For many years, our family ran a summer theatre in the only theater in town. In its beginning days, it had been a vaudeville house. There were only a few in the whole valley, and our town had had two.
One closed long ago and is now a plumbing shop. The high back end of that building was used for flying in scenery and is a dead giveaway to its past, as are the words chiseled into the stone on the front of the building, “Gray’s Opera House.”
Even though our town was the only one I knew of in the valley with two vaudeville theaters running simultaneously, it was a small town and still is. Probably the only reason it could support two was because it was the last town all the way to the west gate of Yellowstone National Park with much in the way of entertainment, and it drew in people for a hundred miles.
The theater our family ran was called “The Roxy” and saw its share of change over the years. When movies came out, it changed to a movie theater. My parents took us to see “The Sound of Music” and “The Ten Commandments” there. I remember seeing one of the first cartoons I ever watched in that theater. It was “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and I thought it was one of the best shows ever. But the building was shuttered as videos came out and attendance dropped. It was after it had been closed for some years that our family had the opportunity of running it for live productions.
One evening, as we were getting ready to do one of our melodramas, an old man came in. He had very little money and, therefore, didn’t plan to stay for the show, but he asked if he could come in and reminisce for a moment about the days of his youth.
I told him I could do better than that. I invited him to watch the show for free as my guest, and I even got him a bag of popcorn. I told him I had to get ready for the production, but I would love to visit with him afterward if he had a few minutes. He thanked me for my offer and took his seat.
As the play progressed, I heard his booming laughter, loud booing of the villain, and cheering for the hero throughout the hall. After the production, I slipped into a seat beside him, and he began to talk.
“Thank you for letting me stay. I haven’t laughed that hard in years. I think your melodrama was about as close to the old vaudeville shows as anything there is today.”
He talked about how he worked hard all week and then came to the theater on weekends. For only a nickel, he could get in for a show. He seldom had money for popcorn, but occasionally he would splurge. He talked about actors he had met, some going on to become famous movie stars.
“You know, back in those days, Main Street was not just the main street; it was about the only street, and it wasn’t paved,” he said. “It was packed down more than most but was still quite muddy after a rain.”
He paused and smiled. “I remember when we got the stop light. The mayor and city council thought that if we got a stop light, it would show we were progressive and it would bring more people into our small community so we could show we were a real town. They said that one stoplight would lead to two, and two to three, as our community grew. We really didn’t need a stoplight at all, but they put it in anyway.
“But then there was an electric bill for it. I heard they shut the light off except on days when there would be a lot of people coming into town, mostly on the weekend. They still didn’t need it, but they felt it impressed people. I think it mostly annoyed everyone, and we mostly ignored it and went through the intersection as we always had.”
He laughed. “And we still only have one stoplight after all these years. It’s still mostly an annoyance, and I’m sure it didn’t make our town any bigger. But we are a real town.”
The post A Real Town first appeared on Meridian Magazine.