My grandfather's early career was playing the organ at movie theaters during the silent age. He was an accomplished musician of the Pipe Organ, Piano, and Carrilon. As with the fate that befell most actor's during that period, the transition to the talkies, my grandfather was out of work also. Not to worry, he did find another career

Many a weekend, I would stay at their house, and he would play his grand piano and tell me stories of the great movies that he had played the accompanying music. I never tired of hearing those stories. My grandmother and I would take the city bus to see many movie matinees at the Uptown and Vogue theaters. So started my love for the Movies.

My father would bundle up the family and we would go to the drive-in movies on a Friday or Saturday evening. The Shadeland and Pendelton Pike drive-ins were our connection to Hollywood. In the heat of summer, lawn chairs or a blanket were our theater seats. In the freezing cold of an Indiana winter, we would barely keep warm inside the car. The low rush of lukewarm air spilled from the small milkhouse heater the drive-in provided. A tinny surround sound would be provided by stealing both speakers to hang from the car windows. Still , my sisters and I would be enraptured by that flickering screen.

My grandparents, God bless them, have long since passed away. The neighborhood movie theater and the drive-in theater have seen their day come and go also. I still remember them, the theaters and the movies.