Sunday, March 20, 2011

Movie theater, Main Street USA (and another silo)


More movie history!   This is the cinema in the street that runs through the center of Marceline, MO.   And who came from Marceline?   Walt Disney!   In her The Place You Loved is Gone, Meliessa Pierson remarks in passing that Disney regarded the Main Street of his home town so quintessentially main street USA that he based the Main Street in Disney World upon it, returning to Marceline with a crew that took  photographs and film of it in order to recreate it - or recreate it with embellishments, it would seem, because the faux Main Street's little cinema looks nothing like it.   The Uptown Theatre was built in 1928, and Disney came back and did various things with local children there - but now it just seems to be an occasional theater - a Talent Show is coming up in April - with a B&B above it.   But knowing this, and seeing that it was just three miles south of where I was driving, I couldn't resist a look ...

Marceline's Main Street was - if a bit sprucer than many - indeed, fairly typical ... that is, of such streets today: insurance agents, a number of stores to let, a dusty jewellers, a couple of "antique shoppes" - that is, with pyrex dishes and flyblown evangelical pamphlets from about thirty years ago, and some "gifte shoppes", with plastic rabbits and plastic flowers, getting ready for Easter.

I wish I'd managed to see in time - and therefore stop the car - and take a picture of an amazing sign outside a rundown motel, somewhere in the middle of Missouri - it promised KITCHENS THAT SLEEP UP TO EIGHT PEOPLE.

And here's the Silo of the Day - from Waterville, KS.

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