Friday, May 27, 2005
A Trip To The Ol' Home Town
The old Plains Theater: Corruption! Snake oil salesmen! Con artists! Four flushers!
Well, I'm headed out to Roswell to visit my ailing Mom for a couple of days. It's always a real treat to go back out there. It left there in 1985, and it's hardly changed at all. All the same raggedy-ass buildings line the cluttered streets overgrown with weeds. Of course, the buildings have different names on them now, going from a dry-cleaner to a butcher shop to a book store to an insurance agency to who-knows-what next.
The Plains Theater is one of those changelings. When I was a kid, it was the only theater in town, right there on Main Street downtown. A couple of others went in and out from time to time - "The Yucca" and "The Chief," but they ended up showing Mexican movies in the end, and are now gone forever. But the Plains hung on for many years, until some visionary opened up the "Cinema One" in about 1970 or so on the north end of town. Get this: it had two theaters in one building. Can you imagine? Two theaters in one building? You gotta be kidding. How could The Plains compete?
But The Plains will always have a special spot in my heart. The first movie I remember seeing there was "The Lost World" when I was about seven. My brothers took me, and the movie scared the living shit out of me. To see it now, it's really a joke. Irwin Allen glued fake fins on to some garden lizards and magnified their asses about 1,000 times. The geckoes who hang out on my front porch snagging bugs every night are a lot scarier. And I have them named.
But The Plains is no longer The Plains. Hasn't been for years. Last time I was there, it was "The International UFO Museum." What a travesty, stepping on my childhood memories to shill a few geeks. Charlatans! They even have a fake UFO crashed into the corner wall outside. Chiselers! Oh, and a display of that ridiculous alien autopsy. Swindlers!
I guess "you can't go home," eh?
Anyway, I'll be taking a little hiatus for a few days. Make sure and visit the Cheesehead, Coconut Bob, Wastnawa, and my Texas buddies Baboon Pirates and Zippo while I'm gone, and I'll see you next week!
