I know that I’ve talked about it before and have had another post about it before, but I need to pay respect to the Springfield Cinema, or the person who ran it forever tonight.

We have a small theater in Springfield, one screen, no surround sound and the “big” remodel happend long enough ago to where it’s time for another. It’s a theater that if you look and really pay attention, you can tell that back in the day it was THE place to go, there is still a whisper glamour somewhere in the walls. There is a balcony – although I only ever legally sat there during the aforementioned “remodel” and I remember being ran out of it more times than my father cares to know about.

My middle school was close enough where once a year each grade would get to walk to a show and watch some new Disney flick. And family holidays were often not complete without a movie, sometimes walking in snow to gaze at the Christmas lites on the street on our way home.

And there was always the same manager there. Johnny who, when I was younger scared me enough that I would never cause a problem, who while I was a teenager I believed the whispers that he lived in an apartment upstairs sleeping among old film canisters. And as I have opened my eyes and payed attention I have realized that he was as much part of the institution as the building and space itself. He was always there, I can say pretty honestly that I have never seen a movie where he wasn’t at the front making sure things weren’t being ran right. Of course now, instead of standing and watching, he was sitting to the side observing and I like to think saying goodbye in his own terms.

At the end of January, Johnny retired. There was no big write up in the paper, channel 4 didn’t come to do a news worthy piece on him, and to my knowledge there was no pomp and circumstance from the patrons. But I would like to think that for one night, perhaps as he finished his last shift and turned the keys one final time that maybe the lights flickered for Johnny as if to say goodbye and goodnight.