Sunday, January 07, 2007

A Small Town is Good Enough for Me

Almost everybody trusted everybody else in a small town but it produced an amusing incident. A lawyer from an adjoining county subscribed to our paper. He either was a former resident or wanted to keep up with the area for business purposes. At any rate, each year when he received his subscription notice he would send a check “signed in blank” as he phrased it. He apparently would always misplace the notice and could not remember the amount so he would leave that blank and sign the check. Theoretically, we could have filled it out for any amount but he trusted us.

One year, however, he sent the check with the same phrase but not only left the amount blank but also failed to sign the check. I wrote him and chided him about being absent minded and he remitted the subscription price immediately.

Small towns, then as now, have a hard time keeping up with larger cities when competing for entertainment dollars. Stanton had a movie theater owned by a couple for many years but when the husband died his wife did not want to continue alone, although she tried for a while.

Her attempts to sell the theater also failed. Television was becoming popular and the cost of booking movies compared to the return in dollars was not sufficient to survive in such a small market.

Members of the local American Legion post felt the theater was essential to the well being of the community, particularly as a place for youth to go at night. They came up with a novel idea to retain the theater.

They determined it would cost about $100 a month to hire a part time theater manager and another $100 for film rental, maintenance and other overhead. The committee then went out and sold $10 memberships good for six months. They sold enough to cover the expected costs for that period. The membership entitled the owner and members of his family to attend any movie during that time. The show changed bills twice a week. There was not much cheaper entertainment anywhere, even in the 1950s.

A remarkable thing happened after the program got underway. Since Dad didn’t have to pony-up admission prices, his kids got extra money for concessions and they went a lot oftener because the ticket was prepaid. As a result, the Legion not only made expenses on their membership fees, they cleared about $1,000 a year on concessions.

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