I'm writing this on January 28th, the eleventh anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. It was an event which shocked me (and the rest of the world I suppose) both because it took the life of a "civilian" and because we watched it happen again and again for months (years even) in slow-motion replays.

Anyway, I reckon the Challenger explosion is my generation's equivalent of the "where were you when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor" or "where were you when Kennedy was killed" question. I know I remember it distinctly.

I was just getting into the movie business at the time, and was running porno movies at the Franklin Theatre on South Ave (it's now a parking lot) here in Syracuse. It was where you broke in as a projectionist, and it was pretty good experience, since you had to run the show constantly, the product was generally in really bad shape, and the equipment wasn't exactly state of the art, so you learned to thread up after a film break, and deal with film related "catastrophe" in a hurry.

That theatre was "mine" for quite a while. I used to work from nine in the morning till ten-thirty at night, Monday through Friday, and then nine till four-thirty on Saturday. Somebody else picked up the Saturday night and Sunday tricks. God, the hours sure dragged on down there. To kill time, I used to take apart the projector that wasn't running, and then try to get it together before I had to change back over. I usually made it, though I had a few close calls.

There was a pretty nice marquee right off the booth, and I use to pull a chair and my radio out there to read when it was nice out. The sides were about three feet high, so you could survey the neighborhood without really being seen yourself. I used to barbecue out there, and in fact I was doing chicken one time when the damn thing flared up, and started smoking like crazy. I thought for sure somebody'd call the fire department, and I was trying to figure out how to explain to the owner (a very nasty-tempered Nazi son-of-a-bitch) why I was barbecuing on his marquee while he was paying me to run movies. I managed to put the fire out before that happened, thankfully.

Across the street, next to a little neighborhood store, was a vacant lot, where just about everybody in the area, it seemed, stopped to urinate. I saw men amble on over to write their names on the brick wall. I saw moms bring their kids over to stop and take a leak. Hell, even women darted back into the high weeds, looked back and forth once, and then dropped their drawers quickly to leave a little something behind.

There was a bar next door on the left, and Friday night was usually good for at least one fight out front. One sunny afternoon I got to watch the commotion as the owner of that little convenience store across the street got stabbed by an apparently dissatisfied customer. I looked just in time to see him come running out (covered in blood) swearing at his assailant. He was a tough old Arab, and I don't think he even missed a day on account of it. Up on the corner there were a few prostitutes who'd work the passing cars, and I used to watch 'em get picked up, and then time how long it was till they made it back again. They averaged about twenty minutes. One of 'em even tried to solicit my Dad when he came to pick me up one night when my car wasn't behaving itself. My mother decided to accompany him for the next few nights till I got it fixed. Her name was Jeannie (the prostitute, that is), and she was really a pleasant woman, though not exactly the smartest person I've ever met. Jeannie was apparently from the south, and every now and again she'd wind up in the hospital for a few days with hepatitis. I guess she was a heroin addict, and she'd get ahold of a bad needle once in a while. I figure she's probably gotten ahold of something a lot worse by now. When she wasn't in the hospital, Jeannie'd come in every Thursday, with a guy who drove a purple van. Out in the lot, she'd wait for one of the customers to spot her the five dollar admission fee, and once inside she'd work the crowd. If somebody wanted a little extra, she'd take him out to the van, and I remember watching that sucker rock up and down. I think it needed shocks.

There was an old balcony, long since abandonded that you could walk out onto from the projection booth. The seats in that old theatre used to squeak and creak, and sometimes I'd walk out on that balcony with my big old mug of coffee, and hear the seats below squealing away as Jeannie "serviced" a customer in the back row. I'd let a little coffee drip down, and then jump back out of sight. The squeaks would stop for a bit, and when I heard them resume, I'd creep to the edge and let loose with another volley and then quickly jump back out of sight again. It was tough to keep from laughing out loud. I don't know whether I was spoiling the guy's fun, or prolonging his pleasure.

It's funny, but everybody thinks if you're a projectionist, you sit there watching the movie every time through. Other than the first time (when you try to make sure you haven't put it together upside down or something) I rarely looked at the screen, except to check the focus and lamphouse alignment every changeover. Hell, after a day through the same movies a few times, I didn't even have to look for the changeover; I knew it by sound.

"Oh God." Strike up the lamphouse.

"Oh, oh, oh." Start the projector.

"God oh baby, oh my God!" Boom. Hit the changeover. Thread up, rewind, and get back to your book (and turn the damn sound back down, so you didn't have to listen).

Everybody always gave me that "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" look when they heard where I worked, but personally, I never found those movies very interesting, let alone erotic. And looking at a forty foot penis at nine o'clock in the morning isn't really my idea of a good time.

Anyhow, back in '86, I'd just gotten done with a changeover when I thought I heard them say something like "...shuttle... explode..." on the radio. Nah, couldn't be. That was totally unheard of, and nobody (no American, anyway) had been killed in a space-related accident since '67, when those poor guys burned to death in Apollo 1. I ran downstairs (where I rarely went, because Jimmy, the guy that sold tickets, made even the clientele look normal), where there was a TV and sure enough, I got to watch the replay a hundred times before the next changeover. Jimmy took the opportunity to run down front to check something. Seems every week this one guy'd come in and sit in the front row for five or six hours. When he left, he'd come out with white stuff all over his face. Well, as I watched the smiles of the astronauts families turn to horror in slow motion a few more times, Jimmy ran down to investigate. He came back up with a big, toothless, smile and two spent cans of K2R spot remover. Apparently this guy sat down in the front row and (with his free hand) sniffed spot remover all afternoon. Now, there's one that never occurred to me.

So, anyhow, when I think about the Shuttle accident, that's what comes to mind. Porno flicks, prostitutes, and spot remover. I wonder how that'd sound on one of those "man in the street" interviews for the six o'clock news?

"Ha-ha! Porno movies, Ron!"

"Hee-hee. And spot remover, too! Ha-ha. That's great Kathy! In other news...."

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