CARLTON FLETCHER: Movie, popcorn, Coke, candy … and change for $1

Old days, good times I remember.

— Chicago

I took out a loan a short while back and went to the theater to see a movie. My teenage daughter did that eye-roll thing when I talked about what a major financial investment it is to go to the movies these days. If you want popcorn and a Coke — and who doesn’t want popcorn and a Coke at the movies? — you just about need to be one of those 1 percenters everyone talks about.

If my daughter’s exasperation with my complaints about the cost of a night out at the cinema was at DefCon 2, imagine her consternation when I started talking about the “good ole days” and going to the movies in Ocilla, Georgia, in the 1960s. And while I know it’s a rite of passage to reminisce about such things with your kids, even I had a hard time believing some of the stuff I was saying.

It’s hard for someone like me to come to grips with the fact that the ’60s were, in fact, a long time ago. In my mind, that decade — which ended, incidentally, with me still a few years younger than my daughter is now (16 today, happy birthday, Boo) — was just “a little bit ago.” Heck, I remember going to see “Help!” at the Ocilla Theater and conspiring with my brother to convince our cousin Sonia that everyone in the place was going to be screaming like crazy when The Beatles first appeared on the screen. When that first magical chord twanged through the speakers and the Fab Four made their appearance, you heard one tiny “Aaiii” followed by a chorus of “Shhhhs” and then conspiratorial laughter.

Fun times.

But as I was telling my daughter, the thing I remember most clearly about going to the Ocilla Theater (which, you’ll note, was spelled with the “er” … I’ve always wondered at what point we became so fancy we decided to change the spelling to “re”) was the excitement of Saturdays in small-town America.

This is what it was like: The three of us Fletcher kids would get our dollar each and encourage our folks to get us to town as early as possible. The first movie (there were almost always two, plus a cartoon) usually started around noon, but we’d like to get there early and just roam around town, going into the shops and looking at all the things we’d like to buy or grabbing a booth at the Rexall Pharmacy where we’d read the latest “Archie” — yes, kiddies, the real “Riverdale” — “Superman” or “Batman” comic books until Mr. Harper got tired of us freeloading and ran us off.

As movie time drew near, this is what would take place (and despite my daughter’s skepticism, this is true): We’d buy our ticket to the movie, get a big bag (those tall, paper ones, not the buckets that you get today) of popcorn, a Coke and a candy bar. With the dollar each of us had been given. And have change left over.

Take a dollar to the theater (“re”) today, and that won’t get you a whiff of popcorn.

Ocilla in the 1960s wasn’t he most forward-thinking place in the galaxy, but I remember being confused when I saw black kids my age buying tickets on the other side of the ticket booth, entering a different door and then disappearing into the balcony. I was told that was where “they” sat, and thought it kind of unfair that other folks got to sit in the cool seats upstairs. Ah, the naivete of youth.

If the movies finished — and if there was only one playing on a given Saturday, we’d watch it at least a couple of times — we’d continue our exploration of the small downtown area, often walking the railroad tracks that ran through town for a few blocks before being at the designated pickup spot to return home.

There were things about the good ole days that, for many of us, weren’t really all that good. But those Saturdays at the Ocilla Theater go down in my ledger among the best of times … even if they really weren’t that long ago.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.