again the gentle daftness so pervasive there.

A couple sailing memories: one on a lake freighter traveling the length of Lake Superior, the other floating at anchor in a summer fog. I’d like to do both again.

All good memories, but it’s not likely I’ll replicate a one of them.

But then there’s that misfiled State theater movie memory toted by a beaming smile that also shouts: “Let’s do this again!”

Do what again?

My buddies and I, fresh from our Sunday morning’s religious instruction, used to sneak into the matinee at the Maltz Theatre. That smile wants me to do it again. Do you have any idea how hard it is to ignore a beaming, shouting smile?

I was 8-10 years old at the time, at the peak of my sneaking prowess. Now, I’m a retired judge for heaven’s sake. If I got caught it would be most embarrassing and then too, if given the chance, some judges I know would love to throw the book at me. But that smile toting a memory keeps pestering, nagging — urging.

So, I cased the joint.

The outside exit door still opens onto Park Place. It used to be a knobless double door with one side having a full length flange that partially covered the other side when both were closed. Expert insertion of a whittled stick into that flange would allow for the door’s opening.

Inside, it was down the ramp then right to the stage. With a silence beyond our years — behind the screen showing previews in reverse projection, past giant speakers bellowing the sounds of them — we would pass on tiptoe to the opposite side’s interior exit door. Opening it quietly, only slightly, we would crawl through to the first row seats assembling there hunched, giddy, barely breathing.

But things have changed. The exterior door has been replaced with a knobless, flangeless, single door — nothing left to pry. Gaining admission will require an inside job. Funds will have to be raised to cover the admission of a conspirator to surreptitiously place a door wedge sufficient to an illicit access.

I’ll need to recruit some of the old crew. I wonder if Carol, “Noots” Ellery Antkowiak would be up for it? Noots knows the ropes and would make a great advance person, diverting the ushers, placing the door wedge — fronting once again a successful, clandestine theater entrance.

Is there a lesson here? Maybe this: beware of misfiled memories toted by smiles that beam and shout.

See you at the movies.

Doug Pugh’s Vignettes runs bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached via email at pughda@gmail.com.

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