Growing up in a small town, going to the movies wasn’t just entertainment, it was an event. A rarity. A lifeline to the outside world. We didn’t have a megaplex or stadium seating. We had Lee Cinema…a modest little two-screen theater tucked away at the end of a strip mall that also housed a discount grocery store and a jewelry store, with faded movie posters in the windows and a neon sign that buzzed louder than it glowed.
When I was a kid, the idea of going to the big theater at the mall, which was an hour away, felt like a dream. My older brother and his friends made the trip nearly every weekend, coming back with stories about packed crowds, surround sound, and concession stands that stretched like buffets. I’d sit at the dinner table, listening to their tales like they’d just returned from Hollywood itself. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to go.
But fate had other plans. That mall theater closed about a year before I turned sixteen.
Luckily, in the opposite direction from home, there was the Lee Cinema. It wasn’t fancy. The seats squeaked, the floors were sticky, and the popcorn tasted like it had been popped during the Reagan administration. But it was ours. My family had gone there a few times when I was younger. I remember seeing Jaws 3-D with those flimsy red-and-blue glasses that never quite worked, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark with my cousins giggling through the whole thing, and Back to the Future Part III, which felt like the biggest movie in the world at the time.
When I turned sixteen and got my first job at the grocery store in town, that little movie theater became my second home. Every Tuesday night, a group of us…coworkers, classmates, whoever was free…would pile into someone’s car and head to the movies. Tuesday was “Two Dollar Tuesday,” and that price was fantastic. You could see a movie, grab a soda, and still have enough left over for a late-night snack at McDonald’s.
Most of the movies were a week behind the big city releases, which was fine by us. It gave us time to hear the buzz, read a few reviews in Entertainment Weekly, and decide what was worth our two bucks. Sometimes we’d do a double feature if the lineup was good. I remember nights where we’d catch Toy Story and whatever else was playing at the time back-to-back. Blockbusters, oddball comedies, forgettable thrillers…we saw them all.
That theater wasn’t just about the movies. It was about the parking lot afterward, where we’d hang out, swap stories, flirt, and figure out weekend plans. It was where I took dates…nervous, hopeful, trying to play it cool while sharing a box of Milk Duds. It was where I learned how to read a crowd, how to time a joke, how to sit through a bad movie and still have a good time.
From 1994 until the new theater opened in ’97, I must’ve seen a hundred movies at Lee Cinema. And even after the new place came along with its bigger screens and cleaner carpets, I still had a soft spot for the old one. It finally closed for good in 1999, but the owner opened a drive-in in the next town over, and my movie-going adventures continued under the stars.
Today, I’ve got a 75-inch TV in my living room, probably the same size as those old screens, and every Saturday night (except during college football season), my wife and I settle in for a movie. It’s not the same, of course. There’s no sticky floor, no buzzing neon, no whispered teenage drama in the back row. But when the lights go down and the opening credits roll, I still feel it…that flicker of excitement, that sense of escape, and that small-town magic that made Tuesday nights at the movies something I’ll never forget.
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