Theater memories still play on mind's screen
JERRY AULDS

The jangling telephone snapped me out of my reverie and ruined my concentration. When I got my act together and located the phone, the voice on the other end first messed up, then later made, my day and this column.

"I enjoyed your story on the old Normana Theatre on Saturday," Carl Sanders rumbled in his rich rodeo and radio announcer voice.

I thanked him quickly, then added, "Do I hear a 'But...' coming?"

Carl responded with infinite courtesy, "No, seriously, that was a really good column - took me back to some old memories. But...." Ah, there's that word!

"...that was Gary Cooper, not Randolph Scott, in 'High Noon,'" he corrected me, apologetically, knocking a hole in my much-vaunted memory of old movie memorabilia.

There went my day down the drain. Carl was dead right - it was "Coop."

That famous scene replays now in my mind's eye. It was Gary Cooper stalking the streets of that dusty, little town, waiting for the train bringing the bad guys who were bent on deadly revenge on the small-town Sheriff. It was High Noon - and there was nobody to help.

While I sputtered around, embarrassed by my mistake, the grufflygracious Sanders made a stab at letting me down easy, allowing I did get one thing right about the movie. That was Tex Ritter twanging out a line from the movie's title song, It's gonna be my life or Hissen.

Then, in his next breath, Carl chased away all my writer's blues when he revealed a Normana story he had kept secret, except from his fellow miscreants, since he was 14 years old.

Carl's tale was right out of the movies.

It seems that back then Carl ran with a bunch of youthful bird trappers. The gang would gather up a goodly flock of live birds, sack 'em up, then head to the Normana Theatre, bent on mischief. "We'd wait for a night when there was a real scary movie. Then we'd buy a ticket and walk into the movie with our stash of birds," confided Sanders.

In the darkness of the movie theatre, at the peak of the scariest part of the movie, when the movie patrons' pulses were pounding, the boys would jerk open the bags, releasing the frantic birds into the already tension charged air of the theatre.

Once released, the birds swooped in frenetic frenzy from balcony to screen, dive-bombing smooching couples, terrifying dignified matrons, and frustrating befuddled ushers trying to bring calm to the scene of bedlam. "You never heard such screamin' and carryin'-on in your whole life," Carl recalled with remembered glee.

But why just now reveal the longheld secret?

"I figured the statute of limitations had long run out on the rights of parents to execute punishment on naughty sons," he explained, almost contritely. "I know they would have been mortified to know that their semi-law-abiding son had been involved in such shenanigans."

Never mind the correction, Carl. I want to thank you for reading my column and correcting my starring role error.

And, more importantly, I want to extend my special appreciation to you for providing the material for Normana Memories, Part II, "The Day Carl Sanders Broke Silence and Let the Cat, I mean the Birds, Out of the Bag!"

Stay tuned for Normana Memories, Part III.

- This classic Jerry Aulds column originally ran May 24, 2003.