Have you watched Cinema Paradiso yet? Or John Goodman’s “Matinee? You gotta go get ‘em!!
Here’s a good reminder. Before we continue our story, here’s one last look at the Paradise Theater today in it’s sad state, although still loved by the guys:
You can see why Tom couldn’t find it his last trip to Cotter. He’d remembered it being large and majestic. A proud Paradise Theater most grand. But, let’s move on.
The “boys,” including cousin Oliver, lived in Cotter for over eight years. “Tommy” was the youngest, at 2, when they moved there. Cousin Oliver was 5, Jimmy was 7 and Dickie was 17, going on 18.
Times were good when they moved there in 1946. WWII was just ove, it was a big railroad town, and business was booming. (See here. You’ll be glad you did.) There was even a big railroad roundhouse at the edge of town. Anyone remember those?
The U. S. government was also employing masses of workers to build the Bull Shoals Dam on the White River just north of Cotter. It was an impressive project, employing hundreds and hundreds of people, taking several years to complete. It was started in 1947 and completed in 1951. President Truman came to Cotter on the train to dedicate the dam and Tom remembers seeing him.
But, then, times got tough. Workers left in droves and the railroad roundhouse shut down. Tom’s dad fell on hard times, as well, and lost both the Paradise Theater and one he owned in a nearby town. He kept running and managing theaters, though, driving around to several different little towns in the area, having four or five he ran over the years.
Mr. Andrews also had to make trips to Memphis and other places in managing the theaters he did and was gone a lot. Tom’s parents divorced when Tom was eight, but they stayed in Cotter for a couple of years longer.
As the tides of fortune came and went, the Andrews family moved around within the town a lot. So, when we were there we had to tour all around town to try to find them all. There were so many and of such diverse nature that the boys had trouble recalling them all, needing cousin Oliver’s input, as well.
The main one they remembered was their first. Here it is with Oliver (l.) & the “boys” standing in front.
Here are a couple more views.
As you can see, it was a typical frame house of the times. The elderly man who lives there now welcomed us all in when the boys knocked on his door to explain the commotion out front. Although the man is very proud of him home and how well he’s taken care of it, the boys were most disappointed that all of the rooms and walls had been moved around and changed for other uses. Nothing was in the same place, although they had fun remembering exactly how it was and what was where.
I thought two of the most delightful remembrances were of the neighborhood. (Besides where all of the girls lived, as all four of them seemed to have plenty of girlfriends! I was not surprised, since they were all very good looking as boys and quite charming, even then, I hear.)
The first was the culvert down the hill, under which Oliver and Tom remembered playing, using it as their tunnel.
The second I mentioned before. The scary church high on a corner just like the one picture below up from the house . . .
except that the “scary” one has a big tower rising over the vestibule with high dark green/blue/red very Gothic stained glass windows, as well large Gothic windows all around.
According to Tom, when he was little, he & his mother walked several blocks to the First Baptist (Southern Baptist, it declares proudly on the front) Church . . .
and had to pass the scary church. Tommy, being curious, asked his mom why they didn’t go there. The Methodists worshiped there, she told him, but the way she said the word “Methodists” as they passed, along with the looks of the building, little Tommy was most uncertain about and suspicious of Methodists for many years to come.
There are a lot more houses and stories in Cotter, but I’ll save some of those for next time. As you think back on your young childhood, do you have memories like Tom’s and his brothers and cousin? Places you played, things you mistakenly thought, the size of things around you?
Share some of your childhood memories with me (& Tom) today. Please!!
Stay tuned. Lots more to come. (Can you believe we did all of our tour in four days and it’s taking me three months + to tell it?)
To be continued . . .
I have put Cinema Paradiso on my Netflix list. This is so neat! I have driven down the street where I grew up, and everything looks smaller than I remember. There were some nice pin oak trees in front of our house that are all gone now-disease, I hear. Also, when my grandmother died a couple of years ago, after her funeral we drove through the old neighborhood where my mother grew up, and it was so fun having her tell us where everyone lived and where she played. Her old house burned down a few years ago and Yellow Creek is now a hunting club, but we still had a great time.
One more thing-both of my grandfathers worked on the Frisco railroad in southwest Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Growing up in Corning, Arkansas, the biggest holiday of the year, in my memory, was not Christmas but the 4th of July! Farmers had their crops “laid by” by then, and the whole family went to the picnic. There weren’t any stores that stayed open, so pretty much the whole town celebrated. The festivities began with a parade at 9 or 10 am, and it was the biggest parade known to man. Float after float after float, farm equipment, kids on bicycles, the Corning High School Marching Band, horses and riders, antique cars, convertibles with the teenage girls riding who were going to be in the Miss Independence Day Pageant later in the day. You name it, it was in that parade. People came out by the droves!! Oh, and I forgot the politicians walking the parade route. The parade route ended at the picnic grounds. Fun to be had by all with all the trappings. Big swing rides. Little swing ridges. Hamburgers. Hot Dogs. Barbecue. Bingo. Pony rides. Ferris wheel. The Rhodes Family and others performed on stage. In the afternoon, the beauty contest. We had more than one winner go on to do well in the Miss Arkansas Pageant. Last of all, close to midnight, there was a drawing for a Cadillac. Then the biggest fireworks display below the Mason-Dixon line. There were people everywhere. Tens of Thousands. No matter where you had moved, you were back in town for the 4th of July! These are my memories.
After I moved away, for many years, I just didn’t make it back. But I told everybody how big and fantastic it was. Then one year, not too terribly long ago, Doris and I went. Got there for the parade. Wasn’t as big as I remembered. Wasn’t nearly as hard to find a good place to watch. And when we got to the picnic grounds, there weren’t nearly as many cars, and we were able to park almost right in the park itself and only had to step across the gravel lane to the festivities. And it no longer took a whole day to walk over the entire area! Not nearly as many people. I’m sure you can understand my disappointment that people just don’t know how to celebrate anymore. Or………could it be my memory does not serve me?
I lived in the same house from birth to marriage and loved the four sycamore trees out front that provided much needed shade for our house in the hot San Joaquin Valley of CA. A neighbor gave me a small seedling of an acacia tree when I was rather small that grew into a nice large tree that I considered my own. I had a lot of allergies (still do, for that matter) so Dad became convinced that it must be the acacia tree at fault. Being the good father that he was, he cut down the tree. Many years later, and after his passing, I finally went through the allergy tests. To my surprise, I am very allergic to sycamore trees. Can’t wait to tell Dad when we meet again in heaven. By the way, the house is now long gone with a new freeway running through our acre of property.
I have Cinema Paradiso on my Neflix queue … apparently the other, “Matinee” is not available through Netflix. For the record, most movies that others recommend to us … we simply did not enjoy. I hope you don’t disappoint us!!!
Growing up in Sheffield (Alabama) and, later, visiting in the summers, was a great time of my life. It was small town as it comes, with those same kinds of houses. My grandparents were prominent people, so for the most part, we had to behave, but we had LOTS of fun playing on the bluffs overlooking the Tennessee River, at a place where Gen. Jackson camped his troops during “that war” we lost. We were into all kinds of mischief, but not destructive. Just kids being kids. My grandmother had pecan trees in the front and a black walnut tree in the backyard. Loved those nuts and would love to have them today.
On Saturdays, we would walk to town (maybe a mile or mile and a half) and watch a movie, get snacks, and buy something at the 5&10 cent store next to the movie theater … great memories. I miss that part of my life because we almost never get back to that part of the country and when we do, it’s for a funeral and we’re so limited in the time we have, that we can’t go back and visit the old home places.
With the drug dealers and illegals taking over the neighborhoods, it’s not a very safe place to go these days anyway.
I’ve been able to travel to a few of the houses where I used to live. I have been universally disappointed with their condition. It seems others didn’t love them as much as we did when we lived in them. And then there was the house I lived in from grade one through the middle of grade four. I recently got photos of how it looked when we lived in it, complete with me and a sister or two on the porch. I was shocked at how poor a house it was.
It was a cheap house. We were a lot poorer than I remembered. Even our clothes in the photos were poor and a little shabby — except for the Sunday clothes. Those didn’t fit well but they were spiffy!
I’ve returned to a few church buildings my father and I built when I was a child. All of them were tiny in reality, huge in my memory.