When I was 5, I moved with my mother Christine Crouch and my three sisters (Pam, Robin, and Jennifer) from a farm in Ancramdale to a house on Main Street in Pine Plains. Our new home had peonies in the yard. Next to us ran an old railroad embarkment and then an empty field to the sidewalk on Smith Street. It was simply Main Street then—no North or South.
We were in town! Soon I started walking down the street from my home and around the corner to the Pine Plains Theatre on Church Street, the building that is now The Stissing Center. Usually I was with a sister, or my next-door neighbor and best friend, Renee Casazza. We would stop first at the drug store to get gum and candy—Juicy Fruit and a Sky Bar for me—and then head across to the movies.
Going to the movies was pretty much a weekly event, at least in my selective memory. The shows changed on Sunday, so if I wanted to see what was there on Saturday, and also go to the Sunday matinee, I had to come up with an extra 25 cents, the price of a ticket. My allowance was a quarter a week. One way to cover this gap was to return soda bottles to Peck’s Food Market for the five-cent deposit.
Late one afternoon, slouched in the front row, we heard Renee’s mother Adele coming down the aisle looking for us. I don’t remember what movie was playing. It might have been a tear-jerking Disney dog movie, or maybe a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy. But whatever it was, it must have captivated us—we had stayed straight through intermission and into the second showing. Adele found us, and we left to go home.
I loved movies fairly indiscriminately. Two scary films stuck with me. One, I figured out decades later, had been “Queen Bee” with Joan Crawford; when I watched it again, I realized it had been way over my childish head. Still, there was that powerful image of Crawford, falling out of an open car door as the vehicle approached a caved-in bridge over rushing water! Terrifying.
The other was “Mole People.” It followed me as I walked home in the dark (must have been the shorter days of winter). I stood on the northeast corner of Church and Main, waiting for the traffic light to change. At the time, there was only one lone traffic light at the intersection, not the mysterious eight there now. My guess is that there was no traffic, but that didn’t matter—I did not cross against the light. As I stood beneath the red light, my blue shirt changed to purple, further luring me into a world not completely worldly.
I crossed the street. To the left of me was Harold King’s bar; to the right, next to the sidewalk, a wide patch of grass and dirt stretched to the street, obviously a home for mole people to rise up out of. I did not linger, but also did not run; running might cause the creatures to wake.
I’m not saying that I was thoroughly frightened, but I was, let’s say, respectful of the possibility that what I had seen on the big screen could actually happen. I was a kid. Fortunately, I was almost home, walking past houses where people I knew lived and would come out and save me.
I still love movies, admittedly more discriminately, and I love movie theatres. Wish I could still walk to one.
Murphy Birdsall, a volunteer with the Herald, grew up in Pine Plains, always maintaining contact with the community while living and working in Cambridge, Mass., Manhattan and Montclair, N.J. She and her husband, Keith Reamer, and their dog, Nellie Jo, have recently moved into a house in Pine Plains within walking distance of most of the town’s natural and cultural resources.
###
We look forward to hearing from you!
Throughout the bicentennial year, the Herald has been creating a portrait of the town through your memories and images. If you’ve got a favorite Pine Plains’ story to share, please send 200 to 500 words (ideally) and one or two photographs to editor@newpineplainsherald.
Please include your name, biographical details and contact information.