Mike, I put in the Boyd Theatre and found 5 of them in Pennsylvania, and 1 in Philadelphia. Thinking that was the one you were talking about, I went to it and found only 1 entry from you, and that was back in August, 2010! I went out and went back in to make sure I had it right, and I did. So, what’s up with that??? I didn’t read them, but ALL I saw was a few people talking about the possible historical significance of this place and if it could/should/would be saved. Help me out here with a link or some more info and I’ll be glad to look it up.
Mike, are you sure Weis never had a marquee?? I thought I remember them having a very, very small one on Peach Orchard Rd. It was pretty short (still required a ladder to get up there), and only had about 3 lines on it. Am I dreaming again??
Mike, not sure about the dates of “Ghost Dad”, but I can clearly remember it being played in Cinema #2. I’d walk in, watch for a couple of minutes, and turn around and walk out after thinking what a stinker it was! But I will say this, if YOU don’t remember us playing it, maybe I better recheck my memory!
Paul DelRossi. I remember that name because he was scheduled to come to my theater up in Northlake (Atlanta). We prepared for it…worked like DOGS getting it cleaned up, and one of my ushers was just trying to help, and tripped and spilled a good quart of black paint all over the standard red GCC lobby carpet!!! I mean, whatta ya gonna do?? dawn..I showed my son your comment about the paranormal club and he was thrilled with the idea of one being here in Augusta. Now, before you try to sign him up, I gotta tell you that he’s only 11! But he loves those ghost-hunter shows on cable! Maybe we do need to get all of us into the theater and see what ghosts are still around? I just hope we don’t see Bill Cosby’s “Ghost Dad” in there! THAT was bad enough on the big screen! LOL!!
Paul DelRossi. I remember that name because he was scheduled to come to my theater up in Northlake (Atlanta). We prepared for it…worked like DOGS getting it cleaned up, and one of my ushers was just trying to help, and tripped and spilled a good quart of black paint all over the standard red GCC lobby carpet!!! I mean, whatta ya gonna do?? dawn..I showed my son your comment about the paranormal club and he was thrilled with the idea of one being here in Augusta. Now, before you try to sign him up, I gotta tell you that he’s only 11! But he loves those ghost-hunter shows on cable! Maybe we do need to get all of us into the theater and see what ghosts are still around? I just hope we don’t see Bill Cosby’s “Ghost Dad” in there! THAT was bad enough on the big screen! LOL!!
What??? A story on Chuck Dray?? Oh my…..who would be able to publish a story on Chuck that would pass all the censors? The guy was certainly one in a million! To look at Chuck, you’d think you could blow on him and he’d fall over because he was so thin and frail looking. But he was tough..battling cancer for years. He was fast, as I saw on a couple of occasions when the film would break and be spread across the floor, but soon spliced together and back up on the screen in a matter of a couple of minutes! And to look at him, you’d see his cigarette smoke-stained shirts and think he might be a slob, but then you’d go into his union-bathroom and he’d raise hell with you if you dribbled on his spotless floor….and yes, he would check!! Oh, I could add a few more stories, but in honor of his legacy and my friendship with him, I won’t divulge anything that might make someone question his character or his heart. I miss Chuck..I really do. He was one of those folks that come in your life only once.
Mike, and whoever else is interested, I had also put in a search on Ebay for General Cinema Corp, or for GCC. The first time I did it (a few weeks ago) I found a book of gift certificates for a couple of dollars…and no, I did not bid on it. Just now I put in another similar search, and found 2 wooden “soda” crates that had GCC imprinted on the side. The description read that they were from General Cinema Corporation, but I’m not sure how this guy put them together. I remember GCC had bought Sunkist a long time ago, and they dealt with Pepsi products…maybe even included owning a Pepsi bottler??? Is that right…does anyone else remember anything about that?
Mike, in your opinion, of the theater companies that you worked for, which one did you like working for the best? If you say General Cinema, I’m going to spew a mouthful of coke all over my computer screen!! The bunches and bunches of times I heard you moan and groan about having to work so much, and do the Telxon for inventory and checkout, well, I’d just have a hard time believing it’d be General Cinema. BUT…I don’t want to influence your opinion!! So, which is it….and why?? This sorta sounds like an English writing assignment, doesn’t it??
That’d be great, Mike. As soon as our life slows down around here, I’ll get my wife to try and download them somewhere on here. Hey, dawn..one of those pictures in the bunch from the mall showed a lady standing inside the mall. That was along the same route we would walk to from the theater to the bank. I remember for awhile we rode a bicycle that we were going to give away as a prize in some contest! Sure made the trip over and back alot easier..and since we only used it when the mall was closed, it made it alot FASTER too!
Alonzo, thanks for the pictures but I have to be honest with you…they sorta hurt my heart! Seeing that old and rundown place and remembering how it used to be. That’s probably how my wife feels when she looks at pictures of me before we got married! LOL! Anyway…back to the pics…seeing that marquee makes me remember the hundreds of times I had to climb up to those suckers (2 of them).
dawn, you’re remembering Alan Chavous. Alan was a great guy, and a very hard worker. Sadly, Alan was the kind of guy that had a black cloud over his head and always seemed to have a hard life. I remember one time we had Alan and his security guard-girlfriend worked a midnight show on a Saturday when the time changed..went back an hour. Well, Alan must’ve spent an hour trying to convince me that they were due an extra hour of pay that night. He was mad at me for a couple of weeks about that! And it’s not just because he wanted the extra money, he NEEDED the extra money. I have not been over to the mall in decades!! Might go by there just to see that sinkhole!! Mike, I got your pictures today and they are GREAT!! I’ll see if I can get my wife (the resident computer guru) to put them on here…even though I have no idea how to find the others you say are on here!
Hey, right there on that one side, overlooking the little plaza area going into the mall entrance, that’s where I took that water fire extinguisher and doused all those Rocky Horror Picture Show people who threw stuff at me while they were in line!
Mike, as far as the theater IN the mall, I bet I still remember how to get into that cruddy gate thing that came down to “secure” the theater from the rest of the mall after closing! Hey another memory just came into my big ‘ole head…remember the game machines we had?? I remember them making a “game room” in the little tiny space we used to store those coke cannisters and CO2 tanks…had room for maybe 3 video games…Donkey Kong, Frogger, and something else (Tron?). I remember Zack would set the thing on “free play” and play Donkey Kong for HOURS…well past closing time. We’d get mad because we wanted to go home, and he’d say he didn’t want us to leave him there alone! Those things sure made the money, but I hated squatting down and emptying those things and counting all those quarters. As far as getting into the mall or the Exchange, Barry is a cop, so we should be able to do it with him with us, right?!? Let me know, and I’ll be there to do that and maybe go on to lunch or supper afterward.
Yeah, Mike, I’d love to see those, you know I would! Let me know when and I’ll be there. Heck, if I have the time, I’ll even break back into the place with you!! Well…maybe not. Maybe we’ll just meet up for lunch or something. Might be a good time to get Barry and Charles into the discussion…that’d be great!
Okay, I’m going to post this comment here because I KNOW there are like-minded people on here who understand. Today, after a long, hard day at work, I happened across a small plastic bag of Kroger-brand popcorn my wife had bought for my son’s birthday party (no, that was NOT his present!). I was alittle hungry, so I opened it and grabbed a handful. Being an “old theater man”, I love popcorn! But aside from the taste, the wonderful smell immediately took me back to the days when I was an usher and I was assigned once or twice a week to come in for a few hours and pop popcorn in an out-of-the-way room upstairs..just me, a big cup of free coke, a blasting radio, and a super-hot popcorn popper and I dumped out loads and loads of steaming, sizzling popcorn that I’d shovel into large and long plastic bags! I’d put the day’s date on each bag,and then toss it up on the easily-accessible shelves. Turn around, and attend to the next batch of popped corn that was spewing out like a lava-filled volcano, into the salty, oily bin!
Then I’d think about the busy weekend nights when I’d run upstairs to fetch 2 or 3 or those big bags because the concession girl told me that they were about out of popcorn…again, that smell would hit me every time I ran into that room! Can’t you just smell it now??
Man!! I figure for the $1.00 that my wife spent on that little plastic bag of Kroger popcorn, I got a ton of memories that came flooding back to me!
Oh, wow! Thanks so much for posting that photo, Alonzo! That made my day, seeing “my” old theater. Looking at it, I can just about remember which screens were located where, how small the marquee was, that we had a bad water problem in the planters over there on the left side (water would leak into the bottom of the cinema!), etc.. Good stuff. Wow, I guess a picture IS really worth a thousand words…well, about 40 here, but you know what I mean!
I remember another couple of theater stories, so, since this is the place to share them, Ima sharin'! Soon after I started working there, I had to hire a good number of staff. I was really done hiring and had everyone lined up, so I didn’t need anyone else. This one cute little girl came in for an interview..she was recommended by someone I had just hired..and I told her I was sorry but I didn’t really need her. Our conversation turned more personal and I asked her where she was from. As soon as she told me her family had just moved from Augusta, I told her she had the job!! A girl from my hometown, and I’m not gonna hire her?? Another of the concession girls I hired told me, when I brought out a bunch of candy cases from the storeroom, that she had the same cases of candy at home..her Dad worked for the candy distributor. She asked me if I wanted her to bring any cases from home to work, and I told her “Hell no!!!”! That’s all I needed was to get linked to some candy-conspiracy! Going back to my previous post and how I had put in my resignation…the morning the company auditor was there to check me out, he was upstairs counting while I was downstairs. I told them I didn’t have anything to hide and they could count without me..that’s how sure I was of my count. Anyway, I sat downstairs with the crazy division manager talking about stuff. I guess he was trying to tell me a story about good versus bad management. He told me a story about a restaurant called Wiener King that was beside the place he used to work at when he was young. He said that as soon as the manager of Wiener King left the place on an errand, he could look in and see the employees jumping on the counter, throwing stuff at each other, and just acting like idiots because the manager wasn’t there. I turned to my soon-to-be-ex-boss and asked him with a serious face, “Hey, do you think Wiener King is hiring?”! I thought that was the highlight of our relationship! Hey, again, thanks for letting me air out my old memories!
Mike, I was reading all this, and it jogged a couple of old memories that pretty much mirrored a couple of yours! I remember my family going into the old Sky City..actually, I think it was first called Bowers, with Bi-Lo being beside it…and us kids would run over to the top of the hill overlooking Forest Hills, and WATCH a movie (couldn’t hear anything!). I do remember my family going to the drive-in and taking in a HUGE brown grocery bag of popcorn that we popped on the stove. I’m sure we took in our own drinks and candy as well. My Dad was military, so we didn’t have alot of money. Us kids would also go and play at the decent-sized playground that was just under the screen. And I think Forest Hills is where we saw “Planet of the Apes” when it came out…your post jogged that memory as well. Good stuff! I hated to see this place close up. And you’re right..the shopping center now is an absolute dump!
“Pufnstuff”…“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”…“Fiddler on the Roof”…“The Bermuda Triangle”??? & “In Search of Noah’s Ark”??? (there were like 2 or 3 of those strange documentary-type movies out back then)…and some BORING, BORING, BORING movie about some teacher that went down to some poor part of the country to, well, to teach! (Hey..I was a little kid whose mom dragged me to this movie! She had to feed me candy to keep from whining, and then I just fell asleep! She also bought me a couple of comic books as part of the deal, from what I remember!)…….those were just some of the first movies I ever saw in Augusta, as a kid. Walk in, box office was on the left, concession stand was on the left (pretty small one), and bathrooms were straight ahead! The picture that was on here earlier reminded me that behind the theater, across the street was the Navy National Guard place…I remember the anchor out front. Also, down the street, was a Dairy Queen with a small, handmade village that was built by the firemen at the fire station right across the street. People would always bring their kids, or their dates, to that little village. Daniel Village Theater was one of my favorites growing up!
Yeah, that’s a pic of it alright. Looking back over my last post on this place, it reminded me of the girls that worked there! Man, they had some cute ones, that’s for sure. But, now that I look back on it, I know why. The manager had an eye out for the cute girls, that’s all I’ll say. I remember going to see “E.T.” at that theater…saw it 3 times and with a different girl each time! After the first time, I knew when to make myself available for my date when she started crying! LOL!!
Dave Poland was definitely not my favorite division manager…but that was a long time ago. You had asked me earlier what it was about Al Hernandez that made me and Barry put him on our “Hero Pedestal”…well, he just acted cool, and we were at the age when we thought it was real important to also be cool. He was a Doorman,and walked around cool, tore tickets cool, emptied trash cool…what a couple of dorks we were! Anyway, we stopped thinking Al was cool when we noticed how UN-cool he smelled!!! (Your stinky coat comment reminded me about that!) I figured good personal hygiene is a must for someone to be cool, right? Mike, how does someone go about checking out that coming attraction tag and looking at all those pictures you’ve put on? Speaking of those coming attractions, I remember when GCC had a Christmas sales promotion for the management that was one of the easiest things I’ve ever sold! Can’t remember the name of it, but it was essentially a 20-second “still picture” ad that a business could buy and it’d be placed on a screen, shown in a loop between shows. We presented it to the business by telling them that they’d have a “captured audience”, it’d reach hundreds/over a thousand people a day. AND…that’s not all folks…AND, they also would get something like 250 2-for-1 movie passes that they can use however they’d like for a promotion! I think of those whenever I go see a movie now..and watch all those commercials before the coming attractions!
While we’re talking Rocky Horror, I remember how the theater would be TRASHED after the show! We had to pay the janitors extra to get it cleaned up in time for the next day’s shows, and that was no easy feat! GCC had those seats where you could seperate the bottom cushion from the tray it fit into, but the janitors couldn’t take that much time to do that, so we had rice tinkling and shaking around in the seats whenever customers went to sit down or get up! The RHPS freaks would also throw stuff and spray water at the screen, which almost ruined a couple of spots on them. For you guys who don’t know much about Augusta, this theater was right down the street from a military post, Fort Gordon. It was the spot where most new guys in the Army would come right after boot camp…so, they were still pretty immature and liked to play, IMO. Anyway, some of those guys would really get in to RHPS, and they’d come in wearing water-filled backpacks, with battery-operated machine guy style squirt guns, and they’d have walkie-talkie headsets! They ended up helping out our 2 security guards that would patrol the theater during the movie…helping to spot the trouble-makers! The crowds would always ask me to come in and watch with them, but I told them “No way!” because I didn’t want to get my nice polyester jacket messed up!
Speaking of being up on the roof and Rocky Horror, I remember Zack making me go check the back of the Rocky Horror line (this is when we’d snake it outside after the mall was closed, and before the last regular show got out) to make sure that people who wanted to see another show wouldn’t be stuck, by mistake, in the wrong line. Anyway, the crowd knew who I was and gave me a hard time, and eventually they started squirting me with their water guns! I told them to stop or they’d “regret it”! Well, that just egged them on and they pelted me good! After running back inside, I went upstairs, grabbed one of those old water fire extinguishers, climbed thru the hatch up on to the roof, and went to the edge that overlooked…yup…overlooked the Rocky Horror freaks! I yelled “Hey! I told you not to mess with me!”, and then proceeded to rain streams of water on them! Man, looking back on that, I was lucky not to get fired and lucky that they were all pretty good natured about it! Course, in about 30 minutes, they were going to squirt each other anyway, right?
Mike, you mentioned the plexi-glass tunnel that people had to walk through from the boxoffice to the concession area of the lobby. The word was that the tunnel was deemed a hazard, because if there had been a fire, people who were trapped in that tunnel would have that plexiglass (or whatever it was) melt all around them! Rumor was that the fire marshall who inspected the place after it was built, was paid off. Course, don’t know if that’s true or not, but it was always interesting to go in there and walk through the tunnel…quickly, I might add!! The manager, for a good while, was a guy named Robert. He was married with a couple of kids, but that didn’t stop him from being a playboy with the candy girls! I had a couple of his employees that left him and came to work with me at Regency, and they told me of his “smooth moves”. It was sad, but funny at the same time. Like I’ve said before, I can honestly say that I NEVER made a move…that I remember…on one of my concession girls…that I remember, okay? I guess I was always afraid of getting caught. And, besides, they were too young. Anyway, back to the theater, I remember having to run over to the Weis on several occasions to borrow popcorn, or oil, or napkins, or whatever! And they’d do the same from time to time. That Weis theater and our GCC theater were the only ones of our companies in town, so I guess that’s why we didn’t mind sharing when we had to. We even had a joint softball team! Do you remember that, Mike?? By the way, in case you’re wondering, yeah, that Weis manager, Robert?….he cheated at softball too!!
Mike, I put in the Boyd Theatre and found 5 of them in Pennsylvania, and 1 in Philadelphia. Thinking that was the one you were talking about, I went to it and found only 1 entry from you, and that was back in August, 2010! I went out and went back in to make sure I had it right, and I did. So, what’s up with that??? I didn’t read them, but ALL I saw was a few people talking about the possible historical significance of this place and if it could/should/would be saved. Help me out here with a link or some more info and I’ll be glad to look it up.
Mike, are you sure Weis never had a marquee?? I thought I remember them having a very, very small one on Peach Orchard Rd. It was pretty short (still required a ladder to get up there), and only had about 3 lines on it. Am I dreaming again??
Mike, not sure about the dates of “Ghost Dad”, but I can clearly remember it being played in Cinema #2. I’d walk in, watch for a couple of minutes, and turn around and walk out after thinking what a stinker it was! But I will say this, if YOU don’t remember us playing it, maybe I better recheck my memory!
Paul DelRossi. I remember that name because he was scheduled to come to my theater up in Northlake (Atlanta). We prepared for it…worked like DOGS getting it cleaned up, and one of my ushers was just trying to help, and tripped and spilled a good quart of black paint all over the standard red GCC lobby carpet!!! I mean, whatta ya gonna do?? dawn..I showed my son your comment about the paranormal club and he was thrilled with the idea of one being here in Augusta. Now, before you try to sign him up, I gotta tell you that he’s only 11! But he loves those ghost-hunter shows on cable! Maybe we do need to get all of us into the theater and see what ghosts are still around? I just hope we don’t see Bill Cosby’s “Ghost Dad” in there! THAT was bad enough on the big screen! LOL!!
Paul DelRossi. I remember that name because he was scheduled to come to my theater up in Northlake (Atlanta). We prepared for it…worked like DOGS getting it cleaned up, and one of my ushers was just trying to help, and tripped and spilled a good quart of black paint all over the standard red GCC lobby carpet!!! I mean, whatta ya gonna do?? dawn..I showed my son your comment about the paranormal club and he was thrilled with the idea of one being here in Augusta. Now, before you try to sign him up, I gotta tell you that he’s only 11! But he loves those ghost-hunter shows on cable! Maybe we do need to get all of us into the theater and see what ghosts are still around? I just hope we don’t see Bill Cosby’s “Ghost Dad” in there! THAT was bad enough on the big screen! LOL!!
What??? A story on Chuck Dray?? Oh my…..who would be able to publish a story on Chuck that would pass all the censors? The guy was certainly one in a million! To look at Chuck, you’d think you could blow on him and he’d fall over because he was so thin and frail looking. But he was tough..battling cancer for years. He was fast, as I saw on a couple of occasions when the film would break and be spread across the floor, but soon spliced together and back up on the screen in a matter of a couple of minutes! And to look at him, you’d see his cigarette smoke-stained shirts and think he might be a slob, but then you’d go into his union-bathroom and he’d raise hell with you if you dribbled on his spotless floor….and yes, he would check!! Oh, I could add a few more stories, but in honor of his legacy and my friendship with him, I won’t divulge anything that might make someone question his character or his heart. I miss Chuck..I really do. He was one of those folks that come in your life only once.
Mike, and whoever else is interested, I had also put in a search on Ebay for General Cinema Corp, or for GCC. The first time I did it (a few weeks ago) I found a book of gift certificates for a couple of dollars…and no, I did not bid on it. Just now I put in another similar search, and found 2 wooden “soda” crates that had GCC imprinted on the side. The description read that they were from General Cinema Corporation, but I’m not sure how this guy put them together. I remember GCC had bought Sunkist a long time ago, and they dealt with Pepsi products…maybe even included owning a Pepsi bottler??? Is that right…does anyone else remember anything about that?
Mike, in your opinion, of the theater companies that you worked for, which one did you like working for the best? If you say General Cinema, I’m going to spew a mouthful of coke all over my computer screen!! The bunches and bunches of times I heard you moan and groan about having to work so much, and do the Telxon for inventory and checkout, well, I’d just have a hard time believing it’d be General Cinema. BUT…I don’t want to influence your opinion!! So, which is it….and why?? This sorta sounds like an English writing assignment, doesn’t it??
That’d be great, Mike. As soon as our life slows down around here, I’ll get my wife to try and download them somewhere on here. Hey, dawn..one of those pictures in the bunch from the mall showed a lady standing inside the mall. That was along the same route we would walk to from the theater to the bank. I remember for awhile we rode a bicycle that we were going to give away as a prize in some contest! Sure made the trip over and back alot easier..and since we only used it when the mall was closed, it made it alot FASTER too!
Alonzo, thanks for the pictures but I have to be honest with you…they sorta hurt my heart! Seeing that old and rundown place and remembering how it used to be. That’s probably how my wife feels when she looks at pictures of me before we got married! LOL! Anyway…back to the pics…seeing that marquee makes me remember the hundreds of times I had to climb up to those suckers (2 of them).
dawn, you’re remembering Alan Chavous. Alan was a great guy, and a very hard worker. Sadly, Alan was the kind of guy that had a black cloud over his head and always seemed to have a hard life. I remember one time we had Alan and his security guard-girlfriend worked a midnight show on a Saturday when the time changed..went back an hour. Well, Alan must’ve spent an hour trying to convince me that they were due an extra hour of pay that night. He was mad at me for a couple of weeks about that! And it’s not just because he wanted the extra money, he NEEDED the extra money. I have not been over to the mall in decades!! Might go by there just to see that sinkhole!! Mike, I got your pictures today and they are GREAT!! I’ll see if I can get my wife (the resident computer guru) to put them on here…even though I have no idea how to find the others you say are on here!
Hey, right there on that one side, overlooking the little plaza area going into the mall entrance, that’s where I took that water fire extinguisher and doused all those Rocky Horror Picture Show people who threw stuff at me while they were in line!
I don’t get it…who is Robin and why would she want pictures of the Regency Exchange?
Mike, as far as the theater IN the mall, I bet I still remember how to get into that cruddy gate thing that came down to “secure” the theater from the rest of the mall after closing! Hey another memory just came into my big ‘ole head…remember the game machines we had?? I remember them making a “game room” in the little tiny space we used to store those coke cannisters and CO2 tanks…had room for maybe 3 video games…Donkey Kong, Frogger, and something else (Tron?). I remember Zack would set the thing on “free play” and play Donkey Kong for HOURS…well past closing time. We’d get mad because we wanted to go home, and he’d say he didn’t want us to leave him there alone! Those things sure made the money, but I hated squatting down and emptying those things and counting all those quarters. As far as getting into the mall or the Exchange, Barry is a cop, so we should be able to do it with him with us, right?!? Let me know, and I’ll be there to do that and maybe go on to lunch or supper afterward.
Yeah, Mike, I’d love to see those, you know I would! Let me know when and I’ll be there. Heck, if I have the time, I’ll even break back into the place with you!! Well…maybe not. Maybe we’ll just meet up for lunch or something. Might be a good time to get Barry and Charles into the discussion…that’d be great!
Okay, I’m going to post this comment here because I KNOW there are like-minded people on here who understand. Today, after a long, hard day at work, I happened across a small plastic bag of Kroger-brand popcorn my wife had bought for my son’s birthday party (no, that was NOT his present!). I was alittle hungry, so I opened it and grabbed a handful. Being an “old theater man”, I love popcorn! But aside from the taste, the wonderful smell immediately took me back to the days when I was an usher and I was assigned once or twice a week to come in for a few hours and pop popcorn in an out-of-the-way room upstairs..just me, a big cup of free coke, a blasting radio, and a super-hot popcorn popper and I dumped out loads and loads of steaming, sizzling popcorn that I’d shovel into large and long plastic bags! I’d put the day’s date on each bag,and then toss it up on the easily-accessible shelves. Turn around, and attend to the next batch of popped corn that was spewing out like a lava-filled volcano, into the salty, oily bin!
Then I’d think about the busy weekend nights when I’d run upstairs to fetch 2 or 3 or those big bags because the concession girl told me that they were about out of popcorn…again, that smell would hit me every time I ran into that room! Can’t you just smell it now??
Man!! I figure for the $1.00 that my wife spent on that little plastic bag of Kroger popcorn, I got a ton of memories that came flooding back to me!
Oh, wow! Thanks so much for posting that photo, Alonzo! That made my day, seeing “my” old theater. Looking at it, I can just about remember which screens were located where, how small the marquee was, that we had a bad water problem in the planters over there on the left side (water would leak into the bottom of the cinema!), etc.. Good stuff. Wow, I guess a picture IS really worth a thousand words…well, about 40 here, but you know what I mean!
I remember another couple of theater stories, so, since this is the place to share them, Ima sharin'! Soon after I started working there, I had to hire a good number of staff. I was really done hiring and had everyone lined up, so I didn’t need anyone else. This one cute little girl came in for an interview..she was recommended by someone I had just hired..and I told her I was sorry but I didn’t really need her. Our conversation turned more personal and I asked her where she was from. As soon as she told me her family had just moved from Augusta, I told her she had the job!! A girl from my hometown, and I’m not gonna hire her?? Another of the concession girls I hired told me, when I brought out a bunch of candy cases from the storeroom, that she had the same cases of candy at home..her Dad worked for the candy distributor. She asked me if I wanted her to bring any cases from home to work, and I told her “Hell no!!!”! That’s all I needed was to get linked to some candy-conspiracy! Going back to my previous post and how I had put in my resignation…the morning the company auditor was there to check me out, he was upstairs counting while I was downstairs. I told them I didn’t have anything to hide and they could count without me..that’s how sure I was of my count. Anyway, I sat downstairs with the crazy division manager talking about stuff. I guess he was trying to tell me a story about good versus bad management. He told me a story about a restaurant called Wiener King that was beside the place he used to work at when he was young. He said that as soon as the manager of Wiener King left the place on an errand, he could look in and see the employees jumping on the counter, throwing stuff at each other, and just acting like idiots because the manager wasn’t there. I turned to my soon-to-be-ex-boss and asked him with a serious face, “Hey, do you think Wiener King is hiring?”! I thought that was the highlight of our relationship! Hey, again, thanks for letting me air out my old memories!
Mike, I was reading all this, and it jogged a couple of old memories that pretty much mirrored a couple of yours! I remember my family going into the old Sky City..actually, I think it was first called Bowers, with Bi-Lo being beside it…and us kids would run over to the top of the hill overlooking Forest Hills, and WATCH a movie (couldn’t hear anything!). I do remember my family going to the drive-in and taking in a HUGE brown grocery bag of popcorn that we popped on the stove. I’m sure we took in our own drinks and candy as well. My Dad was military, so we didn’t have alot of money. Us kids would also go and play at the decent-sized playground that was just under the screen. And I think Forest Hills is where we saw “Planet of the Apes” when it came out…your post jogged that memory as well. Good stuff! I hated to see this place close up. And you’re right..the shopping center now is an absolute dump!
“Pufnstuff”…“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”…“Fiddler on the Roof”…“The Bermuda Triangle”??? & “In Search of Noah’s Ark”??? (there were like 2 or 3 of those strange documentary-type movies out back then)…and some BORING, BORING, BORING movie about some teacher that went down to some poor part of the country to, well, to teach! (Hey..I was a little kid whose mom dragged me to this movie! She had to feed me candy to keep from whining, and then I just fell asleep! She also bought me a couple of comic books as part of the deal, from what I remember!)…….those were just some of the first movies I ever saw in Augusta, as a kid. Walk in, box office was on the left, concession stand was on the left (pretty small one), and bathrooms were straight ahead! The picture that was on here earlier reminded me that behind the theater, across the street was the Navy National Guard place…I remember the anchor out front. Also, down the street, was a Dairy Queen with a small, handmade village that was built by the firemen at the fire station right across the street. People would always bring their kids, or their dates, to that little village. Daniel Village Theater was one of my favorites growing up!
Yeah, that’s a pic of it alright. Looking back over my last post on this place, it reminded me of the girls that worked there! Man, they had some cute ones, that’s for sure. But, now that I look back on it, I know why. The manager had an eye out for the cute girls, that’s all I’ll say. I remember going to see “E.T.” at that theater…saw it 3 times and with a different girl each time! After the first time, I knew when to make myself available for my date when she started crying! LOL!!
Dave Poland was definitely not my favorite division manager…but that was a long time ago. You had asked me earlier what it was about Al Hernandez that made me and Barry put him on our “Hero Pedestal”…well, he just acted cool, and we were at the age when we thought it was real important to also be cool. He was a Doorman,and walked around cool, tore tickets cool, emptied trash cool…what a couple of dorks we were! Anyway, we stopped thinking Al was cool when we noticed how UN-cool he smelled!!! (Your stinky coat comment reminded me about that!) I figured good personal hygiene is a must for someone to be cool, right? Mike, how does someone go about checking out that coming attraction tag and looking at all those pictures you’ve put on? Speaking of those coming attractions, I remember when GCC had a Christmas sales promotion for the management that was one of the easiest things I’ve ever sold! Can’t remember the name of it, but it was essentially a 20-second “still picture” ad that a business could buy and it’d be placed on a screen, shown in a loop between shows. We presented it to the business by telling them that they’d have a “captured audience”, it’d reach hundreds/over a thousand people a day. AND…that’s not all folks…AND, they also would get something like 250 2-for-1 movie passes that they can use however they’d like for a promotion! I think of those whenever I go see a movie now..and watch all those commercials before the coming attractions!
While we’re talking Rocky Horror, I remember how the theater would be TRASHED after the show! We had to pay the janitors extra to get it cleaned up in time for the next day’s shows, and that was no easy feat! GCC had those seats where you could seperate the bottom cushion from the tray it fit into, but the janitors couldn’t take that much time to do that, so we had rice tinkling and shaking around in the seats whenever customers went to sit down or get up! The RHPS freaks would also throw stuff and spray water at the screen, which almost ruined a couple of spots on them. For you guys who don’t know much about Augusta, this theater was right down the street from a military post, Fort Gordon. It was the spot where most new guys in the Army would come right after boot camp…so, they were still pretty immature and liked to play, IMO. Anyway, some of those guys would really get in to RHPS, and they’d come in wearing water-filled backpacks, with battery-operated machine guy style squirt guns, and they’d have walkie-talkie headsets! They ended up helping out our 2 security guards that would patrol the theater during the movie…helping to spot the trouble-makers! The crowds would always ask me to come in and watch with them, but I told them “No way!” because I didn’t want to get my nice polyester jacket messed up!
Speaking of being up on the roof and Rocky Horror, I remember Zack making me go check the back of the Rocky Horror line (this is when we’d snake it outside after the mall was closed, and before the last regular show got out) to make sure that people who wanted to see another show wouldn’t be stuck, by mistake, in the wrong line. Anyway, the crowd knew who I was and gave me a hard time, and eventually they started squirting me with their water guns! I told them to stop or they’d “regret it”! Well, that just egged them on and they pelted me good! After running back inside, I went upstairs, grabbed one of those old water fire extinguishers, climbed thru the hatch up on to the roof, and went to the edge that overlooked…yup…overlooked the Rocky Horror freaks! I yelled “Hey! I told you not to mess with me!”, and then proceeded to rain streams of water on them! Man, looking back on that, I was lucky not to get fired and lucky that they were all pretty good natured about it! Course, in about 30 minutes, they were going to squirt each other anyway, right?
Mike, you mentioned the plexi-glass tunnel that people had to walk through from the boxoffice to the concession area of the lobby. The word was that the tunnel was deemed a hazard, because if there had been a fire, people who were trapped in that tunnel would have that plexiglass (or whatever it was) melt all around them! Rumor was that the fire marshall who inspected the place after it was built, was paid off. Course, don’t know if that’s true or not, but it was always interesting to go in there and walk through the tunnel…quickly, I might add!! The manager, for a good while, was a guy named Robert. He was married with a couple of kids, but that didn’t stop him from being a playboy with the candy girls! I had a couple of his employees that left him and came to work with me at Regency, and they told me of his “smooth moves”. It was sad, but funny at the same time. Like I’ve said before, I can honestly say that I NEVER made a move…that I remember…on one of my concession girls…that I remember, okay? I guess I was always afraid of getting caught. And, besides, they were too young. Anyway, back to the theater, I remember having to run over to the Weis on several occasions to borrow popcorn, or oil, or napkins, or whatever! And they’d do the same from time to time. That Weis theater and our GCC theater were the only ones of our companies in town, so I guess that’s why we didn’t mind sharing when we had to. We even had a joint softball team! Do you remember that, Mike?? By the way, in case you’re wondering, yeah, that Weis manager, Robert?….he cheated at softball too!!