Projector operators

      More Letters From Paradise
        Projector Operators
In the early nineteen fifties, I was one of the few boys in our high school who had been trained to operate 16mm movie projectors. We were trained by the Biology teacher Mr. Kenneth Massey. He had organized a program that had saved teachers a lot of grief. The program worked as follows:

During any time of the day a girl would come to the door of a classroom and give the teacher a slip to be given to a boy in the class, who had been trained. The boy would  during study hall, follow the directions on the form. The form gave the following information: date,teacher's name and classroom, film title, film running time, if the projector was already there, or had to be brought from the AV room. The form also indicated if a screen had to be brought to the room, or if everything was to be returned to the AV room. As our high school had two floors, this meant lugging equipment up and down from the AV room on the main floor. It was a good system and worked well. One special film was shown to the girls in the Home Economics class. It was produced by Walt Disney and Kotex. It caused a great deal of talk among the projector operators.

In the deep winter, we showed movies during the lunch hour. Ten cents admission and bring your lunch. Comedies and cartoons.

We projection operators were honored during the annual awards assembly, and given a pin to wear. Our mentor Mr. Massey invited all of us out to his family's lakeside cabin  for an over-night cookout. I remember him trying in vain to get us to go to bed. And there were two or three guys who had a big carp on a spit, basting it with cheap red wine. I doubt if they every ate any.

That's the way it was back then. No elevator in the school, no swimming pool either. Television had not yet arrived, and so we had to make do with 16mm movie projectors.
We were all so innocent, and it was all so long ago.
       Aloha
       Grant