Charlie and the Movie Theater Hoods

A Jon-Jon Story

This is one of a series of stories on growing up on a farm in the Allegheny Mountains. If you have a similar experience, I would love to hear your story.

Back when we lived on a farm on top of the Allegheny Mountains, I loved the films we saw at our local movie theater, but I hated all the teenage hoods that hung out there.

The worn-down theater sat just off the square in the rural town of Somerset, the county seat of a mountainous area of tough farms, open-pit coal mines, dirty garages, and small factories. Except for a rutted drive-in on the other side of the town, this movie theater was the only place open at night outside of a few drive-in restaurants, roadside bars, the Moose Lodge, and the VFW.

Often, Daddy would decide at the last minute to drop my two sisters, my older brother, and me at the movie theater about twenty minutes away and, as a result, we never arrived on time. Fifteen minutes into a movie, we would enter the darkened theater to find seats, hoping for a bright scene so we could sit together while at the same time try to figure out what was going on - why the Swiss Family Robinson lived up a tree, or Kirk Douglas cruised 20,000 leagues under the sea, or why gorgeous Natalie Woods lay splendid in the grass or wanted sex as a single girl, or when exactly were the days of wine and roses, and how did Gregory Peck choose his team for the Guns of Navarone, or treat the crazy army men in Dr. Newman, MD., let alone represent a black man in a murder trial in the deep South. 

Frequently, after seven o’clock movie ended, we would wait in the seating area to catch the beginning of the next showing. The teenage boys cleaning the auditorium didn’t care if we stayed and Daddy never picked us up on time. When we finally left the theater, the ticket booth would be dark and empty, and we would stand alone under the darkened arcade for what seemed like hours waiting for him.

Often we watched Somerset’s high school kids and farm boys from the county drive past the theater, hooping it up and hollering at my sister Holly, also a teenager, to join them. Both Holly and Allison, my sister who was only a year-and-a-half older than me, would stand back away from the street and the gaudy, glassed-lit, movie posters. My brother Charlie, three years older, didn’t care, though, and often stood near the street, waiting for Daddy, swinging an imaginary baseball bat as souped-up cars and beat up trucks drove past. I never knew where to stand, though, caught between my sisters and my brother who I knew resented being responsible for me.

In the parking lot to the left of the theater – a dark, dreadful place created by some moron demolishing the building next door – kids parked near the back wall and smoked cigarettes and drank beer at their cars. When boys came out to the street to wave down their buddies driving past, they’d call out to my sisters to join them. I hated the threat that they posed and wished Daddy would show up. 

The movie theater’s men’s room, though, I truly hated the most. Located in the basement down a horrible set of wet cement steps with a rusty metal railing, the men’s room felt like a challenge at any age, but especially for me, the youngest of my siblings, except for our baby brother. The basement held a unique place in my mind, dimly lit with peeling paint on perspiring walls, no matter what movie we watched, I dreaded going to the bathroom there. The men’s room, itself, was directly across an open hallway in which men could stand and smoke cigarettes or wait if all the toilets and urinals were being used.

The younger Somerset toughies – hoods, we called them – stood in this area clustered together with their leather jackets, dark jeans, and black engineer boots. The ushers were afraid of them and, as long as they didn’t make too much noise, left them alone, and, given they hunkered down in the basement, the manager didn’t mess with them either. No one, it seemed, wanted to push them out of the building and into the parking lot next door where they would be soon enough once they passed their driver’s test.

I hated going down the long, steep, set of steps to the men’s room dungeon and would wait until I absolutely couldn’t hold my pee any longer. Fidgeting in my seat, I am sure I drove my older brother crazy. At first, when I was younger, Charlie would take me, but, as I got older, he felt his duty to go with me in the middle of a movie ended all together. “Go ahead,” he’d hiss at me in the darkened theater. “You’re big enough.” Without telling Mother or Daddy, he refused to leave his seat. If I pressed him, I knew he would beat me up for it when we were alone at home. No, this right of passage had to be something I did on my own.

Once, I remember, we arrived late for Lonely are the Brave with Kirk Douglas, and because we wanted to get to our seats as quickly as possible, none of us went to the restrooms ahead of time. The ladies room, located just behind the large seating area, would not have been a problem for Holly or Allison, but Charlie and I would have had to walk down, down, down into the house of horror. Halfway through the movie, though, I absolutely had to go, and, once again, Charlie refused to accompany me.

Creeping down the worn steps, holding the crusty rail, I dreaded who or what would be waiting for me down there, and given that the movie, Lonely are the Brave, wasn’t a “kids movie,” I had to be the youngest person in the building. As I came to the bottom of the steps, the town hoods were waiting for me, a group of young teenage boys, hanging out between the stairwell and the men’s room.

“Hey kid,” one said from the middle of the pack. I tried to walk past, but a tough kid with slick, black hair and open jacket over a white tee-shirt stepped in front of me. 

“Hey, I’m talking to ya,” he said roughly. “You got a cigarette?”

The group became silent, maybe five guys were standing there, but I could see already they were rapidly growing in numbers to something like fifty toughs, along with a cyclopes clutching a spiked club and several giant octopuses with swirling tentacles behind them. Now the four in front stared at me waiting for me to respond to their leader. I couldn’t ignore them, but I didn’t want to answer him either.

“No sir,” I mumbled, pleading in my eyes to go to the men’s room. The smell of too many cigarettes and stale urine from the bathroom made me want to gag.   

“Ya don’t have a cigarette? Damn! Want one of mine?” the teenager asked, turning to his friends, laughing and pulling out a pack from his coat pocket. The other boys joined in his laughter and came closer to me.

“How ‘bout a match?” another boy asked. He had long blonde hair, but it hung all stringy-like and greasy.

“No sir,” I stammered to him, looking back at the steps – so many steps to get upstairs. I could hear the movie sounding distant and distorted, vibrating through the room, but no one came down to rescue me.    

“Hey, where do’ya think you’re going?” the first boy asked and pulled me closer to him. I stared at his black pupils, his sharp nose, the red pimples.   

I desperately needed to get to the men’s room. I had already waited too long and now these guys made me squirm.

“The bathroom,” I stammered.

The area around us, dark beyond the two light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, cast shadows on the doors that led deeper into the theater. They could pull me in there, and I would never be heard from again.

“I – I – I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Wait a sec. Where are you from, kid?” he asked.   

“Brotherton,” I answered weakly - Brotherton where our farm was... “Please....”

“A farm boy,” another hood responded, “where’re your cows?” 

The others laughed.

“Do’ya got sheep?” the leader of the group asked, eyes flaring up, again turning the attention back to him. 

“What? Yes, sir.” I could feel myself starting to tinkle in my underpants.

“Do’ya play with your sheep?” 

What was he asking me? “Yes, sir.” Everyone burst into laughter.

“Please, please, I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

“This isn’t a movie for kids. Why don’t ya stay here with us,” the blonde-haired kid suggested. “We can be friends. You got any money? I want some popcorn.”

Everyone burst into laughter again. 

“Give me some money,“ the second kid continued, more threatening this time.

“I don’t have any money,” I moaned. I already had eaten my Milk Duds. “Please…”

But already too late, I wet my pants in front of these guys. I could smell the pee. 

“You need money for this bathroom. You need to pay us.”

I thought I would faint. The men’s room door stood open, the bathroom empty.

“Please,” I started crying.

“Let him go!”

Suddenly I heard Charlie’s voice behind me. Charlie had come down the steps. “I said, let him go. The manager’s calling the cops.” 

Charlie was my big brother and not intimidated by these hoods. In the surprise of hearing his voice, the boys turned and I took the moment to run into the men’s room. 

“Picking on a little kid,” Charlie said to them, following me into the bathroom before they could challenge him.

Charlie went to the urinal next to mine, but he didn’t say anything. I looked over and he had a grim expression on his face. Seeing me staring, he said, “You’re okay.” 

“I think so,” I stammered, worried about getting back upstairs, positive he would beat me up for getting us in this predicament.

“Jerks,” he said.

When we came out of the bathroom, the hoods, clustered to the side, passed a cigarette between them.

“Hey farm boy,” the blonde-haired boy hissed, “Bet you’re not so tough outside.”

Charlie ignored them and kept walking to the stairwell, pushing me ahead of him, “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Someone jabbed his shoulder and another threw a cigarette butt at his back, but we reached the steps before they blocked our path.   

“Charlie,” I said, when we were back upstairs, “I peed my pants.” I started to cry, relieved to be out of the basement.

He looked down at my jeans. “It doesn’t look so bad,” he said. “Stop being a baby.”

I stopped. He would know what to do.

After a minute, Charlie said, “Go to the ladies room and take off your underpants.”

“No...” I said. I had never stepped into a ladies room in my life. What if girls were in there? I couldn’t take off my underpants…

“Go on,” he said, “I’ll watch the door. But don’t do a bunch of stupid stuff in there, like, washing your hands, idiot.”

I hated his plan, but what else could I do? I couldn’t go back downstairs to the men’s room, not with the thousands of Somerset hoods down there, like blood-thirsty pirates, waiting for me, and I wouldn’t sit next to my sisters smelling like the pee from our pigs. 

Reluctantly, I crept into the ladies room, looking around for anyone who might be in there, but only seeing myself reflected in the vanity mirrors: a little boy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, watching a movie I didn’t understand, and hours from being picked up by Daddy, hours from going back to our farm where I would be safe. 

Minutes later, Charlie threw my underpants in a trash bin outside the ladies room and cuffed me across the head.