Art, I have a memory of a young son of one of my cousins. I was a teenager, selling popcorn at the Saturday night movie in Friendsville (we had love story movies on Wednesday night and usually "Oaters" on Saturday night), when "David" swaggered up to the ticket booth. This small boy, who looked about 4 years old, and had been getting in free, stated this was his birthday, and he was 6 years old, so he had to pay. He had a quarter, and admission was 20 cents. After buying a ticket, he walked up to me and stated he wanted to buy popcorn. Now, popcorn cost 10 cents, and he only had 5 cents. I could not squelch his pride by telling him he did not have enough money, so I gave him the full size of popcorn and took his nickel, without letting him know the difference between his finances and retail cost of popcorn. He proudly marched through the doors into the theater, after giving his ticket to the usher. Delores

It was good of you to do that with the reduced price popcorn. Do you remember what was showing? and what's an "Oater"? I have 4 sons, oldest graduating from college this May. I remember once his grade school basketball team got a free ticket each to the nearby high school's basketball game and the families were going so I got to the ticket seller w 2 adults and one (second) kid, plausible child admission, meaning I was right there deciding whether to deflate the truth about a year. My kids were all in parochial school then and being a librarian it was tough to come up with "disposable income" - for us I guess that was the money you spent on "disposable diapers", and in our neighborhood if you said you were going sailing, you meant "garage sale-ing". Anyway, the nice grandpa looking man selling the tickets read my mind and said, "he's $2" saving me $3 and some semiharmless fibbing. My 8th grader might go to that school next year. I think I have been in Friendsville twice for a few minutes, once on the way to Grantsville and Cumberland (when I stopped at the Grantsville Inn, my gm's favorite place to eat in the 19teens, for dinner and was just beginning to try to find out a little about my Friend family connection, through my mystery ggm Rebecca J. Friend/Haskell Tuhill who has been mentioned many times on this list lately. First of all I was a stranger both times in town, and felt really odd that from childhood I was told my ggm was Rebecca Friend from Friendsville, and knowing absolutely noone there. I think I remember going into a lunchroom or restaurant (was knocked out of the 8th grade spelling bee on this word so why spell it right now?) and it looked like senior citizen bingo going on, everyone stopped and just looked at me long enough for me to wonder if I was seeing a mass violation of the Maryland gambling laws!!!!! Well, people were covering their bingo letters with dimes and quarters, wha! t do I know I don't gamble (I will forgo the R. Cath. bingo humor for the moment). Maybe the Bingo caller was like a 4th cousin of mine! (Probably) will never know, don't care. Maybe this was native american bingo and run by fellow decendents of "Shawnee Chief Big Thunder" who shows up in the Old John Friend gedcoms if I (and whoever posted these gedcoms) am not mistaken. Well some day this summer or next, especially if I crack the mystery, I'm coming for the fiddle contest, etc, buckwheat festival in Kingwood, etc, and probably from this list I will know more people than in some towns I have lived in. (Take for instance if I visit the Bedford Ohio cemetery 1/2 mile from my house, I would know 3 names there at most. When I visited the Oakland Cemetery this summer after 5 years of working on my Oakland roots, I found it odddddd to know at least half the folks in there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) I ran a movie series for 8 years at the public library and always had free popcorn. I gave a talk on every movie I picked out (126 over the years) and most of them were from Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Buster Keaton days to 1939. These are the things that can really liven up a genealogy discussion, for instance someone I know very well mentions an unconfirmed story that in her gf's large family, one sister met Jimmy Durante when he came to town and ran off and married him, I can say, "You know Buster Keaton didn't like the Shnoz because his humor was all verbal, and Buster thought his physical comedy was much funnier!" And it was fun learning that Lew Wallace did stay at the Glades Hotel in Oakland, and probably worked on writing Ben Hur there with my 15 year old ggf James Tuhill right there shining his spittoon, "working for Mr. Daily" per the 1870 census. Maybe Wallace got that Charleston Heston driving 2 chariots at the same time thing from someone on this message list's very ancestor who was an Irish teamster driving wagons past the Glades. The Glades had a really nice porch. You never know. I like stories, not just names and dates, so let's all share. Art Thomas Shade <tomdel2@webtv.net> wrote: Art, I have a memory of a young son of one of my cousins. I was a teenager, selling popcorn at the Saturday night movie in Friendsville (we had love story movies on Wednesday night and usually "Oaters" on Saturday night), when "David" swaggered up to the ticket booth. This small boy, who looked about 4 years old, and had been getting in free, stated this was his birthday, and he was 6 years old, so he had to pay. He had a quarter, and admission was 20 cents. After buying a ticket, he walked up to me and stated he wanted to buy popcorn. Now, popcorn cost 10 cents, and he only had 5 cents. I could not squelch his pride by telling him he did not have enough money, so I gave him the full size of popcorn and took his nickel, without letting him know the difference between his finances and retail cost of popcorn. He proudly marched through the doors into the theater, after giving his ticket to the usher. Delores ==== MDGARRET Mailing List ==== If you need help with this list, make sure to email the list administrator, Carol Hepburn, at chepburn@cox.net. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now