Rialto Theater and other stuff
When I was growing up in my little town in South Texas we had one movie theater called the "Rialto" right downtown. Next to the theater was a barber shop, complete with a red and white rotating pole outside. To the right was a drug store with a soda fountain and to the right of that was a record shop. The music was on a large round LP record or a little one (45) with a big hole in the middle. There was only one song on each side, well, sometimes there were two. You could listen to any record you wanted to by stepping into a booth with a turntable and listening to the recording. That way you didn't get stuck with a song you didn't like and a big hole in your pocketbook.
Since we didn't have TV, the news was filtered down to us via the newspaper or the news at the "picture show". Advertisements for local businesses came on the screen first, then the Movietone news, the feature and last, the cartoon. You could sit through the whole thing again without being charged or run off. The movies were usually ones with Bud Abbot and Lou Costello or Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, all of whom were going on the road to somewhere like Zanzibar or Casablanca. The heroes were cowboys or brave young men going off to war played by young men who didn't go off to war but made us believe they did. Young girls were left crying at the train station, very often not realizing that they were pregnant. It didn't dawn on us that a woman could have a baby without being married, like in the movie "To Each His Own". It was years before I figured that one out.
You could go to a movie then and never have to witness "the primal scene". We probably wouldn't have known what they were doing anyway since nobody bothered to explain such things to us then. I never had to sit through a movie with naked, writhing bodies on the screen or listen to cursing and act like it was perfectly okay with me and my date.
Many years passed before I realized that black people had to sit in the balcony of the theater. All I knew was that they wouldn't let us sit up there even though I thought it might be fun, sitting up there in the balcony and looking down on everyone. I really didn't dwell on it much because at that time I wasn't aware of the insidious and damaging nature of the segregation that was all around me.
Which reminds me.....one time when I was about 14 my parents let me take a bus to San Antonio to visit my aunt. It was a Greyhound bus and it stopped in almost every little town on the way. When we got to Karnes City, we got off so the driver could take a break. I went over to the water fountain and as I bent over to drink, the bus driver tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Little lady, you can't drink from this fountain." I asked why not and he pointed to a sign above it which said "colored water". I said "Yes, I wanted to see what color the water was." He said, "No this is for black people." Well, I can tell you that the only difference was that the "colored" water fountain was set in the wall quite a bit lower than the other so, of course, they had to bend over, (or bow), to drink. Such lengths some people went to in order to discriminate!
Guess I'd better wrap it up now before you get tired of reading. Naturally this old brain has a lot more memories to share. To be continued
Since we didn't have TV, the news was filtered down to us via the newspaper or the news at the "picture show". Advertisements for local businesses came on the screen first, then the Movietone news, the feature and last, the cartoon. You could sit through the whole thing again without being charged or run off. The movies were usually ones with Bud Abbot and Lou Costello or Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, all of whom were going on the road to somewhere like Zanzibar or Casablanca. The heroes were cowboys or brave young men going off to war played by young men who didn't go off to war but made us believe they did. Young girls were left crying at the train station, very often not realizing that they were pregnant. It didn't dawn on us that a woman could have a baby without being married, like in the movie "To Each His Own". It was years before I figured that one out.
You could go to a movie then and never have to witness "the primal scene". We probably wouldn't have known what they were doing anyway since nobody bothered to explain such things to us then. I never had to sit through a movie with naked, writhing bodies on the screen or listen to cursing and act like it was perfectly okay with me and my date.
Many years passed before I realized that black people had to sit in the balcony of the theater. All I knew was that they wouldn't let us sit up there even though I thought it might be fun, sitting up there in the balcony and looking down on everyone. I really didn't dwell on it much because at that time I wasn't aware of the insidious and damaging nature of the segregation that was all around me.
Which reminds me.....one time when I was about 14 my parents let me take a bus to San Antonio to visit my aunt. It was a Greyhound bus and it stopped in almost every little town on the way. When we got to Karnes City, we got off so the driver could take a break. I went over to the water fountain and as I bent over to drink, the bus driver tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Little lady, you can't drink from this fountain." I asked why not and he pointed to a sign above it which said "colored water". I said "Yes, I wanted to see what color the water was." He said, "No this is for black people." Well, I can tell you that the only difference was that the "colored" water fountain was set in the wall quite a bit lower than the other so, of course, they had to bend over, (or bow), to drink. Such lengths some people went to in order to discriminate!
Guess I'd better wrap it up now before you get tired of reading. Naturally this old brain has a lot more memories to share. To be continued
I remember riding the bus at age 8 or 9 , from Austin to Huntsville in East Texas where my grandparents, aunts and cousins lived. I also wondered why there were separate water fountains, and substandard bathrooms, too, around back of the buildings in some of the little towns. It seemed so mean.
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