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Steve Sleightholm
Steve's Venezuela Memoirs
Saturday Movie - Tia Juana 1950
Steve Sleightholm's Venezuela Memoirs
Saturday Movie - Tia Juana 1950
It's Saturday and there is a horror movie at the club!!! Oh I can't wait
until after supper so my brother and I run over to the club and sit with our
buddies and watch the movie. I can't wait!!!
I sat in the shower playing marbles in the drain -- kind of difficult to get a
good shot with those little tiles. I turned the water onto cold, but there never
is cold water -- just hot and hotter. Sometimes the water was so hot that your
skin turned red. If I had been in trouble I usually daydreamed that I died and
my parents missed me so much and they regretted having mistreated me. I am 7
years old.
Sometimes I talked out loud to myself and I dealt with the mistreatment I had
experienced from my parents for some small misdeed. (Many years later they told
me that they used to stand at the kitchen sink window which was adjacent to the
bathroom window and they would both laugh quietly to themselves as they listened
to the tirades as I took a shower.)
Dressed now and sitting at the kitchen table with my brother eating supper. “Mom
has it in for me.” I tell my brother. She has given us both a bowl of split
green pea soup with bread. UGGHHHH!! This soup stinks and I don't want to eat it
and I go into my parents’ bedroom where they are having their nightly Manhattans
and listening to the Voice of American on the shortwave radio before they fix
their own supper after we are finished. I tell my mother I can't eat the soup --
“If you don't eat it you can't go to the movies” she tells me and Dad backs her
up. (I will not eat this soup today)
“NOOOO!!! don't threaten me with that” and head hanging I go back to the kitchen
and tell Bill that I may miss the movie. There has to be a way out. HAA!! There
is but it takes stealth. I tell my parents I have to go to the bathroom and I
carefully take the bowl of soup back to our bathroom and dump it into the toilet
and flush it down and then back to the kitchen. The gamble paid off -- my
parents had not left their bedroom while I was away. A few loud clicking sounds
of the spoon in the empty bowl and “I am finished, Mom.” She walks into the
kitchen and checks the bowls and says ok.
It's only 30 minutes until the movie starts and we live over near the new school
and the club house is over by the dike near the tennis courts. We grab 2 Bs each
from Mom, say adios and tear out of the house and run as fast as we can to the
club. We ran like the wind and arrived with time to spare. We went up to the
window and each bought a coke which cost a Medio and a Savoy chocolate candy bar
which cost a Locha and then over to the gate to the tennis courts to buy a
ticket and then we rushed to get the best seats.
Now, there is hierarchy to the seating. Small kids sat in front and then kids my
age sat on the screen-side of the courts nets which had been taken down for the
show and then older kids and parents behind them on the other side of the net
and then there was a covered shelter for those frequent occasions there was
rain. Me and my buddies sit together (Palmer Bazemore, Mike Peters, Phillip
Short, Gene Campbell, Jules Lang and in some instances Magarita Anez because she
was cool and could burp continually like I could and consequently I liked her a
lot). Movie begins with a newsreel: Update on the Korean Conflict, ladies
styles, new cars, etc. Next is the comedy: Tom & Jerry --- YEAAHHH!!
Then the main Feature: THEM
This was the time of threatened nuclear war and anything having to do with
radiation was worth making a movie about. THEM was about mutant gigantic ants
that were bigger than a car that lived in the drainage tunnels in Los Angeles.
GOSH they were big and when they moved they made a whirring sound that I can
hear in my brain today and they would grab a person in their pinchers and
squeeze them to death and they could push over cars and you couldn't kill them
with a machine gun only a flame thrower worked. It was terribly frightening...
Finally the movie was over but all of us were hyper after watching those and you
know what else, we had to go home and many of us did not come to the movies with
our parents who would provide protection because we knew that they--that
is--THEM were out there hiding in the dark under the houses on stilts between
the club and our homes.
My brother and I along with Gene Campbell started to walk home but we knew the
Ants were in the bushes because we could hear the bushes stirring and so we ran
as fast as our little legs would take us home. But--- that's not the end of it.
Bill and I went to bed. His bed was across the room from mine and the bathroom
was at the other side of the room. I lay in bed with my covers over my head and
tucked in under me so no ants could get me, but eventually I had to go to the
bathroom and I debated whether I should or not. I knew “they” were under the bed
and finally I had to go so I stood up and jumped off the bed out as far as I
could and ran to the bathroom, shut the door and turned on the light. --- see,
they could not stand the light.
When I finished I turned off the light so my eyes would adjust and peeked out to
see if “they” were out from under the bed – nope – I could see the glint in
their eyes, so I ran and leaped back into bed, covered myself and went to sleep.
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