The picture show: a memory

What is the lowest admission price you remember paying to go see a movie? Or, as we used to call it - the picture show. For me, it was nine cents at the Crystal Theatre here in Gonzales and also the same price at the Lynn. Later I remember paying 15 cents for a child’s ticket. The adults paid 35 cents, and it went up to 50 cents when I was in high school in the mid 1950s. The Lynn Theatre was to the place to go on a Saturday night in Gonzales. The Lynn, Crystal, and the Fix Theatres were owned by Lynn Smith, Sr., and Lynn Smith, Jr., of Gonzales.
People would arrive at the picture show at whatever time they desired, buy a ticket, go in and sit down. It did not matter that the feature had been playing for 30 minutes or an hour. You just went in and sat down. And all through the movie, people would get up and leave saying, “This is where we came in.” Or, someone would say, “Let’s stay and watch it to the end again. I want to watch the cartoon one more time.”
The Lynn would have special movies at midnight. I mean scary movies. They would scare the living daylights out of you. I was so scared as a kid coming out of those movies I would walk in the middle of the street on my way home. Who am I kidding? I ran down the middle of the street all the way to the house.
The Crystal and Lynn theatres would have cartoon specials on Saturday mornings. They would show only cartoons. And here was the real attraction - you could have all the popcorn you wanted. That’s right. Cartoons and all the popcorn you could eat, all for 25 cents. Was that a good deal, or what.
But, I will tell you something that made me feel like Mighty Joe Young. My junior year at Gonzales High School we won the district championship in football. That was the fall of 1953. To reward the team, the Smiths gave free admission to the movies to all the members of the football team and their dates. Man, that was pretty heavy stuff for a 16 year old kid. Free movies. Could you want anything else. Could life ever be so sweet.
As younger kids we went to the picture show every Saturday afternoon. They would show mostly westerns at the Crystal. I remember seeing movies with Johnny Mack Brown, Lash Larue, and Hopalong Cassidy. The Durango Kid (he wore a mask as I recall) was a popular star, and the ultimate masked man was Kemo Sabe himself. The Lone Ranger rides again. Evil shall be put down, and right shall prevail. Hi Ho, Silver, Away. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans appeared frequently on the screen. They sang lots of songs. The Sons of the Pioneers sang with Roy. And Gene Autry was a regular. Do you remember the name of Gene Autry’s horse? Was it Champ, or Champion? Something like that. Roy Roger’s horse was named Trigger. Roy had Gabby Hayes as a sidekick.
The Lynn Theatre still stands in downtown Gonzales, vacant now for a while. Someone should figure out how to show movies there. That is where a lot of us grew up - first dates; seeing the world as shown to us by the World News Roundup, viewing sports highlights; but also seeing countries at war during World War II; seeing skin and bones people withoutt enough to eat, not quite understanding how these events affected us; not understanding the words that would shape us - the world we viewed from our comfortable seat in the Lynn Theatre in Gonzales,
And that is part of our history. The history of Gonzales. Gonzales Texas is the Birthplace of Your Texas History.