Home Page Though I am not a writer by any means I do dabble as one as a hobby. Like a weekend golfer, at best I am a "duffer" as a literary person. Still I have scribbled many half finished stories over the years and not a few have been about Warwick. Some of you have proposed sharing your stories so I thought I would risk starting the ball rolling. Please send any and all, long or short. Below is a story from Millie Sudman about Greenwood Lake and one I wrote about Monk Crover that I have kept for years. More to come.         Monk Crover         Bubble Gum         At the Movies         Main Street         Cruising         Poley and Augie Home Page |
Warwick in the 1950’s - Heiblim’s
and the Oakland Theater In the early 1950s there was a
movie theatre in On movie nights most kids went to
Heiblim’s first. The sign out front said “Warwick Novelty Shop” but no one used
that name. Harry and Minna Heiblim sold candy, newspapers and magazines but they
also had a soda fountain and a pinball machine, and on Saturday nights a popcorn
machine went full blast until just before the movie started. My crowd was in the pre-teen stage
of life in the early 1950s. We had just begun combing our hair in pompadours, slick
in the front, but still a cowlick mess in the back. Our faces were boyish
smooth. It was before pimples and years ahead of whiskers. We wore plaid shirts
that our mom’s had picked out and dungarees rolled up into big cuffs. Our shoe
laces were tied in double knots. We didn’t say much, and didn’t move around a
lot either when we went into Heiblim’s. We bought some candy for the movies, ate
a few bites and saved the rest to throw around in the theatre. Black Crows and
Dots were the missiles of choice. We stuck
around a while staring at the big kids, the boys and girls at the ice cream
counter or the group crowded at the pin ball machine. We stood in an open area, at a safe distance,
and looked. We stuck our thumbs into our front pockets, cowboy style, in an
effort to make us look older, bigger. After
a while we left and walked the half a block up At the movies we bought under
twelve tickets for 35 cents, determined to squeeze another year out of our kiddish
appearance. Wizzie, - Clint Wisner, the theatre owner, and his wife Henrietta -
gave us suspicious looks (well deserved) as we handed over the tickets and
walked inside. Our group got to the movies early.
At first we sat on the side near the exit door. We didn’t stay there long. As
soon as girls our age came in we moved behind them, maybe five rows back. Once
there, it wasn’t long before someone pegged a Black Crow toward the back of a
girl’s head. This started the communication process going. We slouched down in our seats and
drew our coats over our chests and shoulders, and looked innocent. The girls
bounced in their seats, looking back every now and then. “Take another look,” we would say.
When Brad Piggery came in, he and
I would sit together and talk baseball. Brad liked the Dodgers. I was a Cardinal
fan. We had fierce arguments about who was better, Red Schoendinst versus
Peewee Reese, Enos Slaughter or Carl Furillo, Stan Musial or Jackie Robinson. Our
talk was heated but I never enjoyed anything so much at age twelve as these
friendly conversations with Brad. Once we got rolling we shut out everything else
and other kids moved away saying they couldn’t stand to be around us when we talked
baseball. The “Gees, we said. “What are you
going to do there?” “Are you kidding? Man alive, We were impressed. We knew a lot about Smokey told us a fascinating story
once, about how one night he met a girl from out of town at the diner and he
took her to the movies, up in the balcony, and they necked all night and then
she left town after the movie was over. That was something like a The very back corner of the
balcony was where lonely men sat. I didn’t know anyone that was lonely when I
was twelve, but for some reason I assumed these men were lonely. We would run
into them, before the show, when we’d thunder up the stairs to the balcony. They
came in early like us, but unlike us, sat alone and quiet, reading a magazine
or newspaper. They stared at us through the dim light but never spoke. Another group in the balcony
besides the smokers, the neckers and the lonely men was the kids that snuck in.
During my era – I was twelve in 1952 - the point of entry for “sneak ins” was a
ramp like cellar door in the back of the theatre. The sneak-ins were always around
our age. Older kids didn’t do it, nor did girls. On any given night it was maybe
two or three kids at the most. For illegal things like this it wasn’t good to
bring in a whole grade. Once inside, sneak-ins had to stay out of sight. This
meant curling up in a ball, fetal like, under a seat on the floor, in some far
corner of the theatre, until previews started and it was safe to blend in. Still,
you had to be careful all night not to run into Wiz, because he would recognize
that you didn’t pay. I can only remember sneaking in
once, though I might have done it more. There was a considerable amount of
pressure to sneak in if you were asked to join the group. A couple of guys were
the leaders of this endeavor. I won’t mention their names here because they’re
outstanding town citizens today. Anyway, as luck would have it, my
dad heard about it. Somehow word got to the cops that groups of kids were
sneaking into the movies on Saturday nights. From there the story circulated. Parents talked about it at the dinner table. I
denied all knowledge and involvement. I figured since no one was caught red
handed I was safe. What I didn’t plan on was Greggie Brown telling his dad
about it. Cle Brown laughed about things like this and I’m sure he thought it was
funny when he implicated me and relayed the story to my dad. My dad might have
laughed too, I don’t know. The problem was I had already claimed innocence, so my
crime became “lying to my father,” which was not funny. So now I was caught red
handed and I remember that I cried when my father came home from work that
night. The first thing he said was, “Well what have you got to say for
yourself.” I broke down immediately when he walked through the door, which made
me feel even worse because I thought that I had put crying far behind me so
long ago… back when I was ten. |