Background: Until now, I've posted columns that were previously published in the newspaper. This column is my first "new" contribution to the Monte Muirhead blog.
Wally World Video in Sutherlin will close the day before Thanksgiving. Beginning December 1st, they're going to sell everything in the store. The owner told me that with more people using Netflix and Redbox, it's becoming impossible for "brick-and-mortar" movie stores to remain in business. How sad!
I cut short two months my year-long stay in Brazil so that I could return home early for my American high school graduation. In Brazil, they don't have yearbooks, proms, or other senior-type festivities associated with the United States, so I was yearning to return to Oakland and share some of those activities before it was too late. I actually got my photo in the Oakland High School yearbook, because I was asked to give the benediction (or was it the invocation?) at graduation! I admit that I threw the audience into somewhat of a state of confusion when I began giving the same benediction in Portuguese after I gave it in English. Some people didn't know whether to sit down or remain standing. I hope the crowd didn't think I was speaking in tongues. :)
Back to WALLY WORLD VIDEO: I was excited and felt privilged when I was invited to attend a sleep-over with some other senior guys...Paul Wallman, Brent Parker, James Bird and myself...at a "barn" loft on Paul's parents' property. Some of us went over to Sutherlin to pick up some pizzas. I remember that Brent was chagrined to find pineapple had been added to one-half of one of the Canadian Bacon pizzas. I guess this was before the "Hawaiian" style of pizza had caught on in popularity..??..
We also went to Sutherlin to pick up some videos at WALLY WORLD VIDEO, which had just opened the year before (1983) inside a cramped building at the NE corner of Central Avenue and North Comstock street in Sutherlin. I selected Friday the 13th, Part Two. I didn't necessarily enjoy horror movies. However, during the ten months that I spent in Brazil, I did see my first horror flicks: The Shining and The Exorcist (o Exorcista in Portuguese). I was desperate to hear something in English, so I was forced to watch whatever American movies were playing at the theaters in Ribeirao Preto. I still remember that when I went to see the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again with some Brazilian friends, they couldn't believe that I actually LISTENED to the movie in English, instead of reading the Portuguese sub-titles like everyone else in the theater.
While Friday the 13th, Part Two, was playing during our sleepover at Paul Wallman's house, we stopped the movie for some reason. Perhaps I was going for another piece of Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza, I don't know. Anyway, we happened to stop the movie at a climactic point: It was where a teen-age boy was walking on his hands, upside-down in the hallway, and he comes across Jason. The boy sees a pair of feet on the floor, and he looks up in time to see the hockey-masked evildoer holding an axe, ready to bring it down between the boy's upright legs.
At this point, the movie was paused (back in the days of VHS tape). Brent Parker let out a cry of exclamation, because he knew what was going to happen during the next few seconds of the movie. Or perhaps he cried out because he'd accidentally bitten into a piece of pineapple, I'm not sure. I don't remember much else about our sleep-over at Paul Wallman's barn loft, except that it was one of the last times I had to enjoy a recreational experience with my classmates. And WALLY WORLD VIDEO helped contribute to that fond memory. :)
REEL-TO-REEL VIDEO in Sutherlin closed its doors, and tanning bed, earlier this year after its owner passed away. Come Demember 1st, 2013, WALLY WORLD VIDEO will close its doors and tanning bed after a 30-year-run. This will leave only one video store left in Sutherlin, Galaxy Video. And NO public tanning beds. Another era is coming to a close.
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