Movie Night at YumaBev's

My Wonderful Husband and I both became Classic Movie fans in the mid to late-seventies, but for totally different reasons. He used to watch them to unwind AFTER work and I used to watch them to stay awake AT work. I worked as an attendant at the Orlando Airport parking lot. This was back in the days when the Orlando, Florida airport was about the size of the Yuma, Arizona one now, just four gates and a parking lot that held about 300 cars.

I used to work the overnight shift on Bob’s days off. The last flight came in around 2 am, and the first one in morning didn't leave until 6 am, so there were about four hours with nothing to do. We had to take inventory; write down the tag numbers of all the cars in the lot, but that only took 30 minutes. So, to stay awake, I watched Bob’s 12-inch TV. This was pre-cable or satellite dish and believe it or not, there was only one TV station in Orlando that ran anything but the test pattern after midnight. This station ran old movies; from the forties & fifties. Bob’s TV was black & white, but so were most of the movies, and so I became hooked.

TV station test pattern

Fast forward to 2013; all of my neighbors have owned RV's, some still do. One of them was telling a story recently about how his wife hauled almost 500 pounds of rocks back up north one year in their Motorhome. This reminded my Wonderful Husband and me of an old 1953 movie starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz called The Long, Long Trailer.

We ordered a DVD of it online and had a movie night at our house. There were 13 of us and even though I have seen this movie many times, most had only seen it once (probably when it was new) or not at all. They knew the premise of the movie; too many rocks in a camper, so they all showed up carrying rocks as their price of admission! This was going to be fun, and it was.

They brought rocks for tickets

Sharon brought a huge paper bag filled with fresh popped popcorn, Nancy brought traditional “Movie Theater” candy and Jeri brought peanuts. We made sure everyone could see and hear. The movie began and so did the laughter and squeals of “OH, NO!” “Look out!” and “These people are crazy!” I’m not sure which I enjoyed most; watching the movie or watching the others.

If laughter can extend your life, then we added quite a few years to each of ours in those 103 minutes. Keep an eye out for it, on one of the Classic Movie channels, and have a few laughs yourself; who knows, you might become a Classic Movie fan, too.

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