Looking Back: The Gay 90

I was at a convience store and watched a lady check out amovie at the red box.
It took me back to the time when there were three drive in theaters in Del Rio and three regular theaters.
The drive in movies were the Ceniza, the Flamingo, and the Gay 90 drive in. There were three downtown movies on Main St. the Princess, the main theater the Rita, and then there was the Texas theater where they showed mexican movies. My best friend Robert Diaz and I were hired by MR. POAG to clean the drive in movies every morning.
They paid us a dollar a day and free admission to all movies. We did not miss any movie believe me. I loved going to the Texas theater and seeing and hearing the western type mexican movies and songs they would sing. I would go to Seegers bakery and get some glazed donuts and go and see my favorite .My favorite was any movie with Lola
Beltran, Jose Alfredo Jimenez, Pedro Infante,among others. How I wish they still made movies like that. I recall one Saturday night some one had some kind of spell inside of the movie theater and the lady there ask Robert and I to help him. I walked over and put my hand on his arm and he grabbed me and threw me over the row of seats. He did the same to my friend. It took both of us to hold him down until the ambulance got there. I hurt the next morning like you would not believe. On Saturday I would go to the princess and watch a double feature movie with John Wayne, Roy Rodgers, Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Gaby Hayes and many more.
My friend Victor Camposano said he did the same thing almost every Saturday. In those days they had what they called dollar night at the Gay 90. No matter how many people you had in your car you got in for one dollar. As well as i can remember it was on a Tuesday night. I could be wrong. I called Victor to ask him but he didnt answer. In those days i knew a young musician that was a homosexual and when he dressed up if you did not know him you could not tell he was not a woman. On a dollar night I saw him with a man going into the drive in and he held his finger up to his mouth for me to keep quiet. It wasn’t any business of mine so I did not say a word. About thirty minutes after the movie started I heard him screaming Help me Freddie help. They stopped the movie and Robert Diaz and I ran over to the car which was parked two rows away and the man was beating the hell out of no names please. We tore him off of the guy and ask why were you beating on him. He said because he is a he not a she. He said I was kissing and touching and all of a sudden I put my hand in a certain place and found out it is a man. I am going to kill the so and so but the cops showed up and took him away.
One morning we were cleaning the drive in and found a set of diamond rings. About that time a gentleman walked up and ask if we had found a set of rings. I told him we had and he wanted me to give them to him and I refused. I tried to explain that i had to turn them in to my boss and then he could talk to him and work something out. Not no but hell no he said and tried to grabbed them out of Robert hand and Robert shoved him down and told him to get the hell out of there.
He said I will call the police. He went to the pay phone outside the concession stand and called the police. He told the police we were stealing a set of wedding rings from him and he needed help. I called my boss and ask him to come over there and told him what was going on.
When they all showed up the gentleman said that the night before him and his girlfriend came to the movies and he ask her to marry him. He said the rings had cost him 18 hundred dollars. He stated that the girl told him she was already married to a marine that was some where over seas.
He said he called her a few choice words and the girl got out and walked off. He said he threw the rings out the window and drove off. When he woke up that morning he knew he had to get the rings. To make a long story short he got his rings back. Another time at another drive in movie a friend of Robert borrowed his pocket knife and he ended stabbing someone with it there at the concession stand. In closing let me say that although there was few problems when alcohol was involved but over all it was a good time to be alive. Del Rio is a great place to live. If you live here are just visiting be sure you walk the Dora Alcala trail along the San Felipe Creek and visit the whitehead museum and the winery I am proud to say Del Rio is my home town thank you and GOD BLESS.