Zelienople News Weekly, Wednesday, December 12th, 2001 – Editorial

Time goes by

Dennis H. Schaefer
Ohio

I grew up in Zelienople, as did both of my parents. Actually, my father was born and raised on a farm in Harmony Junction. But both parents graduated from Zelienople High School. I graduated from Seneca Valley.

My mother worked as an usher at the Strand Theater in 1944-45 while she was in high school. She remembers Judy Garland passing through one time and promoting a film that was at the Strand.

At that time, the Strand was owned by the Thomas family who later owned the Kaufmann Hotel.

The Strand was always the center of social life in Zelienople, particularly while I was growing up. I have so many memories connected to it. Some of my earliest are of starting to go to the movies alone when I was in elementary school.

The show on Friday night consisted of two showings or one, if there was a double feature.

Of course, as a youngster, I would go to the early show and from the time I could reach up to the ticket window and hand Mrs. Santoro my quarter; that’s how much the 12-and-under admission was when I started going.

I went just about every weekend. It didn’t really matter what the movie was. There were not really any “adult only” movies in those days. If there were, they didn’t make it to the Strand.

At the front of the theater, particularly on snowy winter nights, there was a wonderful glow from the lights on the marquee and from the glassed-in boxes on either side of the ticket window that displayed photos showing highlights of the current feature.

Just inside the door to the left was another display of photos showing highlights from coming attractions. And to the right was the concession stand; a window behind which was a tempting display candy and the popcorn machine from which two ladies dispensed 15-cent boxes of corn that I would pay a million now just to smell. Coca-Cola was a dime. A whole night of entertainment to be had for 50 cents.

From the lobby, you would enter the magical, slightly stuffy, twilight that was the Strand before curtain time. Friday night was unofficially kids’ night and the place was always packed with a fidgeting, squirming mass representing all of the town. High schoolers in the back rows with their dates, adolescents circling each other in the middle rows, mindful of the younger ones further down front squealing and pointing at their attempts to pair up with who would soon join sweaty hands with them in the dark.

When the film started, after previews and a cartoon, the crowd was reduced to a whisper by a short blond woman named Christine who would patrol the aisles with a giant flashlight, quickly descending on the culprit who indiscriminately whipped a sourball into a line of silhouetted heads or who suddenly lost the ability to whisper.

The first offense usually warranted a stern reprimand, the second would get you separated from your buddies to the other side of the theater, the third would find you out on the sidewalk in front of the theater, a sanction usually reserved only for those most starved for attention or likely headed to reform school.

If the movie was in the least bit interesting, your attempt to watch it was normally only interrupted by Christine’s shrill scolding of some offender, the almost constant flow of traffic headed up and down the aisles to the bathroom and snack bar, or the sharp quick pain of one of the aforementioned sourballs finding its target on your noggin.

The Strand was like a second home to grow up in. It witnessed my first nighttime venture to the perfect shared social event, my first struggle through three fourths of the movie to finally work up the nerve to hold hands or put my arm around or steal my first kiss. And that process was going on all around me, in all of its stages, in the warm, musty, grandma’s lap seats of the Strand.

I continued to go to the Strand, all through high school, even though the lure of dances or football and basketball games sometimes kept me away. I started going sometimes on Saturday or even Sunday nights when the theater was a very different place, absent the children and the giant flashlight.

I remember many of the films I saw, particularly the Jerry Lewis movies, Tarzan, Elvis and all of the scary movies with radiation-enlarged ants, Vincent Price and Sinbad the Sailor. Some of my fondest memories are of Saturday cartoon matinees during the holidays when admission was a can of fruit or vegetables placed in a box for the poor families.

I was very sad and frightened when the Strand closed its doors, becoming more frightened as time went on and the building sat, unsold and getting more and more run down.

I often commented to my family and Zelie friends that one of the first things I would do when I won the lottery would be to buy the Strand and return it and me to those times when we were both more sturdy and full of the wonderful mysteries of life.

I had almost resigned myself to what seemed to be the inevitable fate of the place when my mother sent me the newspaper article telling of the move to save and restore it.

Just sitting and writing this letter has opened a floodgate of memories and thoughts that revolve around the Strand and what it represents in my life. I fell as though I could write a book about the time and ways of life it has witnessed.

If only the place could talk, what stories it would tell.