Movies, mischief and mayhem

(Second of three installments)

Hal C. Wingo was a magazine journalist and editor with Time Inc. whose career spanned 33 years working for the weekly Life Magazine and later People Magazine. He is now retired and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Life on Church Square was pretty much a 24/7 adventure, and on the mistaken assumption that preachers’ kids would stay out of trouble, our parents gave us plenty of room to test that notion. These are a few of the things which still get talked about  among the good people of the Baptist and Methodist churches.

One  Church Square perk we relished was free admission to the Crystal,  paying only the five cent tax. This easy access turned the Crystal into the petri dish of my life-long addiction to movies.   Every time I  entered the theater, I fell in love with the heroines of Hollywood’s Golden era---Lana Turner, Hedy Lamar,

Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, Katherine Hepburn---but my most unwavering devotion was always reserved for Greer Garson, she of the mile high cheekbones and the most luscious  larynx God ever planted in a human.  She later became the first screen legend I would ever personally meet and interview.

Even five cents admission to the Crystal was real money back then, and one summer day David and I came up with a scheme to have our own stash of free tickets. 

Decked out as our cowboy egos Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy, we walked straight up to the theater’s ticket booth and while David began waving his cap gun and shouting “this is a hold up” I reached inside the glass opening and grabbed the entire spool of tickets.

The cashier was so startled, or more likely amused, that she said nothing as we ran back across the street and dove into a small dip in the Minter’s side lawn, figuring we had pulled it off.  Within less than a minute the manager called Mrs. Minter and we were forced marched back across the street to return the booty and apologize profusely. The only thing on our minds that day as we were sent to our rooms was to look at each other knowing we were both thinking, “next time we’ll never a better hideout”.

Our fidelity to The Crystal could have been a clue to my destiny as one of the founding editors of PEOPLE magazine, though David’s career led him to become a distinguished university scholar, author of several books on American literature and ultimately provost of Rice University.   Church Square intelligence score for faux cowboys:  Advantage Methodists.

FROM EARL TO ETERNITY:   Every Sunday in church we were admonished to pray for the sick in the firm belief that God could flip any health issue he chose to.  We had never really encountered anyone at death’s door until one day when we noticed police barricades across the street on the south side of Church Square.  Mother explained that Earl, a teenager who lived directly across from our house, was so ill that Dr. Holmes had requested the barricades to prevent any disturbing noises from passing traffic.

Sitting on our front steps talking about Early, we decided he needed some major cheering up, so we sneaked into our kitchen to select the elements for a marching band—pots, pans, cookie sheets or anything we could hit with a wooden spoon for maximum effect.  Starting at the point of the barricades in front of the Baptist Church, we marched down the sidewalk, banging on the pots and shouting, “Cheer up, Earl, Cheer up”.   Half way down the block my mother came flying out the front door, herding us quickly out of sight and into silence.

At Earl’s funeral soon thereafter, I looked down at his cold, still face and couldn’t resist whispering, “Sorry, Earl. We only wanted to help”. Years later the Earl incident became my “To Kill A Mockingbird” moment when I read for the first time in Harper Lee’s novel the reference to the small town practice of closing off the street from traffic when townspeople were seriously ill in their homes.

THE SECRET SMOKERS CLUB:  One thing we always noticed on The Crystal’s screen was how cool cigarette smoking looked. Humphrey Bogart must have used lip glue from the way he could dangle a lit cigarette.  Even though the twins and I were only six at the time, we found a way to get a few packs for ourselves, thanks to the trusting nature of merchants back then.

After scouting out a large tree behind the Baptist church annex to serve as The Smokers’ Club secret meeting place, David and I walked around the corner to the Red and White grocery where his family had a charge account and where his siblings got their smokes.  Reaching the counter, which we could barely see over, David said to the clerk, “Buddy sent me to pick up three packs of Camels”.  That was my cue to pipe in with “don’t forget Appie’s two Lucky Strikes and one pack of Old Golds”.  Without missing a beat, the clerk handed us the cigarettes  and

David said “charge it” as we scurried out the door.

Back at our hiding spot, the four of us met regularly for a few days and smoked just enough to convince ourselves that maybe adults weren’t so smart after all.  Smoking seemed highly overrated.  Plus, it made you cough.

In the final installment Wingo tells the of the biggest Church Square caper he and David pulled, which may or may not have influenced his father’s announcement that he felt called to another ministry away from Gonzales.