When I was a child in the Thirties, the most important day of the week was Saturday. On that day, every school-aged kid in the neighbourhood wanted desperately to attend the matinee at our local theatre. The big problem was in getting the ten cents needed for admission. It was out of the question to ask your parents for the dime, so we tried lots of ways we could think of to earn it. We did everything from selling old medicine bottles that we'd collected back to the doctor for a penny each, to selling 50-pound bags of shavings from the lumber yard for a nickel. We also sold blueberries in the summer and cranberries in the fall to get some money. For ten cents, we could see so much at the theatre on Saturday. First on the screen were the trailers of coming attractions. These were followed by a newsreel, which didn't really mean much to us back then. Aah, but when Popeye's gnarled face appeared on the screen, the place erupted! We loved that sailor man so much! After the cartoon came the main feature, which was usually a detective story followed by a western; we always referred to that as a "Cowboy" picture. It starred either Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers or Gene Autry. In it the "good" guys always wore white Stetson hats, and the "bads" had on black hats. The piece de resistance of the day was the next chapter of the ongoing serial of the moment. The entire serial was always shown over 10 to 13 weeks, a chapter at a time. At the end of each chapter, we'd be left with a cliffhanger situation. For example, one week an ending chapter was having the good guy captured by the crooks and dragged deep into the woods to a remote cabin that had no windows, doors, or roof. There he was tied to a chair, which had a box of dynamite under it. The crooks would light the fuse to blow it up and run from the cabin just as the chapter ended for the day. All the discussion among us as we walked home that day would be about the ending, and as to how the good guy would ever survive that situation. Some said he was finished this time. Sure enough though, the next week at the beginning of the next chapter, we'd find our hero back in the chair, struggling to untie the rope and put out the lit fuse, but what fortune for him! It would suddenly begin to rain, and the fuse would get wet and snuff out. Our hero would spend the rest of the chapter pursuing the criminals, only to reach another such crisis at the end of that chapter. He'd get captured again, and they would tie him to a railway track, with the light of a big train approaching as the lights came up in the theatre. Of course, as this occurred, we in the theatre were creating an uproar, stomping our feet and yelling and screaming. Never fear, though, because the next week, we were sure to see the train running wide open and almost on top of our hero, only to run up a "lucky for him" siding that we'd never notice until now. We knew he'd be back on the job again, we'd watch the same cycle repeat itself over and over again, and we loved it!   Submitted By: NULL