Horror Movie

Our family had gone to the movie theater only a few times when we were little. My mother did like the idea of going to the movies but the budget was tight and my father worked every day, and it was not the thing then to ever take a day off work, and certainly not in order to take the family to the movies. We went a few times, on Saturdays; I remember The Bijou Theater, I think on Hoosick Street. I don't think there were too many movies made then for children anyway, and I found out that some of what were comedies scared the daylights out of us, particularly frightening Dorothy, the youngest and the most emotional. A memorable opening scene showed a man lying on his sickbed, while outside someone was riding a bicycle at night, in the rain, amidst the sound of howling dogs. Or so I recall, something like that. Dorothy was terrified, I was nervous, and Joseph never commented.

But the movie that marked me for life was the one I saw in first grade. We weren't shown many movies in school back then: later I remember watching some really boring film about composers, and probably a few educational public health reels, boring even to us culturally starved children, and once we were treated to a western, starring a cowboy on a white horse, possibly Hopalong Cassidy. The movie shown to us in first grade was probably also a message movie, though the message was lost on me. I was too overwhelmed by the content to take away anything except the feeling of constant worry that it instilled in me. The movie starred,or so it seems to me, a young girl who I identified with. We both had long pigtails. I surmised later that the actress might have been Margaret O'Brien. People used to compare my looks to her. I didn't think she was that cute, but I did admire her braids, longer than mine. The movie started with the mornings in the lives of 5 families, all preparing for the day ahead. I think the movie must have announced that something terrible was to happen to one of the families that day. One family featured was an Italian family with 5 or so children, with the father driving off to work in an old truck which had faulty brakes, which he knew needed fixing, when he had the time and money. Another may have been a teenager, with a penchant for speed, and who had been warned by his parents about the dangers. The other families and details have faded from my memory except for the that of the pigtailed girl, and her little brother. Their mother was widowed, a single mom a rarity back then. (Most likely, her husband had been lost at war.) The mother was off to look for a job, and was bidding goodbye to her daughter, telling her to look after her little brother. So all of the families drove off to start their day. Close to twilight, when all left at home anxiously awaited the return of their loved ones. One by one, they all returned to the embrace of their families. Only two were left. We saw a scene of the Italian wife and all the little kids wondering where Daddy was, and another scene of the pigtailed girl and her baby brother waiting for Mommy to come home. The two kids were sitting at the kitchen table, the girl visibly agitated while the toddler played with his toy cars. She wondered aloud what was keeping Mommy, and the little boy smashed one of his little cars into the other, and said "Mommy's car go boom." His sister looked aghast and told him to never say that again. The final scene showed the children sitting somberly while some adults were preparing to take the kids and their belongings out of their house. ...Pretty much every time after that,whenever my mother, or father, or anyone I knew was out in a car, I would get that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. And what's more pathetic, that's not in the past tense.