Remember When: A few blocks from home, movies transported you to fantasy heaven

How I ever missed National Fossil Day is beyond me.

Yes, there is such an event. It happened earlier this month, I just found out. Somehow it blew right by me. What’s especially embarrassing is that I’m a fan of fossils to the point that I own one. I even stopped my car, parked, got out and crossed the street to grab it once I spotted the thing.

Well, I admit to using a pretty broad definition of “fossil.” This one isn’t really an ancient artifact, unless you consider the 1930s another geological era, because that’s where it dates from.

My fossil is a brick from the old Hart Theater, once standing proudly on Hazle Avenue in Wilkes-Barre’s Rolling Mill Hill section.

The brick is hardly distinguished. In appearance, there is nothing to set it apart from the billions of other bricks that have been used to make American buildings over the centuries.

But it is from the Hart — the movie house where I practically lived during the 1950s, quite possibly the heyday of our film industry.

As a little kid I enjoyed the Saturday afternoon western and Bowery Boys flicks. Aging a bit, I trekked down from our Loomis Street home many an evening (including school nights) to take in an early showing of a murder mystery, a World War II epic or a Bob Hope laugh riot.

I’m not quite sure what to do with a brick in the living room. Do I just plunk it on some flat surface?

Should I buy a little frame for it as if it’s an icon?

I could just put it in the closet and bring it out for guests.

If I knew an interior decorator, I’d ask for advice.

Don’t get me wrong. The Hart, though a nice neighborhood movie house, was far from the only such place. The Shawnee in Plymouth, the American in Pittston and the Barney Street in South Wilkes-Barre and many more all had their Wyoming Valley devotees, whether families out for an evening or young filmoholics like myself.

You could venture downtown to see first-run epics at the Paramount or Comerford. Or you could wait until they reached your little neighborhood palace a few weeks later (at a lower ticket price). Were you hankering for a cowboy flick or a more edgy European melodrama you could mosey into the Strand downtown or stride into the Roxy in Lee Park.

The possibilities were endless.

I’ll say one thing for the neighborhood theaters. Since you walked there and back, your youthful trip home was likely after dark, not the most appealing prospect after 90 minutes of howling werewolves or bloodthirsty space aliens. Talk about getting your money’s worth!

The lights of your living room never looked so good.

Actually, the 1950s was a great time to be a film freak. Concerned about losing ground to the growing popularity of TV, Hollywood launched a round of Biblical and historical epics in wide-screen as well as terrifying 3D tales of gorillas and madmen on the loose.

How did you know what was playing? Well, theaters in those days advertised heavily in newspapers.

Your Times Leader or Record offered daily a whole page of enticing pictures of Napoleonic sea battles and monsters carrying lovely women to their lair.

All you had to do was sashay a few blocks and there you were, in fantasy heaven.

And that’s why I grabbed a brick from the mountain of debris that had once been the Hart.

The end!