By this time only the girls doling out the Neccos were still in business. Even the all-day suckers were gone; they hadn't been licked, but gobbled in greed. There was a delirious fanfare, and on the screen searchlights crossed over the words, Our feature presentation. There was a rush downstairs to the boys' room. It had a semi-permanent population of underage smokers, looking like they were ready to paste you.

Through these sacred portals Dan-Dan The Yo-Yo Man walked the dog

It was always a double feature: A Western and a comedy. Of the comedies, usually the Bowery Boys, the Dead End Kids or Abbot and Costello. When Bud and Lou met Frankenstein, it scared the shit out of us. Then the Western. For some reason, I have vivid memories of two enigmatic cowboys, Whip Wilson and Lash LaRue. They packed wicked bullwhips. It was incorrectly believed by some that they didn't carry guns. Untrue. They carried them, but they didn't need them, because their whip snatched your gun out of your holster faster than you could draw. In later years I wished they'd been married, like Roy and Dale. I fantasized about Whippet Wilson and Lashes LaRue.

As the afternoon came to an end, the theater, now hot and humid and smelling of sweaty T-shirts, grew quiet in suspense. Dan-Day the Yo-Yo Man strode onstage--from the steps, because there was no backstage--with twin yo-yos spinning, maybe Whistlers. The yo-yo showdown began. The second Saturday, the prizes were cartons of six Coke bottles, courtesy of the Champaign-Urbana Coca-Cola Bottling Co. on South Neil Street. Third weekend, after a surviving handful met the challenges of advanced tricks, the winner got a brand new Schwinn. I assume the Duncan company paid for this and Dan-Dan's salary out of the Yo-Yos they sold across the street at Woolworth's. What Dan-Dan did to pass the time Monday through Friday, I have no idea.

Renaming it missed the whole point (Click to enlarge)

After some lucky kid had his new bike handed down to him from the stage, we staggered out into the sunshine with sugar headaches, and went to the dime store to buy a professional Yo-Yo; those cheap red and black models would never win you a Schwinn.

But one year I lingered over a display for the Miracle Gro Garden in a Pan, and brought it home to my bedroom window sill. It was an aluminum pan like chicken pot pies came in, filled with vermiculite and embedded with eager seeds. I bathed the rootlets with water, and it brought forth young shoots, and it was spring, and everyone was in love, and flowers picked themselves.

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Coming next week! Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein!

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Coming next week! Whip Wilson in Shadows of the West!

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Chapter 9! Frankie and Betsy are taken to Murania!

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