My sisters and I were thrilled when our dad pulled out of a worn cardboard box a secondhand movie projector from Uncle Johnny, our mom's eldest brother. Dad had no movie camera for home movies, so all we ever watched were the same three single spool film shorts, and always in the same sequence. First there was a western featuring a posse chasing after a gang of robbers, then a Sinbad the Sailor cartoon, and finally a scene from an Abbot and Costello movie with Lou Costello in the wrestling ring. Our home theater was our first floor garden apartment's little dinette and the wall was our screen. There was no sound and each film was in grand and glorious black and white.
Perhaps twice a year on a Friday or Saturday evening my sisters and I would plead with our dad to show the movies. He was baffled by the joy it brought us, but our joyfulness brought joy to him as well. For some reason, our mom never joined in. It was just us kids and our dad.
In addition to the movies themselves, I got a kick out of watching Dad spool the film through the projector, and when it was over, watching the projector mechanically unwind the film. One time, he let me try my hand at spooling, but I clumsily got mixed up. I had minimal mechanical memory and that is probably why I never joined the audio visual squad at school.
Eventually, the projector broke down and that was the end of our dinette movie theater. Dad kept the cylinder shaped projection lens. For over a decade it had a second life as a makeshift magnifying glass, much like a jeweler's eyepiece.
My sisters and I look back at this little childhood memory with fondness. More so than the movies, it was the intimacy we shared with each other, and most importantly, with our dad that we will always cherish.
Steve T
June 2021
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