Thursday, August 27, 2009 1:35 PM CDT
A traveling movie-man visits the village
By Rachel Sykes
It would soon be time for school to dismiss for the summer. The weather was very nice when Kathryn, a classmate, and I were on our way to her home at the end of the school day.
Kathryn’s parents had opened up a much-needed restaurant in town that year. I was looking forward to going there for the first time. We must have been sixth-graders.
Several feet in front of the small-town hall building, which was very close to the restaurant, we found ourselves facing a neatly attired man.
He asked a question that Kathryn answered. He then explained that he would be showing some movies at the town hall Friday and Saturday evenings.
He then looked at me directly. He had a big smile, appeared to be quite healthy with rosy cheeks, was trim and slender, and spoke fluently. As he spoke, I became very conscious of the fact that he was a wee bit shorter than I. The tall hat he wore masked that fact somewhat. My growth spurt came during seventh grade, when I grew 7 inches.
With a warm smile, he asked me what seemed to be a very strange question, “Do you look like your mother?”
I continued smiling back as I answered. He soon left, but I was to be reminded of this conversation a few years later.
Kathryn and I went together to see his movies the first night; each of us paid 25 cents, as I recall. I had seen enough movies to realize right away that these short films were outdated long ago.
One was to be my first viewing of the “damsel in distress” type saved by the hero the very last minute. We watched her being tied face-up to the railroad track as she bewailed her fate. A train was fast approaching. We anxiously awaited the outcome.
The hero appeared quickly and struggled with her bonds, barely getting the damsel loosened in time to avoid certain death.
The film that followed featured yesteryear’s heartthrob, unappealing with his slick black hair, heavily blackened eyebrows and eyes, and lipstick.
Only a few other people were there. Were they waiting for Saturday night, or did they have an inkling about what to expect? Perhaps they felt they could not afford to lose a quarter this way when money was so scarce.
I immediately forgot about ever seeing the man who brought two nights of Hollywood short films to our village. It was a real surprise to receive a letter from him two or so years later.
A short movie film strip and a small showbill touting his juggling act were included. As he described our meeting I began to recall it.
He had asked me if I looked like my mother. He wrote that I had “smiled sweetly” and said, “A little, I guess.”
He then went to the restaurant and inquired about me. There he learned “your dear father had just passed away.”
He gave a little of his personal history, naming the street address of his former home in a nearby city. He sold both insurance and real estate, was married and had children (three I think).
He lost everything financially, and his wife had left him for his “best friend.”
“Why was he telling me all of this?” was my overwhelming reaction.
He also wrote, “Your features are perfect” and he could help me “on the road to success.” The letter ended with his asking me to write. It seems as though his address was Oklahoma.
When 13 or so years old, there isn’t always spontaneous communication with a parent. It took no thought on my part to read aloud the startling contents of this letter to my mother in the next room — the kitchen, her haunt.
No comment or discernible reaction was forthcoming... I promptly forgot all of this, but the mail was saved and ended up in the attic.
This wasn’t the end of the story, which began when I was 11 years old. I had not reached my 16th birthday yet when a third letter arrived from the man who casually visited our village in 1935.
There was a very brief note and a card. The note said he was “too old to expect you to fall in love with me. With Junior that’s different.”
The card had a notation, which said my name plus “please write” and gave Junior’s address. The town was more than a two-hour drive away.
At my Aunt Harriet’s house when I opened this mail, I immediately told her the contents. She had no visible reaction to it...this was not pursued and easily forgotten.
After working about a year following my college graduation, a man tried to reach me by coming to my apartment a weekend when I was gone. He had very persistently rung the buzzer until a young woman in an adjoining apartment decided she had better climb down two flights of stairs to see what was going on.
Upon my return Sunday, Grace told me right away that she had to “promise faithfully” to give me the note from a man who said he had “been looking for me for a long, long time.”
He was “moving back to...” He left only his name and P.O. box address.
When I asked Grace, “What did he look like?” she only said, “He looked like the type that was hard to get rid of.”
I repeated the same question, only to get the very same answer. Feeling it would be too rude to persist in getting a fuller description of him at this point, I leaned on “my own understanding.”
I toyed with the idea for a while that it was a serviceman I recently met on the train. He was returning home after being discharged from the service at the end of WWII.
My life was full and it seemed to be too much trouble to hire a private eye to investigate the name and mailing address.
Once, out of curiosity, I located on a map the street where the movie-man once lived. Some time later, I drove in this area and decided to look for the short street.
It appeared to have been absorbed into a larger area now used by an educational facility.
Years later, it suddenly hit me that the city where this unexplained visitor was returning to was the very same city where the movie-man of 1935 once lived.
I did not recall his name at that time, but did think of it later.
The mystery about correct identity is solved, I do believe. We can draw some conclusions about why someone would carry around an ungrounded fantasy for many years.
My superficial analysis is that the Depression years of the 1920s and ‘30s left scars on some people. They felt a numbness from the loss of security as they faced many uncertainties on a daily basis.
They reached out for hope in finding a better way to surmount the onslaught of despair hovering around them. Hope and the kindness of others is what pulled them through loneliness, constant wariness and despair.
It is my hope that the man in this story was able to reunite with some family members for rewarding relationships, find support and comfort from others, and to be at peace with himself.
If writing me and hoping for a contact helped him in any way, no harm was ever done.
Rachel Sykes is a free-lance writer living in Humboldt.
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