This is the fourth story from my father about the adventures of two brothers (Rafael and Gabriel) from a very poor family of 10 trying to make a living during the Great Depression in the 1930s. In this story, they had moved to Monterrey where they could find better work. The other stories can be found in previous blogs: “Having a Meal at the Smorgasbord,” “The Whipping” and “Coffee, Sugar, Firewood and Meat.”
Dracula Got Us Fired
After the continuing drought, the lack of work in Nuevo Laredo, the Rivera-Gaytan family moved to Monterrey. Luckily for Catarino, his wife’s, (Altagracia) family had moved from Parras to Monterrey a couple of years before and they could find some family support in their move. Rafael and Gabriel were 10 and 11 now and were still inseparable. Daniel had notions of starting a dry cleaning service and got a job in a dry cleaning shop near where they lived. By 1936 they were established in a little house just north east from the center of town a few blocks north of Calzada Francisco I. Madero. The two were still doing what they could to get money for entertainment and Gabriel was beginning to look for “job” since he was about to finish 6th grade and wanted to start working to help with the costs at home. Jobs were scarce for young kids and other than shining shoes, selling candy on the street for someone else.
Monterrey was a large city with a population of over 150,000 at that time. More than a third of the population was migrants from the farms in the north and north central Mexico driven by the relentless drought that had gripped all of northern Mexico and everything north of the border for several states. Like Steinbeck says in The Grapes of Wrath "The migrant people, scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement." Monterrey had its cinemas that provided pleasure for the masses. It had more than 15 cinemas at that time, and in 1936 90% of the movies shown were made in Hollywood. It was one of the few forms of entertainment for the working people; for lovers, a dark place to get away, for families, the afternoon matinees a cheap form of entertainment, a more classy place to go out for the night, and for everyone, an air-conditioned place to go to on hot summer days. The Mexican government saw the cinema as the great source of entertainment of the people and though credits, subsidies and grants launched the Mexican film industry in 1936 and with it launched Mexico’s Golden Age of Films that dominated all of Latin America up to the early 1950’s.
Rafael and Gabriel got jobs selling concessions at the “Cine Lirico” in the summer of 1937 (see picture below from 1937). They were two of six concessions sellers, all about the same age, and their job was to walk up and down the aisles with a metal tray of products before the showing and during intermission, where there was an intermission, and sell the candy, pop corn and other goodies. The theater manager would give them a certain number of items (on credit) and they had to pay them back at the end of the day. Some of the kids that had been working longer had their own money and would buy from the manager additional items they thought they could sell faster. One benefit from this job was that they got to watch all the movies that were shown for free!
One weekend they were working the theatre and Dracula with Béla Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor, was being shown. They had worked through the two matinees and were about to start the late evening showing. As the movie started, all the vendors went to the back seats in the balcony to wait for the next showing. By this time they knew the movie by heart; all the tense parts, all the scary parts and all the surprises. One of the older vendors convinced the others to play on joke. At the most tense part when Dracula was about to bite and suck the blood of the girl, they would all drop their metal trays and yell “Dracula is here!” And “I’ve been bitten!” They all waited with great anticipation for the right moment looking at each other, calming each other down and reminding themselves to wait for the right moment. Finally, the scene was about to come, they all stood up, raised their trays and all drop them at the same time on the concrete floor. The noise from the tray and the yelling and screaming caused a panic in the theatre and soon people began to run toward the doors. Seeing this other people began to get up and jump over the seats trying to get to the doors. Some people were jumping from the mezzanine level to the first floor and some of them landing on other people. The stampede emptied the theatre in a few minutes but left a lot of people with bruises and a couple with sprained ankles. Luckily none was seriously hurt.
The six boys stood there in panic not knowing what to do. They thought it would only cause a few heads to turn and for some of the “lovers” at the back part of the balcony to stop kissing. Empting the theatre was a whole different problem. They started to walk down the steps to the lobby when they met the Manager and several of his assistants. It was the moment of truth and none of them knew what was going to happen. The manager very calmly collected the money and the trays form the kids and as he did two of the assistants would grab the kid and throw them out to the sidewalk. “I don’t ever want you to set foot in this theatre again” the manager yelled at them and closed the doors. Rafael and Gabriel walked away a little bruised and their pride a little lower, but that job was in the past and they had to find another one.
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