Movie Nights, Heavy Projectors, and Our First VCR

Growing Up Before Everything Was Just a Click

Movies were a big part of my childhood. Long before Netflix, streaming services, or even a VCR in our living room, my mother found a way to bring the movies home.

And believe me, back then, watching a movie took some serious effort.

A Mile to the Movies

In the late 1970s, when I was just a little kid, my mother would gather up all four of us children, and we'd walk about a mile to the local library.

We weren't going there just to check out books. We were going to bring home the movies.

Back then, the library had actual film projectors you could borrow, along with those enormous reels of film. These weren't little machines you could tuck under your arm. They were big, heavy pieces of equipment.

My poor mother had the worst job. She carried that heavy projector all the way home, while the four of us kids helped carry the giant film reels.

Just picture that for a moment. A mother with four young children walking a mile down the street, hauling enough equipment to open a small movie theater.

And after we finished watching everything, it all had to go back to the library.

Today, you can watch just about any movie in the world without getting off your couch. Back then, we practically needed a moving crew.

Our Living Room Was the Movie Theater

One advantage of living in our apartment was that we had white walls.

Who needed a movie screen when you had a perfectly good wall?

Once we got everything home, my mother would set up the projector, and our living room became our own little movie theater.

There was something special about those old projectors. The sound of the machine running, the light shining across the room, and the pictures flickering against the wall.

It wasn't high definition. There was no surround sound. And I'm sure the picture wasn't nearly as impressive as I remember it.

But to us kids, it was magic.

We didn't have much money growing up, but somehow my mother always managed to find ways to entertain us.

Looking back, I wonder how many mothers today would be willing to walk two miles round-trip carrying a heavy film projector just so their children could enjoy a few movies.

Mine did.

The Strange Machine That Played Movies on Your Television

Eventually, we started hearing about something that seemed almost too good to be true.

A machine that could play movies right on your television.

One of our relatives had one of those early VHS machines. I remember it because it wasn't anything like the VCRs that became common later.

This thing opened from the top.

You actually popped open the top of the machine and dropped the videotape inside. It looked more like some kind of futuristic appliance than the VCRs most people remember.

At the time, it seemed like the greatest invention in the world.

Think about it. No projector. No giant film reels. No white wall. You could just put a tape in a machine and watch a movie on your own television.

For a kid growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that was pretty amazing.

My Mother Bought Our First VCR at Kroger

Now, here's something that probably sounds completely ridiculous today.

Yes, Kroger. The grocery store.

And if I remember correctly, that thing cost somewhere around $500.

Five hundred dollars!

Keep in mind, we were a family living on welfare and food stamps. We certainly weren't rolling in money.

But my mother wanted that VCR, and somehow she figured out a way to get it.

I remember her having some kind of layaway arrangement at Kroger, making payments until she could finally bring it home.

Imagine walking into a grocery store today to buy milk, bread, and eggs, and making a payment on your new home entertainment system.

But that's how I remember it.

I couldn't tell you how long she made those payments or how much she put down. I just remember that eventually we had our very own VCR.

And that was a big deal in our house.

No more hauling a projector home from the library. No more carrying those enormous film reels. We had officially entered the modern age.

At least, what we considered modern back then.

Our First Google Came in a Set of Books

Something else I remember my mother getting through Kroger was a set of encyclopedias.

Now, that might not sound very exciting to kids today, but we absolutely loved those books.

Before Google, Wikipedia, smartphones, or even home computers became common, encyclopedias were about as close as you could get to having the world's knowledge sitting in your living room.

You wanted to know about dinosaurs? Grab the right volume.

Interested in airplanes, ancient Egypt, animals, or outer space? There was a book for that.

And those books were filled with pictures, illustrations, maps, and information about things we had never even heard of.

We would sit around looking through them, sometimes just opening a random volume to see what we could discover.

One subject would lead to another, and before you knew it, you'd spent an hour learning about something you hadn't even intended to look up.

The only difference was that instead of typing a question into a search bar, you had to figure out which book contained the answer.

And if you wanted to know more, you kept reading.

I sometimes wonder how many children today would find the same excitement in a set of encyclopedias that we did.

We Were Poor, but We Had Our Own Kind of Riches

The older I get, the more I appreciate what my mother managed to do with so little.

We were on welfare. We received food stamps. Money was tight, and there were plenty of things we couldn't afford.

Yet somehow, she managed to bring movies, books, and a little bit of the outside world into our home.

She carried a heavy projector a mile so her children could watch movies. She made payments on a VCR that probably cost a small fortune compared to what we had. And she brought home encyclopedias that gave four curious kids a chance to learn about a world much bigger than our apartment.

At the time, I didn't think much about any of that. I was just a kid who loved movies and looking at pictures in books.

Today, I realize how much effort went into those simple things.

And of all the movies I've watched over the years, one of the clearest pictures in my memory isn't from a movie at all.

It's my mother walking home from the library, carrying that heavy projector, with four little kids following along carrying reels of film.

We didn't know it then, but those walks were part of the entertainment, too.

And nearly fifty years later, I still remember them.