One of the fond memories of my childhood was going to the show (movie). When I was just a kid growing up in Heber going to the show was part of the entertainment we enjoyed. At that time there were two shows a week. There was a show on Thursday and Saturday evening. The movies came on two or three reels (16mm) through the mail in a film box that was held together by straps. Accompanying the movies were usually two or three small posters about the movie and the actors. The small posters were posted in the Post Office and usually in the Heber Store. If you wanted to know what the show was, you could check out the posters but most of the time people just went because it really didn’t matter what the show was, you just went if you wanted to do something on Thursday or Saturday evening.
Sometimes the movies were in black and white but most of the time the Thursday movies were in color. It cost twenty-five cents for kids to get into the movie on Thursday so we didn’t get to go very often. We could however read the posters and wish we could go.
There was always a movie on Saturday evening. I don’t know all the details, but if your family paid their budget assessment (money required to operate the church building) the Saturday night movies were free. If you didn’t pay your budget like those who were not church members, then the cost was twenty-five cents for kids and I think fifty or seventy-five cents for adults. As you can imagine, there were lots of kids at the Saturday night movies. The reason the members who paid their budget got in free was because the projector was owned by the ward and the movies were shown in the church gym. In essence, it was a church sponsored activity for the community. Most of the Saturday movies were in black and white although later many of them were also in color.
I believe the management of the shows was a church calling in the Heber Ward. The person who had the calling was Clarence Crandall. Clarence had the nick name of “Windy” because he liked to talk a lot. Anyway, Clarence had some tickets printed up that said “Windy’s Theater.” When the popcorn machines and the pressurized pop fountains came in, the ward bought one of each so people could buy popcorn and pop as refreshments. The concession stand also sold candy bars. I imagine the concession money and the admissions more than paid for the expenses associated with having the movies. When the church burned down, some of the things saved were the popcorn machine and the pop fountain although I don’t think they were ever used again. After the church burned down, the movies moved to the school until the new church was ready.
I can remember that Clarence liked boxing. At rodeo time he would set up a boxing ring on a wagon and pull it into the middle of the rodeo arena. After the rodeo was over he would entice the little kids to box by giving us tickets to Windy’s Theater. That’s about the only time we got to see the Thursday movies until we were old enough to earn some money of our own. I saw lots of movies and going to the show was a favorite entertainment all through my youth. I still like to see a good movie. We saw lots of westerns, musicals and love stories. I liked the westerns or comedy’s best . If we didn’t have money to buy popcorn, we could take a bag from home. The kids would sit on the floor in the front of the chairs that had been set up. The screen was on the stage. As you got older, you moved back in the audience. By the time you were a teenager, you had the back row staked out. When I was in High School, Charlie Riedhead, my best friend, was the projectionist so we went together to most of the shows.