The Strand

Rog Rogers and Trigger

My old friend, Tim, and I were reminiscing recently about our boyhood days in Hanover, PA. One of the great treasures we had then was the Strand Theater on Carlisle St. and its fabulous Saturday matinees for kids. Tim, Jack, and I would troop up to the Strand every Saturday, shell out 18 cents, and settle in for hours of entertainment.

It was the era of the “B” westerns. RKO studios made a lot of them, and we could always look forward to one of these cowboy heroes: Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Johnny Mack Brown, Rex Allen, The Durango Kid, Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd) , Lash LaRue, Whip Wilson, Rocky Lane, Wild Bill Elliott, Tim Holt, Monte Hale.

The Strand always ran a double feature.

Plus, it showed a half a dozen cartoons featuring the likes of Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester and Tweety Bird, Tom and Jerry.

Plus, we had a few comedy shorts: the Three Stooges, and a guy named Joe McDoaks.

Plus, the Strand usually had a serial running. We’d see a chapter of the story each week. The hero would always get involved in an impossible-to-get-out-of situation at the end of each chapter only to get himself out of it miraculously at the beginning of the next.

And then there was the promotion that ran sometimes in conjunction with the Hanover Clothing Company. Each kid would get a number going into the theater, and then sometime during the afternoon a movie of a race full of whacky characters would be shown. Each character had a number on his or her back. Your number would correspond to one of the characters. If your character won the race, then you won too. The prize, I recall, was a pair of Red Ryder gloves from Hanover Clothing.

To get ourselves through this action-packed afternoon we had to have sustenance and that was candy. I would almost always get Jujyfruit or Jujubees, occasionally Necco Wafers or Goldberg’s Peanut Chews. The key thing here was to have something that would last a while.

Laughs, thrills, sheer excitement! You can not believe the fun we had - all for 18 cents. We walked out of that theater exhilarated. And we just couldn’t wait to get back there again for next week's show.