#304: Ghosts of Junkyards Past

 

When I was a kid, there was a huge scrapyard on Clinton Street directly across from Fort Wayne's Lawton Park. Despite a tall, corrugated metal fence bordering the property—which was originally known as Superior Iron and Metal—stacks of junk cars and scrap metal eventually grew so tall they were easily visible to passing motorists on Clinton.

Thankfully, that junkyard eyesore is long gone, but the recent announcement about a new development slated for the property—to be called the North River Fieldhouse (which you can read about here) made me wonder how many people remember what used to be on that land—and what may still be there.

Back in the year 2000, a soil study of the former junkyard revealed unsafe levels of argon, cadmium, lead, mercury, and PCBs—all pretty bad stuff—and spills of diesel fuel, gasoline, and cleaning solvents were reported on the site. At this point I'm sure you're thinking: but that report was over 20 years ago, so surely everything's all good now, right? 😟🤞

Normally, I think any news about the continued development of downtown Fort Wayne is good news, but in this case, I intend to steer well clear of any future developments on the old OmniSource site. I mean, who wants an ice-cold PBR with a PCB chaser?

    There's more to come in the next dispatch.

    ©2023 SummitCityScribe

Dispatch #292: The Time(s) My Mother Took Me to a Slasher Film

John Carpenter's Halloween turns 45 this month, and lately I've been thinking about the first time I saw that classic fright flick up on the big screen.

As I wrote in a much earlier Dispatch, my mother loved movies, and among her favorite kinds were thrillers and murder mysteries.

One of my earliest childhood movie memories is watching Stanley Kubrick's Killer's Kiss on the living room couch with my mom—eventually pulling a blanket over my head when the picture's creepy climax in a warehouse full of mannequins became too much for me.

On that same living room couch we also watched Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number, Dorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase, Ross Martin and Stephanie Powers in Experiment in Terror, and a very scary Bette Davis as The Nanny.

As I got older, mom and I would often spend Saturday afternoons at one of our local cinemas. We saw all kinds of films during those weekends in the 1970s, but in particular a lot of thrillers—both good and bad: Jaws, William Castle's Bug, Grizzly, The Eagle Has Landed, The Cassandra Crossing, Twilight's Last Gleaming, The Boys from Brazil, Capricorn One, and Phil Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

In late October 1978, mom saw a commercial for a new flick she thought looked pretty scary and chose it for our weekly movie outing. 

 As it turns out, she was right, but I don't think either of us were prepared for the intensity of John Carpenter's Halloween. This wasn't a murder mystery like Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians—it was a full-on slasher film, and it scared us silly that Saturday afternoon. 

As I hadn't seen any of his earlier films (Assault on Precinct 13, Dark Star), I remember thinking beforehand it was pretty bold the film was advertised as John Carpenter's Halloween, a privilege usually only afforded to established directors such as Alfred Hitchcock. 

Afterward, I realized it was pretty clever, assuring that everyone knew the name of the man behind the stylish, low-budget thriller—who would later go on to give us The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, and They Live, among other iconic films.

That screening of John Carpenter's Halloween wasn't the only time my mother and I saw a rather intense film together, either. Thanks to our weekly movie ritual, we also saw Midnight Express, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Ridley Scott's Alien, too. 

As these features were all R-rated, I was usually the only kid in my class to see them, but even for those of my intrepid peers who did manage to sneak into a Halloween screening back in October of '78, I think it's safe to say that none of them saw the spooky slasher film as I did—with a movie-loving mother by their side. 

Several months later, in the summer of 1980, mom took me to see another thriller with a high body-count: Friday the 13th. Yes, that's right: I actually saw two iconic slasher films with my mother. 

Unfortunately, Friday the 13th's director, Sean Cunnigham, was no John Carpenter, leaving us both disappointed. "I can't believe Betsy Palmer was in such a lousy picture," mom grumbled as we walked out of the theater. 

Obviously, we had no idea at that moment how Jason Voorhees would continue to haunt movie screens for decades to come—we just agreed that Friday the 13th couldn't hold a candle to those old black & white thrillers we used to watch together on the living room couch.

There's more to come in the next dispatch.

©2023 SummitCityScribe

Dispatch #200: Indiana Jones and the Dial-In of Destiny

 

This summer moviegoers will see the fifth (and reportedly final) Indiana Jones film starring Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. All the press surrounding this latest big screen adventure got me thinking about the time I got to see an advance screening of the very first Indy film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in the summer of 1981.

Back in the pre-internet era, information on upcoming films was pretty scarce. I didn't have access to industry trades like Variety or The Hollywood Reporter when I was younger, so often the first time I found out about a new film was when I saw the coming attractions trailer for it at my local movie theater.

 This all changed with my discovery of Starlog Magazine in 1977. After its debut, I finally had a place to learn about the latest science-fiction/horror/fantasy films & TV shows in development. 

An early mention of Raiders in Starlog #32 (1980)

A few years later, in early 1980, I began to read brief news items in Starlog about the thrilling possibility that two genre film titans—George Lucas & Steven Spielberg—were about to embark on a new film project together.

A Raiders update from Starlog #33 (1980)

 As with most properties involving either filmmaker, secrecy was extremely tight around the Raiders project, so for many months all I saw were notices in Starlog about casting, filming locations, and one about John Williams' hiring as the film's composer (welcome news but not a huge surprise). By the time the movie was "in the can" as they say, I still knew nothing at all about the plot.

The Nazi Flying Wing, from Starlog #48

 In fact, secrecy was so tight, it was less than two weeks prior to Raiders' release before I saw any still photographs from the film—in the pages of Starlog #48. The issue has a cover date of July 1981, but I remember buying it the first week of June at my local comic book store (the Broadway Comic Book and Baseball Card Shop at the corner of Broadway and Scott Avenue in Fort Wayne—which, sadly, is now the parking lot for the Philmore theater).

Indiana Jones at the Well of Souls, from Starlog #48

The three pics in the magazine—which accompanied an interview with star Harrison Ford—included the first one I ever saw of him as Indy in his battered fedora, a shot of a Nazi flying wing in the desert, and a third still of Indy lowering himself into a snake filled Well of Souls. A brief plot synopsis was included before the interview moved on to other subjects, namely Ford's work on future projects Blade Runner and Return of the Jedi.

The Raiders plot synopsis from Starlog #48

The synopsis really wasn't very much to go on, and I remember being slightly disappointed—because of the presence of Nazis, it sounded more like a straight-ahead WWII adventure to me (I was thinking Guns of Navarone) than the rollicking special-effects epic I expected from Lucas and Spielberg. Little did I know!

Then, one Friday afternoon in early June 1981, a local radio station announced that in just a few minutes, a few lucky callers would have a chance to win tickets to an advance screening of the latest Steven Spielberg movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Boy, talk about a Dial of Destiny (or maybe I should say a Dial-In of Destiny)! 

I already had the station's request line memorized, so I grabbed the phone, called in, and was thrilled when the DJ picked up and informed me that I'd just won two tickets to the Raiders screening at the Georgetown Theaters on East State Boulevard in Fort Wayne. He also told me the special screening would take place that very evening—in about two hours. Now all I needed was someone to accompany me.

Of the first two people I immediately thought of asking, one wasn't at home when I called (this was the pre-cell phone era) and the other had to work that night. What followed was a mad telephone scramble to connect with any of my other friends who I thought might want to go. 

Frustratingly, almost none of them were home (to be fair, it was a late Friday afternoon in June)—that is until I finally got through to my old elementary school friend, Danny (who's currently an elementary school teacher and now prefers to be called Daniel). 

Danny seemed vaguely interested but wanted to know more about the film. I told him that all I really knew was that it involved Harrison Ford (in my excitement, I might have actually said Han Solo) fighting Nazis. 

My friend sounded uncertain, "I don't know...that theater is all the way across town...", so I reminded him that it was a free movie and that I would drive him to and then home from the screening—all he had to do was buy his own soda and popcorn. 

That did the trick, and seconds after I hung up the phone, I sprinted out the door to my '72 Chevy Impala in the driveway. Fortunately, I didn't get a speeding ticket during the whirlwind trip to pick up my friend and make it across town to the theater on time.

Danny still seemed a bit wary as we sat down inside the Mallers/Spirou-operated theater less than an hour later, "I sure hope this doesn't suck," he said before taking a sip of his Pepsi as the house lights went down.

Personally, I was hooked from the moment the Paramount logo dissolved into a South American mountain peak, but I could tell Danny wasn't on board until the tense sequence inside the Peruvian temple with Indy and his traitorous sidekick, Satipo (Alfred Molina). 

By the time that gigantic boulder rolled down toward Indy, everyone in that theater knew they were in for one heckuva ride. Indeed, most of the film was a straight-ahead action-adventure flick, but the supernatural fireworks in the finale did deliver the state-of-the-art special effects I'd expected in a joint project from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. 

As we walked out of the theater into the warm June night afterward, Danny gushed that it was one of the best movies he'd ever seen—and in that moment, who was I to argue?

There were many elements that made Raiders a success, but for me a big part of why I enjoyed the film was how little I knew about it beforehand—leaving me constantly surprised and amazed by the rollercoaster ride of action and thrills onscreen. These days it's hard to experience a big-budget summer blockbuster the way I saw Raiders—not with the plethora of spoilers, leaked script pages, and early footage available online. 

For that reason alone, I can't remember when I've had a better time at the movies since that free screening back in 1981. It was a blast.

There's more to come in the next dispatch.

©2023 SummitCityScribe

Dispatch #27: Thanks, Mom

After over 80 years on this Earth, my mother has passed. At the moment, my thoughts are a jumble of sadness and random happy memories, so I thought I'd post a few of the latter here in tribute.

My mother was a good person: kind and loving. When I was a child, she encouraged me to be kind to others and to consider their feelings and not just my own. I can still remember the time she sat me down and played Joe South's 1970 song Walk a Mile in My Shoes to teach me about empathy. She also couldn't abide bigotry and racism and made sure I felt the same way. These were the most important lessons I ever learned from her.

My mother loved to read. She loved nothing more than to curl up with a good book. I saw her reading novels for pleasure regularly while I was growing up, and that influenced my own love of reading. Like a lot of moms, she also read People magazine and the occasional drugstore tabloid, but I remember her having a subscription to Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, too, which I thought was pretty cool.

My mother loved movies. When I was younger, we would watch them together on the living room couch. She especially loved a good thriller. Later, when I was a little older, we would visit one of our local cinemas nearly every Saturday afternoon to see a new movie. More often than not, it would be something that she wanted to see, so I ended up watching a lot more R-rated fare than any of my classmates at school. The first time I ever saw The Deerhunter, Midnight Express, Apocalypse Now, or Alien was in a movie theater with my mom.

My mother loved music. She had a special affection for Rhythm and Blues. When I was younger, I remember her playing records by B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, and Al Green around the house, and she practically wore out her 45 of Booker T. and the MGs Green Onions. I still remember visiting her one weekend and finding the Isley Brothers blistering hit, Fight the Power, part 1 & 2, on her turntable. I was impressed, thinking it was a pretty hip tune for a (then) 42-year-old white lady.

My mother was a proud union member. For many years she worked in a hot, noisy factory, testing motors for General Electric (a company that once employed 10,000 people in Fort Wayne). 

My mother was all of these things I've listed here and much more. Besides being a great Mom, she was a good, decent human being who cared about the people she shared this planet with. I can trace all of the good qualities that (I hope) I possess straight back to her.

Thanks, Mom, for everything. I love you.

     There's more to come in the next dispatch.

     ©2021 SummitCityScribe