To me, the Strand was a dream palace. It never had to wait for dusk, for it had its own darkness. Though the summer heat and humidity raged outside, inside the Strand there was ever-present the coolness of perpetual evening.
Reflections After Dark, Memories of the Drive-In by John Gilbert
Chapter 2
Daddy was from Tennessee and mother was from Florida and they had met at church in Columbus. Daddy had always wanted to move back to Tennessee and in my third grade year the Strand Theater in Athens, Tennessee needed a manager. He asked for a transfer and got it. Daddy left for Athens in May of 1962 and my mother, my sisters, and I would move when school was out in June. Moving day was very exciting. We hadn't seen daddy in over a month. The movers had finished loading the van and mother piled us in the car. In just a few hours we would see daddy! I did have my fears. Mother had never been to Athens, Tennessee. How would she find her way?
I don't remember the trip but I do remember pulling into a small town with a courthouse on the square. Shops and businesses lined all four sides of the square and hanging from the front of one building was a theater marquee. The Strand! We were there! As we approached the box-office the cashier asked, "How many?" "I'm Mrs. Gilbert," my mother replied. The cashier smiled and asked my mother to go inside. Daddy was standing at the doorman's ticket box. The bright light from outside was in his eyes as the door opened and he saw five figures silhouetted in the doorway. He reached out to take our tickets just as four children squealed "Daddy!" I remember being chocked up as I saw my father and tears of gladness filled my eyes. This was a new emotion to me. I had seen older people tear up when they met a long lost friend and I wondered why they were sad. I now knew it wasn't sadness but joy. Daddy hugged us all and kissed mother. I held onto his leg and wouldn't let go. Our stay in Tennessee would be short lived
 The Strand was an average small town theater with its musty auditorium, a balcony and a stage. It was on that stage that I made a wonderful discovery. The screen was full of tiny holes to allow the sound through. I could stand behind the screen during the show and see the audience but they couldn't see me. How magical it was to be standing in front of hundreds of people and not be seen.
 Daddy (L) with the Strand staff in the concession
To me, the Strand was a dream palace. It never had to wait for dusk, for it had its own darkness. Though the summer heat and humidity raged outside, inside the Strand there was ever-present the coolness of perpetual evening.
Then suddenly and without warning the dream was shattered. My father was fired. His district manager was a man who enjoyed spirituous fermenti and often indulged in the bottle. My father had been told to keep a bottle on hand for his manager and he would be his best buddy. But daddy did not drink nor did he encourage drinking. This made for a rather strained relationship between my father and his boss. On the night of the firing the district manager had been drinking heavily when he stumbled into my father's office.
"Gilbert, I thought I told you a week ago to have your theater painted," growled the thick-tongued manager.
"Yes sir. I called the painter after I talked with you and he said that his wife was in the hospital and as soon as..."
"I didn't ask about your painter's wife," he snorted. "I wanted to know why you hadn't had your theater painted. Well, I guess I don't need you around here anymore. You or your painter. Go ahead and clean out your desk and give me your keys."
Only years later did I find out that this is the way theater companies do business. You never know from one day to the next if you'll have a job, no matter how good a job you're doing. There's a great lack of trust in the theater business. It's a holdover from the days of vaudeville when acting troops traveled from town to town. You would hire someone to take tickets and they might run off with your box office and then again, they might not. Then again, you might skip town without paying your hotel bill or your acting company. The entire entertainment industry is cankered from top to bottom with dishonesty and mistrust.
We moved back to Columbus where my father took a job with J. C. Penny. Daddy worked in the Men's Work Clothes Department at Penny's. For some extra money he wanted to "catch relief" or work as a projectionist on the weekends. The projectionist had a union and they got union pay. This didn't set too well with Martin Theaters. According to the union, if a man worked, he got paid and was paid union scale. A projectionist, in many cases, made as much if not more than the manager. Daddy had approached the local union's business agent about catching relief. He was a good projectionist. Daddy had learned projection in the silent days when projectors were hand cranked. Motors weren't allowed on those early projectors. Early motors occasionally threw off sparks which might catch the film on fire. Those were the days before safety film. The film was made of nitrocellulose and called nitrate film which was highly explosive. Theater fires were common in the early days and there were projectionist who lost their lives when a magazine full of film exploded filling the booth poisonous smoke. Daddy had a great respect for the job and did it well. It was decided that he would catch relief at the new Snak-Vu Drive-in.
The Snak-Vu was a small drive-in located on the Manchester Expressway. It was the brain child of Curt Drady, a man who was well ahead of his time. Curt had the idea that if you could locate your concession near the street, you could keep it open during the day and make money while other drive-ins were closed. He also used FM radio to broadcast the sound to the cars instead of speakers on post. The only problem is that cars weren't equipped with FM radios in those days. To solve this he passed out small FM transistor radios as you entered the theater and collected them at the exit. The Snak-Vu only held about a hundred cars and the idea was that you ordered your food at a window as you entered the Theater. Then you made a loop around the perimeter of the lot arriving back at another window in the concession to pick up your order. Then you found a place to park and watch the movie. The movie was free with your order. Curt couldn't compete for feature films. Martin Theaters made sure he couldn't get films. What an embarrassment! Curt had built a drive-in smack in the middle of Martin's home town, their national headquarters. The only films Curt could rent were short subjects, Three Stooges comedies, and old serials. He put together a forty minute program that repeated itself throughout the evening.
 I was in the fifth grade at Gentian Elementary and on Friday nights daddy would take me with him to the Snak-Vu I loved being in the booth. The booth wasn't equipped with a motorized rewinder so it was my job to rewind each reel after it ran. I loved my job. Even when the rewinder was motorized, I purposely broke the motor so I could rewind the films by hand. Reel after reel I would watch daddy thread the projectors. It didn't look too hard. I asked if I could try and he let me. I didn't do too badly for my first try but daddy had to fix several mistakes. One night Curt asked daddy if he could come downstairs to the office for just a moment. Daddy instructed me to watch the projector.
"If the film breaks, close the lamp house dowser and turn off the motor switch," he said.
I had never felt so important in all my life. I was in charge of the booth. The patrons on the lot were now depending on me to keep the show going. The left projector was running and I positioned myself between the two projectors with my arms folded. I was ready for anything. At eleven years old I was barely tall enough to see out the porthole but I kept a steady eye on what I could see and waited for any eventuality. I knew that if anything went wrong it was up to me to bring everything to a halt. I felt ten feet tall. Daddy was gone no more than three minutes but in that three minutes I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to be a theater projectionist.
Curt continued to improve the Snak-Vu. He found a source for older features and was now playing movies. He eventually installed speakers in the lot and did away with the radio sound. To keep speaker theft down he had speaker jacks installed in his speaker post and plugs on the speaker cable. When you parked your car, you simply plugged your speaker into the post. An attendant was on hand at the exit to collect your speaker as you left. As poor a quality as those little drive-in speakers were, they were highly prized and often stolen. One night a car failed to stop and deliver up its speaker and the attendant gave chase. He was run down and killed.
After four years at Penny's there came a call from Martin Theaters asking daddy if he would be interested in managing the Edgewood Drive-in Theater. He jumped at the chance. The problem with theater business is that it gets in your blood and when it does, there's no getting it out.
I had been on a Boy Scout outing in the summer of ‘67. It was after dark on a Saturday night when I was dropped off at our house on Cody Rd. The house was empty as I deposited my scouting stuff in my room. I was attracted to voices coming from the front porch. My mother and sisters were sitting on the porch in the relative cool of the evening. I joined them and sat in the soft silver grey glare of a nearby streetlight. "Daddy got a new job!" one of my sisters announced. "He's gonna' manage the Edgewood Drive-in." This was too good to be true. I loved the Edgewood. "When does he start?" I asked. " In two weeks, " mother answered. "Can we go to the Edgewood tonight?" I asked feeling that two weeks would never come. "Maybe next weekend," mother replied. ......
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