Through a Screen, Darkly

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Aug. 23, 2009

The other day, someone I was speaking with said they were “privileged” to grow up in Chester County in the 1980s, when the county was coming into its own, culture-wise. Local art became noticed, local cuisine started developing, and local entertainment exploded.

And I scoffed.

Privately, of course. You have to keep the scoffing to yourself when you are a professional newspaper reporter and you occasionally deal with people who say scoff-worthy things. You never are quite certain that the person you are scoffing at will at some point be on your “People to Call For Important Quotes” list and who may remember all too clearly the time you scoffed at something he or she said. Because let me tell you, professional newspaper editors are not wholly sympathetic with the “Scoff Defense.” It dos not tend to go over well on deadline. Editors given the “Scoff Defense” tend to look at the reporters who have offered it up with the expression of someone who has found gum on the sole of their shoe and who wonders, “How soon can I get rid of this?”

But scoff I did. “Privileged?” I chortled, softly, in my head. “Cultural opportunities in Chester County, circa 1980?” I clucked, privately, without expression. “Mister, you must be thinking of a whole ‘nother Chester County than I’m thinking of,” I retorted, with no outward display whatsoever.

It’s the movie theater situation, you see. When I moved to Chester County in 1982, the area lacked two things: decent Chinese restaurants, and movie screens. If you wanted either of those, you were likely to end up in Delaware County and what’s the point of that, anyway. If I had the urge to go to Delaware County for a plate of good Chinese food and a nice action flick, I would have shot myself immediately, thank you very much.

If you want to talk privilege, culture-wise, then you have to take a look at my childhood in Cincinnati so as not to scoff too loudly. Where I grew up, we could walk to a movie theater, the Esquire, where you could see a decent first-or-second run movie for $1. Or you and your friends could see a good first-or-second run movie at the same theater for the same $1, provided the usher was not looking too closely when you opened the back door and let your friends in.

I saw, “Dirty Harry” there. I saw, “Let It Be” there. I saw “M*A*S*H” there, and “Straw Dogs” and “Shaft” and even “Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang.” Pretty much every movie I saw from 1965 to 1980 I saw at the Esquire.

The Esquire was there when I came into the world in the mid-1950s, and is still there as I type this. Except that now, it’s even better. You may have to pay closer to $10 to see a good first-or-second run film, but you have your choice of four or five movies as the theater now has three separate screening rooms. That is privilege. And if the usher is not looking too closely, you can skip from room to room and squeeze in all four or five movies on the same $10 ticket. That is, you might do so; I wouldn’t think of it.

Chester County, by the time I arrived, on the other hand had depopulated itself of just about al the decent movie theaters within its borders, perhaps not realizing that people were just as interested in seeing a good first-or-second run movie as they were in visiting the Herr’s Snack Factory or the Mushroom Museum. Gone were the Palace and Silver in Coatesville; the Met and the Oxford in Oxford; the Garden and the Harrison in West Chester; and even the Roselyn in West Grove. The Warner Theatre in West Chester, grand as is was, was open sporadically, as I remember, but even that was eventually relegated to the misty-eyed past. We were pretty much stuck with the Eric in West Goshen, which is now a K-Mart and which tells you about something about the cultural landscape of the county, circa 2009.

Folks I know who grew up in West Chester in the 1960s and 1970s have pleasant memories of seeing their fist movies at the Exton drive-in, which I remember mostly as the spot where some depressed fellow set himself on fire around Christmastime one year, then walked across the street to the Howard Johnson’s and bummed a cigarette from someone at the counter. I suppose that seeing a movie at an outdoor arena while inhaling the all-too-fresh aroma of the result of your little sister’s car-sickness episode is the definition of privilege to some, but for me, it’s just one more reason to scoff.

To myself, of course.