THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Theaters in San Antonio
INTERVIEW WITH: Oscar Saenz Canchola
DATE: 24 September 2002
PLACE: ITC
INTERVIEWER: Laurie Gudzikowski
TAPE I, SIDE 1
G: This is Laurie Gudzikowski;, I’m at the Institute of Texan Cultures and I am interviewing Oscar Canchola about his memories of going to the movies in San Antonio. Oscar, the question I usually like to start out with is: where were you born and when were you born?
C: Um. It’s what I thought.
G: It’s a good place to start.
C: I was born in Victoria, Texas, on February 24, 1934, and that’s a little bit south and a little bit different than San Antonio. But, I was raised here in San Antonio and the locals have the advantage over me because at that time, before you were fourteen, you couldn’t go anywhere where your mother couldn’t see you and your father couldn’t whistle at you. So they went nowhere where I didn’t go, other than in their particular little neighborhoods – hoods that is. And so downtown was the place to be. And we loved downtown. And movies were it. I’d liked to tell you about Oscar Saenz Canchola 2
C: the two most...that just stick in my mind. It didn’t happen to do with me being downtown – movies that I ever saw. And one of them I didn’t want to go home and for some reason I stopped at the Empire Theater, and I thought it would be a good place to stop because they had sword play and things like that.
G: Roughly what age were you?
C: I was sixteen at that time - sixteen or seventeen. And so, the name of the movie was Cyrano de Bergerac. And I walked in there, and that movie so impressed me that I just had to get my girlfriend to come see it with me. Well, I managed to; I don’t know how because she...her parents were Mexicans – they were from Mexico you know – and so, well, here’s...
G: And they were stricter than American parents?
C: Well, let me put it this way: I could never go out with her without taking one of her little sisters. And we never went anywhere without a little sister. So I did. And we went to the Empire Theater and I just couldn’t get over Cyrano de Bergerac. But I think it had to do with the age because that’s a big difference in movies. But let me tell you a little bit more about the other one - just again, the age and the understanding - that I just happen to see, I don’t know why. And it happened that they asked for me. It happened at the Aztec and I saw the movie Carrie.
G: Ah. Okay.Oscar Saenz Canchola 3
C: And I – the great Sir – what’s his name, that great English actor?
G: Lawrence Olivier?
C: Yes. Lawrence Olivier, and I just couldn’t get over that movie. I guess I understood it. And those are the two movies that I saw that really, really stay in my mind since I was young at that particular time.
G: What was the very first movie you ever remember seeing in your life?
C: Oh my goodness. I’m trying to think. We didn’t go to movies - it was too expensive, it cost a nickel at that time. And I lived in, like I said, in Victoria. Now, that’s a small town that’s completely different from a big town. And so my mother let me go, because my brother was a little older, and gave us each a nickel. And at that time we went to the Uptown, that was in Victoria, Texas. Of course, there had to be cowboys. And, of course, they had a serial, whatever it was. And we were not quite sophisticated or old enough for musicals or anything serious. We saw silent films, really, some of the shorts - Max Sennett and some of the other ones. And I saw some of the greatest characters: like Leon Errol - played the greatest, the greatest drunk. And Edgar Kennedy, he did the best slow burn, I guess, since Elmer Fudd. But, any rate, movies were... If you say movies, it’s just wide open because you’re looking at all the neighborhood movies. And Oscar Saenz Canchola 4
C: there were neighborhood movies for a reason – because you couldn’t go anywhere. This was World War II I’m talking about. And money – who had money? So what was the range of your...where did you go? And even as a high-schooler, cars we didn’t have, to the extent that one of our friends had a Minnie Piper Laurie Award for something. And they were going to present it to him at the Jefferson High School, and three or four buddies got together, you know, and said, “Yeah, we’re going to go.” Well, logistics took over, and “Who’s got a car?” Finally Joe says, “Well, I think I can get my parents to lend me one.” Fine. Well, the greatest hurdle was none of us knew where Jefferson High School was at! We’d never been north of Commerce Street.
G: What school did you...what high school did you go to?
C: Yes. I went to Tech, of course. Tech High School. We were downtown. In Spanish – I don’t know if you know – see, Lanier in Spanish, they called them La Tripa and Tech downtown was called La...La Tripa means guts because they had all the packing plants over there, off of Tampico – Tampico and Brazos Street. And so they called them La Tripa. They called La...because we all dressed that well.
G: One of things I’m interested in is the Spanish language movies and theaters that specialized in the Spanish language movies. Did you patronize those theaters?
C: Yes. Downtown. I never went to the Guadalupe or those theaters over there. To me they were...I don’t know why I Oscar Saenz Canchola 5
C: call them neighborhood theaters, but to me it was neighborhood theaters. And late in the ‘50s going into other people’s neighborhoods may not be healthy.
G: Especially for a teenage boy?
C: Yes. Especially then. For some reason you were a target or a magnet or something. And for harassment and things like that – gangs and stuff, you know. But certainly – my goodness, I’m drawing a blank.
G: What theater did you go to to see Spanish language movies?
C: Oh, Saragossa, which was on Commerce Street, Internacional, which was there, catty-corner on Santa Rosa and Commerce Street, and the great...
G: Alameda.
C: And Alameda. Now the Alameda was really something, Laurie. You should have seen it when it was – I don’t know when it was built but it was so plush, so nice.
G: Sometime in the ‘30s, I think, but I could be wrong.
C: I don’t know why I was thinking it was later than that, Laurie.
G: Maybe it was – it was the last of the big theaters to be built in San Antonio.
C: Yes. And what I remember the most was that management, how they did it I don’t know, but they had these beautiful girls from Mexico who were the ticket-takers and they were all blonde, fair and blue-eyed. Oh, we used to just get in Oscar Saenz Canchola 6
C: line to see them.
G: That’s one way to get the young men to come to the theater.
C: Oh, I...well now, I figure that had something to do with it, you know – hormones and being young and seventeen, after all. And some of the real fine movies, the better types of movies - or in the ‘40s there were so grainy and so bad but I used to go with my mother to see them and I liked them, even though they were bad and sound was bad and the studios etc.
G: Now all of these theaters, it seems to me showed both English language and Spanish language movies. Is that correct?
C: Not to my experience.
G: In your experience they were solely Spanish language.
C: Yes, they were solely in the Spanish language. And at ...late in the... Well, no, let me say in the ‘50s they would have Technicolor movies, you know. And those were your better movies. And what they were really noted for were their stage shows. Just some marvelous, like, I’ll name one group. It was Los [inaudible] – they were a singing group, a musical group. God, there were some great ...why the United States didn’t know them, well, they didn’t know Cantinflas either, but Cantinflas was the highest paid movie entertainer, if you will, in the whole world.
G: And were all of these movies made in Mexico? Or were Oscar Saenz Canchola 7
C: they made in other South American and European countries?
C: Um.
G: You don’t know.
C: I don’t know about that because they did have – especially from South America, Argentina – you had some famous actress. But mostly they were made in Mexico. I think the technology came...or they would go to Mexico and that’s where they came from and that’s what I was used to. My mother loved the charros and the horses, you know, ranch life and things of that nature.
G: So when you went to the Spanish language movies it was more of a family kind of an outing rather than just kids together?
C: Yes.
G: Or was it both?
C: It was both. You’d have fifty-fifty percent because it was family, they would go in with their kids and buy them popcorn and sit them down, you know. But mostly, Laurie, way back then we...we went to the movies on Sundays, of course, and it was for the air condition – gosh, it was a relief to be able to sit in there for an hour and a half or whatever and just luxuriate in that climate, you know. But those movies - I was of course growing up, fifteen years old, you know, and going downtown, because there’s where you took your girl friends, too.Oscar Saenz Canchola 8
G: How did you get to the movies? Did you walk? Did you catch the bus? You said you didn’t have a car.
C: Well, I lived on South Alamo Street in a rooming house right off of St. Mary’s on the 936 Outbound, I’ll never forget. And until later my dad bought a little bitty old house that we moved to. But none of us...we rode the bus and the reason that the downtown and the movies that we went to was mainly because your momma sent you to the post office to buy some one cent postcards, or whatever, and to pay the phone bill, well, you walked down to the Auditorium Circle, around there, and you paid your phone bill or any other bills that you had to do ‘cause momma stayed at home and you could do it after school and you could hang around downtown and so did the girls, you know.
G: You always hear about movies being the place where young gentlemen took their girls for courting. Do you have any stories that you’d like to tell about that?
C: Oh, my goodness.
G: Or is this not stories that you would tell?
C: Oh, no, I...in retrospect, of course, and being a young fellow, I think I was sixteen years old, going on seventeen, but anyway, I took my girl downtown to the Majestic Theater. And, of course, upstairs where you went ‘cause that way could smooch, you know...
G: Were you’re a little hidden in the balcony?
C: Yeah, and it was...that’s where you went, anyway. AndOscar Saenz Canchola 9
C: so, anyway, we were heading out of the theater – and embarrassment, of all of the embarrassments, my zipper...I had my zipper down, and my girl friend had to tell me before we walked out. I don’t know what...she turned all kinds of red, and told me, and I liked to have died! I said, “Get in front of me; get in front of me,” and then I zippered my pants up and I thought, “Oh, God.” I didn’t know how I was going to do it but I walked her to the corner, and I let her catch the bus and I caught my bus home.
G: And fifty years later you still remember that incident.
C: Well, yes. She’s also my wife now.
G: Does she remind you of that?
C: It was so funny. I believe then that, Laurie, that the Majestic at that time you paid about fifty, fifty-five cents to get into the movie and that was pretty good and that’s pretty expensive, for us, ‘cause we’d go on the other cheaper movies and because they were Spanish speaking movies we’d go somewhere else – we didn’t have to go there. We could go to the Internacional or Saragossa, pay a lesser price and walk in, so we’d go to either one.
G: So going to the Majestic was an experience? Tell us about it.
C: No doubt. That was an experience because...this is how the dates go. First of all, you’re too young, and Mom and Dad probably wouldn’t let...their Mom and Dad wouldn’t let you go out. “Well, anyway, they’d have their little sistersOscar Saenz Canchola 10
C: with them or something. They had to go in a group, so if you had a date, this is how the dates worked: I’ll meet you at the corner over there by Houston Street etcetera and so you caught the bus and you waited down on the corner until they got there. And when they got there, now, you could get together and walk ahead and the little ones, you kicked them to the back, you know, get out of the way, you know. And so we’d go to the movies and, of course, you had to take your girl to the best one which was the Majestic or the Aztec or the Texas. You know, the Texas was a good theater. And that’s where...that’s how the dates would go. And in fact, I did something I’ll never do again. But anyway, we went to – we were seventeen or eighteen - and we got together with another couple and they had a midnight movie called The Thing and it showed at three theaters at the same time - at the Majestic, the Aztec and the Texas, and the lines were horrendous on each one of them. We got into the theater none-the-less, and we sat down, this other couple and us, and we had the girls in between us. And my girl friend was on my right hand side and I put my arm around her. And right in one of those scenes when the monster - it never shows himself - all of a sudden jumps out of a window or something, everybody just screamed, and what I did is I grabbed this other girl, my wife’s girl friend, by the back of the neck and she almost...well, she almost wet herself. And she screamed so loud. Oh, it scared me Oscar Saenz Canchola 11
C: too. And to this day - her name is Emma - she’ll never forget me. Every time she sees my wife, she says – which was my girl friend at that time – she says, “That Oscar!” you know, so-and-so forth; she’ll never forget.
G: You’re never going to live that one down.
C: No, I guess not. And so I remember that one, especially that one. And especially when 3-D came in, that was really something to see it for the first time. We experienced it all so...
G: And what movie do you remember seeing in 3-D?
C: When it was the Wax Museum. And it’s first time that Charles Bronson came out. But he came out as a mute and he didn’t speak or anything. Previous to that, of course, the first one was... But I can’t remember the name of it, but it had to do with Africa and lions and throwing spears and things of that nature, but I can’t remember what it was. There were several theaters downtown and one of them was the – not the Plaza, it was the Palace, it was between Alamo Street and Losoya and you could enter on either side. And I went there several times, but one time I took another girl and – that I had known before, in elementary... I hadn’t seen her for, well, anyway, in the seventh or eighth grade, and so I took her to the movies, Roberta was her name, and, of course, I didn’t want my wife to know it at that time, but it wasn’t nothing, “It was hi, how are you?” And things like that. I shouldn’t have been there, but I was. And Oscar Saenz Canchola 12
C: that’s what I remember the Palace for at that particular time. And we were speaking one time especially about all these Mexican theaters, you know...you might call them Mexican but at that time anything past Main Avenue, the gringos wouldn’t go that far west, you know, in the ‘50s. They wouldn’t wander that far. And so they might go to the State, which was between Main and South Flores, that was as far as they went, they didn’t go to the O’Brian.
G: I was going to ask you. Tell me about the O’Brian Theater. O’Brian Theater seems like a strange name for a Spanish language theater.
C: It is. I don’t know why. You can ask anybody about the O’Brian – okay.
G: Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about the O’Brian.
C: Ask anybody, yeah, I went to the O’Brian - there it is over there and so-and-so forth. But that’s not the name of the theater. For some reason – I saw the marquee, not the marquee but their sign and the sign on it says “Obrero, O-b-r-e-r-o, which means The Worker. But everybody knew it as the O’Brian. Why, I don’t know. I guess we...most of us never...we were never taught Spanish, and so we thought we spoke Spanish and then again we thought we spoke English, you know. In between that, it came out O’Brian instead of Obrero and I couldn’t tell you why. But those theaters, that one was outstanding. They’d have people out there selling you little Mexican style candies, you know, and things like Oscar Saenz Canchola 13
C: that.
G: So they sold a different kind of/array of candies at their concession stand?
C: Yes. They didn’t have concession stands. They had people standing outside.
G: Okay.
C: And they did have concession...
G: On trays or tables or...?
C: Yes. A little tray table like, you know, that you’d pull up and you know had little scissor type legs.
G: So this was outside the door?
C: Yeah, outside the door. And inside – oh, boy – that was really outstanding. It was...see, you had a lot of low-lives and drunks and things like that, and they would go to that theater, it seems like - that and the Joy which was right across the street. And pretty soon you had to lift your feet up because somebody was urinating going down the aisles. You really had to have no money to go down there and pay and go sit in like that, you know.
G: So that was a kind of a rough neighborhood?
C: Well, not rough, I wouldn’t say rough, just low-life, that’s all.
G: Okay.
C: Not bad, just low-life. And so they...
G: You wouldn’t go take your girl to that movie?
C: No, oh, no. No, my God, you know.Oscar Saenz Canchola 14
G: Did they show the same range of movies as the other theaters? Or were they kung fu movies or I don’t know...?
C: Different. They had a – B class movies. They were strictly black and white - you wouldn’t get no color movies there. There were...they ran the gamut, you know - Abbott and Costello and westerns, especially, because it seems during the day you would have kids going there and, like I said, some of your local low-lives that hung around there, especially at the Longhorn Saloon, or whatever they called it, Buckhorn – there it is, Buckhorn. And that’s another story because at that time all your pool halls were...most all of your drinking places were below ground; they were never on street level. They were either upstairs or below street level. They were not on street level at that time. And it had to do with state law that wouldn’t allow them to do that. So that’s why you have a lot of famous places that were below the street level - some were above the street level.
G: Now I heard that some theaters had bars in them, do you remember that?
C: That must have been further back than I did because I don’t remember any – as far as bars. You’re talking about whiskey, beer or...
G: Serving alcohol. . . [inaudible].
C: Alcohol, wine and things like that? No, I knew the smoking sections were up in the balcony.Oscar Saenz Canchola 15
G: So they did have smoking sections in some of the theaters?
C: Oh, yes. They were upstairs, and some of them that didn’t have balconies, well, you just smoked down there. You could smoke on busses and just about everywhere. And the strange thing about it at that time was how we never paid attention...that we never saw any black people.
G: I was going to ask you about that.
C: Yes. We never saw any black...we never paid any attention. I never went to school with any, certainly not at Tech. And they wouldn’t serve them, and so therefore they wouldn’t stay downtown very long because if you’re not served or have a place to go to the bathroom or drink water at least... So they wouldn’t go downtown, there was no reason for them to, other than if they had to buy something or something that they wanted. And so it’s strange how you don’t see them and it’s not as if you’re not – I don’t know what it is – it’s just that we just never paid attention to them, especially as kids, you know. You just don’t think about those things, you know.
G: Now the movie theaters were segregated and some of the theaters - the Majestic being one - had black balconies, with separate entrances that they had to...
C: Oddly enough, I never knew where it was, I never saw any black people at a theater, no where at no time did I see them.Oscar Saenz Canchola 16
G: Was there any kind of segregation of Mexicans in movies?
C: No.
G: Only the informal segregation by the Spanish language movies that I’m assuming were mostly patronized by Mexicans?
C: Correct. That’s correct, Laurie. At the same time, people seemed to pull away from each other. For instance, I used the gringo...white – I hate to use white, you know; I’d rather use gringo. And the Mexican – I like to use the word Mexican and but we were hometown, you know, and we hung to ourselves for some, you know, it seems like you went that way and I went this way. And normally, even with our friends, unless they lived in the neighborhood, we didn’t socialize. We went to school, we knew each other, we left and that was it.
G: When you went to a movie like the Majestic or whatever, where people all kinds of people – all kinds of people...
C: Yes.
G: Were there areas that were more favored by Mexicans and more favored by Anglos or did people just sit wherever there was a space?
C: Oddly enough, you went in and there was no...at that point you sat where...
G: Wherever there was some space?
C: Yeah. Wherever you liked to or...
G: Or the usher sat you?Oscar Saenz Canchola 17
C: Yeah. And some kids liked to sit right up – the little ones, you know, liked to sit right up on the front seat. Well, I’d walk with my girl or something, we’d walk down until I got the sound just right and everything and then we’d see if there’s any seats in that particular area, almost halfway down. No, no particular area for the Mexican-American, if you will, or the Mexican. None whatsoever. We were free ranging; in fact, the schools, you could go to any high school you wanted to. I mean high schools were there then, not that many.
G: . . .[inaudible]
C: Yeah, Brackenridge, Tech...
G: You went to Tech. Was Tech mainly a...were more of the students at Tech mainly Mexicans?
C: They were...
G: Was that kind of a mixed school?
C: It had to be ninety – better than ninety-five percent Mexican. And the other half – maybe you had a handful of gringos and a handful of – a bunch of Chinos – a bunch of Chinamen. And I didn’t know why...
G: ...[inaudible] significant Chinese...[inaudible].
C: There were a big Chinese population - like Frank Wing, they had to send him to school to learn Chinese. And Willie Wu, a bunch of fellows that went down to Tech. But they grew up in the Mexican neighborhoods and they were just like ...we were buddies and we knew each other and they spoke Oscar Saenz Canchola 18
C: Spanish and just carried on like we did, you know. And the movies were quite a thing - Sunday was it - and during the week, well, you had to have a reason for that or you had to be home before supper, that is, and you couldn’t be skipping school which I never did. And so that...when we went to high school kids came from all areas. And they came from Burbank, because that’s how I met my future wife, you know - through a friend of mine who’d come from Burbank and went to Tech and introduced me to this girl from Burbank and that’s how we started it off. We’d go to the Alamo Stadium to go watch football. I’ll see you over there, okay? I’ll see you over there. You never picked her up, you know.
G: I’m going to ask you to stop because...
C: Certainly.
G: I’m almost at the end of this side.
C: Okay.
G: And I don’t want to run out of tape in the middle of a thought.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1.
SIDE 2.
G: When you went to the...tell me about the stage shows.
C: Oh, they were so marvelous. In fact Lydia Mendoza was on there. Tito G. [inaudible], from Mexico. All your famous actors. Well, performers, especially from Mexico, would...apparently they had a route that they took where Oscar Saenz Canchola 19
C: they played one place and the other place and the other place. And when they have a variadad , you know, which is a variety show, more or less like [TV are on] and they would perform: jugglers and singers and trick ropers and all kinds of mimes and mimics and...
C: Now the shows, these live shows were in conjunction with a movie and you paid a price for both of them? Did you go separately? How did it work?
C: It was one price. I can’t imagine that we ever paid more than the normal entrance price to get in.
G: And the normal entrance price was roughly?
C: Roughly what Majestic would be fifty cents.
G: Okay.
C: And that’s to keep out the riff-raff, you know. But it didn’t mean than your lesser theaters like the Saragosa - the Saragosa always had a...always had a variety show on, in fact, they would have them on during the week. In fact, there’s where Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez used to work, out at...let me put it that way. And the Internacional, you know, which was...like a I said, was catty-corner there on Santa Rosa Street, and those were great places to go. Depending on the movie and depending on who you’re with - mostly families went there. Families who lived close by, and the Westside was close by. In fact, where I-35, right now those were houses over there and they would come from there and it was just great to go down to the movies. LikeOscar Saenz Canchola 20
C: I said, for different reasons. And especially when the girls would come downtown and, of course, we were from Tech, you know, and all we liked to do is cruise Houston Street - from Main all the way to Alamo and back on the other side. But you had to...
G: And of course you from Tech were known for your good dressing.
C: Oh, yes, amongst other things. And especially during parades, you know, you had to know what side of the side of the street, because in the morning one side of the street would be sunny and in the afternoon the other side, so you had to know which side was sunny and which not, where you’re going to stand and where you’re not. And so we knew that. And the interesting thing – I have a photo right now – coming to or going to a theater with a girl friend and there was a company right there - I think it was Kress or something - they would take photos on the street, and they would hand you an envelope and they’d take ten thousand photos a day, I think, And so I went and saw it and I liked it and I bought and I had it blown up and I still have it.
G: You still have it. I’d like to be able to copy that picture...
C: Sure.
G: ...Because that would go well... that would go well with the exhibit.
C: Yes. As soon as I find it. Oscar Saenz Canchola 21
G: The stage shows...
C: Yes.
G: During the...actually it’s not the stage shows, but during the depression and even during World War II when theaters were trying to build audiences.
C: Yes.
G: They often had give-aways, they’d have raffles and they’d give away dishes and stuff. Do you remember that at all?
C: What I do remember, because I was small, is in conjunction...for instance, like I said, I grew up in San Antonio but I was born in Victoria, and there’s a little plaza in the center of town and the theaters - two of the theaters, three of the theaters – one of them is on the opposite side and two are on the south side, if you will. Santa Claus would come by and throw...we’d be standing on the grassy part and he’d throw oranges and apples and candy at us. And then the movie across the street they would have a free movie for all the kids.
G: Oh, what a deal.
C: So that was generally where we went. And the plaza at that time in a little town is it; that’s where you went. In fact, my dad used to take me over there to listen to Joe Louis and his fights, ‘cause they would string some amplifiers on the post and we’d go and listen to Joe Louis.
G: . . .[inaudible]. Oscar Saenz Canchola 22
C: ...Right across from the theater.
G: When you were...you said that in the theaters - the Mexican theaters - they sold candy outside; they didn’t sell popcorn in those theaters.
C: They did; they did have popcorn. For some reason or other, I think, they had it on the inside not the outside. But apparently they allowed the vendors outside because they didn’t have...compete against theirs or things of that nature.
G: So when you went to the theater, what was your favorite candy that you would buy?
C: Well, it had to do with how much money I had in my pocket. Let me tell you how that would work. When I was a kid - and it’d be Sunday morning - and my mother would give us all a nickel because we had to go to Mass and that was supposed to go in the basket. Well, we got wise pretty quick you know, regular little con men. And so we’d go to Mass and real piously sit there. And I usually carried a little washer in my pocket, you know. So I’d pull the washer instead of the nickel and I’d hide it in there and then we’d go home. And then we wanted to go to the movies so Momma would give us a nickel, she’d never give us a dime. Well, a nickel would get you into the movies and then get you back. A nickel could buy you candy, popcorn, just about anything they had a nickel would buy it. So I’d keep that little nickel that went to the collection plate, and so thatOscar Saenz Canchola 23
C: was what I’d buy and I’d have to...I think I stood there and Mickey Mantle – popcorn? No, I want the candy bar – I want that Holloway; I want that all-day sucker; no, I want that jaw breaker; no, I think I want a Hippo soda; God, maybe a Delaware Punch; no, that Barq’s Root Beer looks better. I don’t know, let me start all over again! You know. So, I never knew. So it took me a half-hour. Kid, make up your mind or get out of here! You know. Yes sir, yes sir. And so that’s how we got something to munch on while we were there. And of course they had penny candy, too, and, by golly, and here I’ve got a nickel. No, no, no, I can’t do that. And so it was a hard decision to make, you know. When you’ve got a nickel and everything costs a nickel and what are you going to choose? When you want everything!
G: Well, you’d have to sit there, stand there, a long time until they say, “Make up your mind or get out!”
C: But the hardest part was getting out of the house. And the reason for that, Laurie, ‘cause I had a little dog and his name was Corky, oh, my God, and Momma would say, “No, you take care of him; I’m not going to hold him for you, I’m not going to tie him up.” “Oh, Momma...”; and trying to get away from Corky was a problem. We couldn’t hide from him - my favorite, favorite dog, Corky - little terrier, scrappy little dog, loved to...he loved to play football. We’d kick it around; he didn’t like football much, he liked baseball Oscar Saenz Canchola 24
C: better because he could grab it.
G: I was going to say, football a little hard for a dog to ...
C: Oh, he’d tackle us, he’d run behind us and run up to our back legs and knock us down, and then we’d kick at him, but he was gone already. He’d sort of grin at us, or something. I don’t know. He was a great dog.
G: But he always...he also wanted to go to the movies with you and they wouldn’t let him in.
C: Oh, absolutely. I would have took him if they’d let him in, but somehow they didn’t like no dogs up there – no dogs allowed. You know. But my dog was Corky. You don’t understand. Well, anyway, I couldn’t take him.
G: And you had to sneak out of the house to get away from
Corky.
C: Yeah, we had to sneak out. I don’t know how we did it, but we managed to get out of there. And one time I lost my nickel. I only had one nickel and I had it in my pocket, I was so afraid to losing it I didn’t want to put it in my pocket, I didn’t know what to do so I had it in my hand. Lo and behold, I lost it. I cried my eyes out, at least a whole hour. Finally I dragged home. My brother said, I’ll see you. My older brother, that rat, he’d leave me alone, he did. And so I went home crying, crying, told Momma about it and well, she didn’t have another nickel to give me, but she said, I’ll take care of that. The next time, she gave Oscar Saenz Canchola 25
C: me a handkerchief, put the nickel in it, and put a special little knot in it to hold it, so now you can put it in your pocket and hold it at the same time.
G: And that was the last time you lost a nickel... [inaudible].
C: I never lost a nickel after that. Let me tell what happened – talking about losing something. The worst thing that ever happened to me in my life, I guess - traumatic, traumatic - I went to the movies at the Majestic with my wife. I couldn’t think of the movie, but it could have been “Frenchmen’s Creek”, I think... But anyway, beautiful movie, we came out and this time we were a little bit older, so I was going to ride on the bus with her all the way to her bus stop where she got home. Then I’d get off the bus stop and she’d walk two blocks home and I’d turn around, cross the street and get on another bus and go back home. So anyway, we came out of there and I got on my bus and I reached – somehow or the other I missed my wallet because it was about like the thickness of a hamburger - about two inches, two or three inches thick like that – and you sat sideways and it gave you a crooked back. It was full of pictures and I lost it. Laurie, I lost all my pictures that I had that I...so they were...
G: ...[inaudible]that you carried them around... [inaudible].
C: Yes, I had them with me. I lost my driver’s license, Oscar Saenz Canchola 26
C: because I had a driver’s license at the age of fifteen. And I lost my Social Security number, because I worked; I always worked through high school. I was one of those kids that worked, so I didn’t socialize at school, so I wasn’t quite well-known, except with the fellows that were in my print shop at Tech, where I took shop, which was printing. And that’s what hurt so much. If I’d had those pictures today Laurie, oh, my goodness, that was really something. Don’t lose your pictures, Laurie, don’t lose your pictures.
G: Yeah, pictures are very important...
C: Yes. They lead me way back. And as far as...it’s hard to take things out of context because you had so many neighborhood theaters. Every neighborhood had a theater.
G: What was your favorite? What was your neighborhood theater?
C: Well, I didn’t have a neighborhood here.
G: You lived downtown.
C: We lived downtown, I was a downtown cat, you know. Just roaming around downtown, that’s all we did.
G: So all of the downtown theaters were your neighborhood?
C: Yes. That was it. In fact, one of the best places to make business – see it was right there by the Nix Hospital and you’d go down there with a big old screen net and you’d put chicken necks and things in like that, and you dropped it in and you caught crawdads. See, and you’d put them in a can. Sometimes the drivers wouldn’t let you on, you’d go Oscar Saenz Canchola 27
C: all the way to Brackenridge Park and you could sell them for a much as a nickel a piece.
G: Whoa!
C: Yeah. Sometimes they give you a penny. Well, all right.
G: ...[inaudible] You know, you’ve got to earn your money.
C: There and at Alamo Street, there where that creek or river crosses right there, off to the left, that’s a good place, across from the Pioneer – you could really catch a lot of crawdads there.
G: ...[inaudible] I never would have thought of going for crawdads.
C: You could make money. Yeah.
G: Well, you know, when things get tough you can always go ...[inaudible] for crawdads.
C: Yeah.
..: ...[inaudible].
G: No, I can’t remember what it is.
C: Oh, one of the theaters, you asked me about neighborhood theaters, my wife had a neighborhood theater. And that was off – she lived on Semmes, off Nogalitos Street. Well, further south there was the Sunset Theater.
G: Oh, okay.
C: Right there. When they built those streets they just mounded all the dirt in the middle and we called it La... Oscar Saenz Canchola 28
C: [inaudible], the little dome, or whatever, and that’s where Zaramora Street ended. And close to there and, of course, close to there was The Brass Rail Bar, also, but anyway, the Sunset Theater was there and we’d go there on Sunday afternoons. I hated it when they wouldn’t let her go to the movies, because you just saw your girlfriend once in a week, around eight o’clock on Wednesday, for me, and on Sunday afternoon. You couldn’t make a pest out of yourself or, boy, you’d be banned. So you had to walk on edge, you know. And so, well, all right, we’ll go down to the Sunset. All these little kids, you know, my goodness, they must have been twelve or eleven years. I was sixteen years old, Laurie, hanging around with – seventeen years old – these little snotty brats, all they wanted to do is talk and it was horrible. At least I was with my girlfriend.
G: Well, sure.
C: And some popcorn.
G: Did you ever go to the drive-in theater when you acquired a car?
C: Oh, well, see, I didn’t have a car for a very long time. But some of the kids we grew up and, oddly enough, little by little we were just about getting married – one year you’d count Richard and Gilbert and all these guys getting married. I got married when I was twenty years old and so we’d go to the drive-ins – absolutely. We could go to the drive-ins on the Southside – Lackland. Oh, if I canOscar Saenz Canchola 29
C: think – a whole bunch of them – but I can’t think of their names right now – and we used to get together and pool up and...but even before that... See, I lived in Randolph – my dad worked Civil Service there – and so I don’t know why but they would give us extra money, and somebody would jump in the trunk and they’d lock him in and we’d go in through the front gate and then we snuck him out of there and then we could buy some extra popcorn or something. But that was something. I remember, especially, the theater at Randolph, on Air Force Base, on Base, and the theater was as you go in directly opposite the Taj Mahal and on one side they had a big bush next to the window, next to the bathrooms and if you were broke you could jump through the window and sneak in there. And we’d go to the movies there, where else could you go? There was no other place to go, we were too little, there were no cars, where do you go? No neighborhoods, no nothing.
G: When you’re on a Base, you’re pretty much on a world of your own, aren’t you?
C: Yes, we lived outside; we lived in Universal City right outside the gate, past the tracks there in some barracks, some old barracks that they’d converted.
G: It was very much out in the country at that time, I’ll bet.
C: It was. It was very much so. We used to, in fact, we used to go down to Cibolo Creek and oh, boy, we had Oscar Saenz Canchola 30
C: adventures up and down that creek, all the way to Selma and back. In fact, we took – I hate to say it – but we took a horse out of the pasture, we were tired, so we just put our belts around him and trotted him back, took him out of his pasture. I guess he found his way back to the pasture; I don’t know.
G: They didn’t come for you, at any rate.
C: My God, if it was nowadays, they would have put me in jail for a year and a day.
G: Most probably. Are there any other stories that you would like to tell? Or any other things that you would like to tell me that I didn’t think to ask you?
C: I thought a lot about it and the theaters were a thing that were very necessary to us, because of the times and the places and that’s why there were so many theaters. We couldn’t go anywhere, no one didn’t have any money, cars were scarce, jobs were scarce. You hardly got paid. And a lot of young kids like me had to work after school, and so we valued our money. And we had to go home and give it up. But even when you were younger, you couldn’t leave your neighborhood. You had to be within whistling distance. Oh,
Lord, if your dad came out on the porch and whistled, oh, man, you went running like mad because you didn’t know whether you were in trouble or if he was calling you for supper. So...
G: But if you didn’t answer, you sure would be in trouble.Oscar Saenz Canchola 31
C: That was for sure. And so those neighborhood theaters were very important to us.
G: When you went to the movies did you...do you ever feel like you learned something about your world by going to the movies or was going to the movies just an escape entertainment?
C: If we learned anything it would have had to have been subliminal. We weren’t never looking for anything. When we were young we weren’t sophisticated enough, like I said, for these singing movies or... The dumbest thing I ever saw was Abbott and Costello and Ella Fitzgerald with her in a yellow dress singing A Tisket A Tasket or – I couldn’t understand that one – the Three Stooges were it for me. We’d go home and we’d mimic the Three Stooges. Imagination...I don’t think there’s a kid that never jumped off his roof with a towel wrapped around his neck thinking he was Superman. You know.
G: Or swing from trees like Tarzan.
C: I broke my arm doing that. I did. I did. Another time I landed flat on my chest jumping – we played follow the leader – and there’s always...at that time – way back in the ‘40s - there was always an empty lot and there was always a tree somewhere and so we played follow the leader. Whatever the leader did. Well, we had to jump this or climb on that, he would get up in the tree and we’d have to follow him. He’d jump one limb to the other. Well, I did; I Oscar Saenz Canchola 32
C: missed a limb, I came straight down and broke my left arm. Oh, boy.
G: And was going...when you’re talking about going to the movies, I see smiles.
C: Yes.
G: So you have happy memories?
C: Very, very much so. I’d like to show you, for instance, a difference in movies – Victoria, Texas, as opposed to San Antonio. At that particular time in San Antonio they would show a Mexican movie once a week and it was after eight o’clock and it was at one of the lesser theaters that was not downtown, but away from there. And so come whatever day that was, Tuesday or Wednesday, I can’t remember, during the week, Momma would get us all together - little guys, us - and here we’d go, just trudging on down the street, because we were going to the movies and it was a Mexican movie because that’s what she like to see, especially whoever her greatest actors were. But all the neighborhoods they would all be walking together, you could see down that street and down that other street - little families getting together, just all heading for the same movie houses. And in Victoria...but it was one week and it was after eight o’clock, and before that it was strictly whatever the fare was and whoever had the money and dominated those movies and therefore they were in English, not in Spanish. And as opposed to San Antonio where you hadOscar Saenz Canchola 33
C: Spanish movies all over, especially downtown which were ...[inaudible] like I said, were...[inaudible].
G: A huge array of Spanish language theaters.
C: Yes. And here was just marvelous – that’s a big difference.
G: Was that because of the size of the population? Small Mexican population in Victoria or...?
C: Numbers-wise, small. And yes, and for some reason San Antonio always had the more liberal, the better educated and I guess it has to do with some of the elite from Mexico. But in a way I wish maybe Pancho Villa would have hung some of them - to begin with the Mungias in Gonzales. I...well, that’s another story.
G: ...[inaudible]story today.
C: And so it was beautiful because I found my place in San Antonio where I really loved it - just the atmosphere and the freedom – what freedoms? Let me say this: they are locked into a small town mentality and they can’t seem to get past some. I saw it as I grew up and even more-so when I became a little more sophisticated, a little more educated, a little bit older. And I said, this is not for me, thank God, you know, that I’m here in San Antonio. Too bad I couldn’t have gone further. But none-the-less from here we have books, and I could find where I wanted to go in my books in downtown in the libraries. But yes, it was a tremendous difference between the thinking there and the Oscar Saenz Canchola 34
C: thinking here. And here they were so forceful, resourceful and strong, physically strong, both the men and the women, I always admired their physical strength to stand up and sustain. And so we did, and so that’s why theaters were so important because of the discipline they exerted on us and we couldn’t go too far. And you couldn’t date no one. You had to go on the bus, you had to meet them there. And if you could ever earn the right to go there once a week and sit on the parlor - well, you did. And forget about going out on the veranda because you weren’t going to go out there where they couldn’t see you. You’d better sit in the parlor. And so we did - visited - and boy howdy! You know. And, of course, girl friends were a different thing you, know. And I, as a kid, of course, they had to be buxom, beautiful, hair, eyes, clothes, even the ugliest one of us wanted one of those.
G: And, of course, you have a beautiful wife to show...
C: “Of course, of course”, said the horse. And there’s nothing more romantic than sitting in a movie theater cheek to cheek, chewing gum.
G: Okay.
C: Thank you.
G: That sounds like a good note to end on. Thank you very much.
C: Thank you Laurie,
G: We appreciate it.Oscar Saenz Canchola 35
C: Certainly.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2.