Where did the sunshine go? We’d ask that question after being escorted out of the Serf theater following visual and aural intoxication brought on by sitting through three runnings of the same film.

     As kids in the early ’50s, hundreds of us would get in line for whatever movie was showing that Saturday in summer. Admission was 16 cents for kids under 12, and 50 cents for those older. It’s amazing how tall 11-year-olds grew and how some of them remained 11 during the fifth, sixth and seventh grades.
     In those days people paid no attention to starting times. Unlike today’s more formal movie theater policies of not seating people after the film starts, back then, it was like a buffet. People came and left at any hour, helped themselves to whatever plot they could deduce, and picked up the rest of it while watching the first part last.
     It was during one of these flicks that we met up with a friend intensely interested in the fate of Gregory Peck. Will he get shot in the end? Well, in the stomach anyway. My two friends and I pooled a dollar and placed a bet that Peck would get shot. After collecting our friend’s money, we admitted we’d already seen the movie and therefore knew what was going to happen. The bet loser said he, too, had seen the movie an hour earlier but didn’t think Gregory Peck would be stupid enough to let the bad buys shoot him again.
     For reasons we still don’t understand—the theater was far from full—the head usher told us we’d already seen the continuous-run movie and “It’s time to leave to give other patrons a chance to be seated.” We believed that since there were plenty of empty seats, the only way our staying would affect the Serf would be to increase concession stand sales with our new-won wealth.
     The usher won, and we left the Serf just as it was getting dark. A family we didn’t recognize was leaving the Serf just a few steps ahead of us and headed in the same direction. We noticed the father looking back nervously and instantly telling his family to pick up the pace.
     We had never been in a position like that: we as the apparent stalkers. Most frequently, we were the ones being pursued. On our walks home, we’d often become aware of people right behind us, and as we sped up, so did they. We’d avoid dark alleys where bigger boys, just for kicks, would try to rearrange our dentition.
     So the experience of inadvertently menacing a visiting family puzzled and later excited us. Two girls under 10, a teenaged boy and the father comprised the family. Imagine prepubescent thugs loose on the streets of Las Vegas. Leroy, the oldest, who had borrowed his brother’s car, broke into audible conversation with something like, “Boy, I can hardly wait to tell my parents what a great movie we watched.”
     That wasn’t reassuring to our scurrying visitors, so Fred played the Chamber of Commerce card: “Las Vegas is so beautiful in the summer, it’s no wonder visitors come here again and again.” Still no luck.
     I played the bookish card: “Hey, guys, did you know that Mount Vesuvius is the oldest volcano in Raton?” By that time we were getting closer to the car, which was parked on Jackson Avenue, almost three blocks from the Serf. Leroy didn’t have a license and didn’t dare drive on Douglas.
     Finally, it was time for the religion card, and I chimed in with “Gee, Father Rabeyrolle’s sermon at mass this morning was good!” Whatever happened, the family broke into a much faster pace. My encouraging words probably sounded more like, “We and Fred’s gonna rob and roll you and mess you up real good.”
     For a few moments, though we never exchanged a word with one another, the three of us felt a surge of power; we’d simply been walking to our car, and with no effort or intent whatsoever, we’d terrified a family. One thought shared by us hoodlums was the instant power. In school we’d been learning about the relationship between the thought and the deed. Since the visitors to the Meadow City assumed we were muggers, maybe we should mug them—on principle. But we dismissed that thought in a hurry.
     We slowed down as the father and his children broke into a jog. Each one grabbed for a separate door as the father fumbled to unlock the car. Using the full-contact method of pulling out of a parking space, he broke the headlight of the car parked behind him and bumped the car in front before speeding away.
     Later that night, Leroy, Fred and I had quite a discussion about how we must have been perceived. Do we today quicken our gait when we imagine we’re being followed by a mugger?
     Nowaways we marvel at the contrast between three boys thought to be muggers and gang members today, some of whom need to commit a heinous crime—usually random—just for the privilege of being initiated into the group.
     We never reached an agreement on the import of the incident that night in 1951. What we did agree upon, however, was that we’d need to chip in and spend some of that dollar for repairs to Leroy’s brother’s car. By pure coincidence Leroy had parked behind the car with Texas plates, driven by the father who spurned our hospitality and didn’t stick around to say goodbye.