1939 ca. Walk to Movie at the Queen Theater
We lived at 901 Bouldin Ave. in south Austin. Every Saturday Jim, Bobby and I would walk to town to see a Western at the Queen Theater. On Saturdays they had singing with the bouncing ball, previews of movies to come, a cartoon, a Western movie, and a “serial.” The serials I remember most were Batman and Robin in their baggy cotton leotards and “The Perils of Pauline.” (Will she get away? She has to; or, there wouldn’t be a next chapter to “The Perils of Pauline.”)
Our trek of over a mile to town was the same every weekend. I don’t recall any of us ever having any complaints about that great trip to town and back. We’d walk north down the hill that was Bouldin Avenue, then turn East on Barton Springs Road to Congress Avenue, where we’d turn north, crossing the bridge over the wide Colorado River. While on that bridge we’d always look over the railing at the river far below. As result, in years to come I had some really dramatic dreams of that river,–dreaming of it in flood almost up to the capitol grounds, with only wooden planks on steel cables over the torrents below the riverbed, forming a makeshift long bridge that replaced the original one that had recently washed away.
One day as we three boys were walking on the west sidewalk of Congress Avenue Bobby spotted one of the then brown-uniformed policemen, walked over to him, extended his index finger and said, “Pull.” The policeman pulled, and much to my horror and to his own delight before running away Bobby expelled prolonged rumblings of natural posterior emissions.