Show Me the Place, 5

“Show me the place.”

Duke Senior in As You Like It (2.1)

5: The Movies in Enid, Okla.

Four movie houses* were downtown—

Each, then, had but a single screen.

My mother sometimes showed a frown

When I told her what I had seen.

See, Parents’ Magazine for her

Was guide for the appropriate.

So when it happened to occur

That I’d messed up? She thought that smut

Had then arrived to ruin me—

But no smut ever on those screens

In Enid. Just some things I’d see—

And bit adult? With puzzling scenes?

There also were two drive-ins then.**

We sometimes went there in the car.

And Sleepy Hollow***—that was when

I thought cartoons had gone too far.

It scared me, yes, from head to toe.

I closed my eyes and covered ears—

How shocked I would have been to know

I’d teach that tale for many years!

*Sooner, Esquire, Cherokee, Chief

**Trail, Enid

*** That Disney cartoon, narrated by Bing Crosby, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1949