12 August—Taking an ever so brief hiatus from politics, we note that flat-screen televisions are getting so big that before long they’ll take up whole walls in private homes and even dwarf the screens of little boutique cinemas. Like the petite screen at the old Bantam Cinema. I haven’t been to the new improved Bantam Cinema (& Arts Center), but I assume the screen is a little bigger. Truth be told, I don’t think I’ve been to a movie house since the turn of the century.

Watching movies of all vintages and anything else at home on a 42-inch TV screen or 29-inch computer monitor (because my semi-smart TV isn’t connected to the internet) suits me just fine. A bigger TV screen from perhaps a dozen feet away in the TV room would be overkill. I record most programming because I have a tendency to fall asleep in my electric chair. My home, my right.

Bantam Cinema was probably my last excursion to a movie house. I recall falling asleep during some cutesy French flick or other (as opposed to a flic, of course, which is a French cop) and being prodded awake by the woman who had dragged me there and wanted to watch—if not enjoy—le film (yes, the French, among others, have adopted the English word) undisturbed by gratuitous snoring. She was reading English subtitles, so my adventitious contribution to the soundtrack shouldn’t have mattered. But since virtually everybody in the house knew us both, I reckon I embarrassed her. Par for the course. And another reason to watch movies at home.

In the old days—until the sixties, as I recall—moviegoers were treated to double features and newsreels which were almost always narrated by Ed Herlihy, who also emceed the Sunday morning Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour on NBC radio. We never thought twice about the crowds at the movie houses, or the noise, cigarette smoke and other noxious fumes, often deafening sound, and junk food.

Going to the movies was definitely a treat we looked forward to and enjoyed. Because back then we had no other way to see movies and hadn’t the slightest inkling of what was to come. So what the hell. Going to the movies was great. Especially for a kid. And a grown-up on a hot date.

Note for less mature readers and those not from the northeast: Horn & Hardart (as opposed to The Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour) was the nation’s biggest chain of automats, with over 150 locations in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. So what, you ask, is an automat?

In broad and simple terms, the automat was a precursor to the fast-food restaurant. Horn & Hardart’s slogan was “Less work for mother,” but it was really a convenience for everybody. A sort of giant vending machine, it offered the best, most efficient service because you served yourself from a wall of windowed compartments containing a variety of prepared foods, each compartment with its own coin slot. Controlled-portion à la carte, so to speak.

Kind of like PO boxes, you may be thinking. But unlike PO boxes, most of which these days no longer have windows, the automat wasn’t an extortion scheme . . .