Since my
Good Wife and I moved a couple of years ago to the farm outside of Yatesville,
Georgia, where my father, the late great Champ Ruffin, was born and raised, we’d
gone to the movies in Macon, Griffin, and McDonough. We’d never visited the
Ritz Theater in Thomaston, the Upson County seat that is a fifteen-minute drive
from our house.
That changed
last week. We drove over to watch the new Guardians
of the Galaxy film. The movie is a lot of fun. I recommend it.
The Ritz is
great. It’s a single-screen, downtown movie house. The picture and sound
quality is fine. A ticket costs $6.00. The concessions are reasonably priced.
As folks would have said back in the Ritz’s heyday, it’s neat.
As I sat in
Thomaston’s Ritz Theater, my mind wandered off to sit for a spell in the Ritz
Theater in my hometown of Barnesville, Georgia. Some of us spent many a
pleasant hour there back in the day.
The first
movie I ever saw at the Barnesville Ritz—actually, the first movie I ever saw
at any theatre—was the 1965 James Bond adventure Thunderball. I was with my cousins Rhonda and Denise. I can still
see the climactic underwater battle (although that’s at least partly because
I’ve watched the movie several more times since then). I was seven years old at
the time.
One of the
most memorable movie-watching experiences I had at the Ritz was seeing Beach Red. The 1967 film was directed by
Cornel Wilde, who also starred in it. It’s about a Marine invasion of a
Japanese-held Pacific island during World War II. The beach landing scene,
which some regard as one of the most realistic ever filmed, is said to have
influenced the one in Saving Private Ryan.
The fascinating aspect of the movie was its effort to depict the hopes and
fears of the combatants on both sides.
The last
movie I saw at the Barnesville Ritz was The
Green Berets (1968). It was also the first movie that I saw with my
parents, which may be one of the reasons it was the last one I saw there. My
folks liked to tell me (I don’t know why) that the last movie they had gone to
the theater to see was The Ten
Commandments (1956). I assume they saw it at the Ritz. I imagine they broke
their twelve-year movie fast for two reasons: (1) their nephew and my cousin
Charles was a Green Beret who was wounded in Vietnam and (2) they were probably
glad that John Wayne had developed a movie that took a pro-American involvement
in Vietnam stance to counter the growing anti-war movement in the country. I’m
not saying they thought the war was a great idea; it’s just that they were the
sort of folks who were nervous about the upheaval of the 1960s. There’s really
no other explanation for the fact that they voted for George Wallace for
president in 1968.
Mentioning Wallace tempts me to say
a few words about the danger in putting a culturally, historically, morally,
and intellectually challenged demagogue in charge of the whole country, but I
won’t, since we didn’t. That time.
Instead, I want to advocate for the
value of the small. I’ve been to those huge theaters with their twenty-four
screens and miles of neon lights. They have their place. Choice is good,
although it’s not unusual for the sixteen-screen theater located right around
the corner from my office not to be showing even one film I want to see. But
there’s something comforting about going to a small theater. It feels like
home. And, while you’re not likely to know everybody there, you could.
You could say the same kinds of
things about small towns, small churches, and small schools. What I said about
big theaters applies to big cities, big churches, and big schools: they have
their place. But I hope those of us who live, worship, and study in smaller
places appreciate the wonders and blessings of our small, close communities.
It’s nice to know and to be known.
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