The thoughts and ideas expressed below are exclusively those of Jack Straley and www.justplaintalkwithjack.com  We may agree, and that’s fine, or we may disagree, that’s okay too.  My sole purpose is to encourage others to think, study, and become involved. Exercise your freedom and above all, when presented the opportunity, please vote.

Many Democrats and Liberals want to destroy our country.  As I have said in the past, they are attacking our schools, churches, and families.  I grew up in a different time when families communicated, siblings played with each other and respected their parents.  Leaving politics for a moment I, will share a short story about a time in a functioning family.  I hope you take the time to read and if you desire you can contribute your own stories of your early life to share with others.

Entertainment was what we made it be, or imagined it to be.  Movies were extremely rare events to be marveled at.  It was a long way to town, couple this with the price of gas, which was in the neighborhood of 12 to 14 cents per gallon, and the price of theatre tickets, that cost 20 or 25 cents each, made for an expensive evening.  The thought of buying popcorn, candy, and drinks was out of the question.

As I have stated, I had, and still do have, two sisters.  At times we could be very nice, agreeable children looking for a joint venture to please and entertain our parents.

On pleasant summer evenings we would play games around the house and yard, using our parents as decoys for different reasons.  We would climb trees and swing from branch to branch. We might even go to the barnyard and play on the huge stack of hay beside the barn.  We found many interesting ways to entertain ourselves and our parents.

There is one memory that still bounces about the mostly empty void of my brain, which is fun to tell.  That is the story of the home made, Movie Spectacular.

The Sunday Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper was thrown from a passing vehicle, headed south on U.S. Highway 281 every Saturday afternoon.  This was the weekly issue that had the colored funnies in it.  The normal routine would to gather the funny pages and hold them dear until Sunday morning.  On Sunday morning around 8:00am we would tune the radio to station KOES, 900 on the am dial.  The deep yet pleasing announcers’ voice would awaken the airways.  He would instruct all children to gather up their comic pages and gather ‘round.  He would proceed to read, while describing each

frame of the comics to us.  As he ended his show we found it was time to go to church.  What a way to start a Sunday.

We would follow the exploits of Dick Tracy and Sam Ketchum as they chased all kinds of criminals with strange names.  Smiling Jack was an entertaining story of a pilot and his endeavors to save our country.  Comic relief was found in Mutt and Jeff and never to be left out were the antics of the Katzenjammer Kids.

Other times my sisters and I would get the papers and begin cutting selected story strips from the big pages.  We would paste or tape the strips together, sometimes covering more than one week.  We would glue the long strip or strips to ice cream sticks, and roll them up as one would roll up an old time scroll.

Later in the evening as the family was settling down for the close of another day, we, my sisters and I, would prepare the Movie Night Spectacular.

 We would get Mom and Dad situated and comfortable on the couch along the wall in the living room.  The lights would be turned off leaving only a slight glow of evening light coming through the windows.  My sister, Wanda, and I would take the ice cream sticks with all our work rolled up onto them and position ourselves in front of the attentive audience, mom and dad.  My other sister, Mary Jo, would take a flashlight and stand behind the screen of comics that stretched out between and in front of us.

As Wanda and I unrolled the scroll from one end, and rolled up the other end of the scroll, Mary Jo would read the script while highlighting each comic frame with the flashlight.  We had our movie right there for all to enjoy.

We probably enjoyed putting it all together more than mom and did having to sit through it.  It was crude, it was rough.  We messed up at times, but we did it with love.

Mom and Dad always carried on just like it was wonderful.  Mom would often serve popcorn during the show and chocolate afterwards.  I guess you could say it was our version of “It’s A Wonderful Life.”