Nostalgia

First of all, let me make it perfectly clear that the nostalgia in the title refers not to MY "good old days," (I'm not that old!) but to "good old days" in general. Yesterday Bill and I read about an event in the paper that sounded like fun...and it was! First, a little background...

We read about this guy in town that bought a 25 ton pipe organ from a 5,000 seat theater forty years ago. For you youngsters, organs used to provide ALL the sound for movies before the days of "talkies." With a theater-specific organ you could do all kinds of sound effects as well as background music. So for the past forty years he has been working on and off at restoring his organ. Ten years ago, needing a place to keep it, he bought the Granada Theater in Old Town Kern, near the corner of Baker and Kentucky streets. The theater is about 90 years old and has been empty for a long time. For the past ten years, he has been restoring the theater (very slowly.) It has air conditioning, but no heat, and he has restored all the seats, but the aesthetics still need a lot of work. For example, he is making latex molds and re-casting pediments that are missing from columns. We're not done yet with this man's hobbies...


He also has a vast collection of old movies and movie trailers which he collects, restores, and repairs. So he announced that yesterday, he was opening the doors to the public and inviting everyone to a free showing of Buster Keaton's 1920 flick, "One Week." He also showed a collection of old movie trailers, did an organ demonstration and answered questions from the audience. The whole thing was free, and sounded interesting, so we went. We had a blast! The organ is so cool. He can make it sound like anything; chiming bells, creaking doors, train whistles, etc. The theater was clean, if not real pretty, though you can see the potential. With a boatload of money and ten more years it could become quite a palace. The pipes for the organ are along the sides of the theater, covered by louvers that open and close with the changes in volume. Every seat in the theater was full and people were turned away at the door. The film was very funny and the crowd had a great time. There were old people who had gone to that theater as children, as well as young film students and everybody in between. There was a very nice feeling of community. We all hope that he does it again soon.