Rogers60

The 1939 movie, "Gone With the Wind," probably the most-viewed movie ever made, was still popular enough in 1959 that the Post Theater scheduled it. The TV networks in the 1950s probably couldn't devote more than three hours of time to such a long movie, so it could still draw a theater audience.

  

It was a summer date. Summer dates are were always welcomed because seeing others, especially girls, was not that easy, and summer dates always seemed to have the potential for something, well, er, romantic. The precise circumstances of why my date with a girl from Atlanta came about are just like the times in Dixie--"long forgotten." She was visiting my good friend, Norm Cooper. She must have been a cousin, otherwise Norm would have dated her himself. Perhaps he just wanted to pawn her off on whoever was available to get her out of his house. Now that I look back on it, I think she just wanted to see, for the eighth time (she informed me as soon as she got in the car she had seen it seven times already) "Gone With the Wind." I had a car, so Norm recruited me, I betcha.

  

When I arrived at his house to pick her up, she came outside on the front steps, and while she passed the cute enough test, something told me it would be a date testing my conversational skills. The "TA-DAH!" spark that I got when my now- wife, Nancy, did the same front step entry into my life wasn't there with the southern belle.

  

As with most dates, I felt it was the gentleman's duty to engage his date in conversation. I asked her questions about Atlanta, but having never been there, I didn't have many to ask. She didn't ask me any questions about Spokane. She just smiled, gave short answers to my limited number of questions and didn't seem to be interested in anything other than talking about how much she enjoyed seeing GWTW so many times. I dismissed her as being a bit shallow, definitely a "this will be the last time," date.

  

As I said above, I figure she just wanted a reviewing of her obviously favorite movie or perhaps she was homesick for Atlanta. Whatever, the answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. I do remember the Post was crowded, many Spokanies apparently having considered the twenty-year old film still good enough to pay to see. I do remember two women sitting in front of us who gushed, gasped and swooned every time Clark Gable did one of his sly smiles at Scarlett, with that Gable twinkle of the eye that helped make him so famous.