Trading Integrity For Popcorn

This story is from my book, Rise, With Healing In Our Wings. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

It still makes me shudder with shame.

On summer Saturdays in the 1940s, my younger brother and I rode a bus from South Ogden to the Paramount Theater in downtown Ogden. There, for 10 cents each, we could watch double-feature westerns starring Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Alan “Rocky” Lane, and the Lone Ranger. They were my boyhood heroes—quick-on-the-draw, ever victorious role models who could do no wrong.

We got to see a “serial,” too, a 10-minute, action-packed adventure flick that would end just as something catastrophic was about to happen, such as a locomotive bearing down on a heroine tied to railroad tracks. When the locomotive was only yards away, the screen would go blank and the narrator would urge us to come back next Saturday to see the “exciting conclusion,” a conclusion that extended over multiple Saturdays.

Even at 10 cents a ticket, we had to count our pennies. The one-way bus fair for children 11 and younger was 10 cents, and for all others it was 20 cents. A bag of popcorn was 10 cents, so we each needed 40 cents (unless we were willing to walk home). That finance plan served well until one Saturday morning when we boarded the bus and I was no longer 11. My little brother dropped a dime into the bus’s glass fare box, and I did the same. As I started for a seat, the driver barked, “Hey, kid, you owe another dime.” Acutely aware I was in danger of losing a bag of popcorn, I insisted I was only 11. The driver insisted otherwise (he seemed to know how big 11-year-olds should be).

And then it happened, the shuddering-with-shame part. Linda, a next-door neighbor in her late teens who had boarded the bus before us, got up from her seat and politely but firmly told the bus driver she knew me and my family and that I would not tell a lie. “OK,” the driver said. But he was right. I was 12 and had been for weeks..

I had a rotten time at the Paramount Theater that day, popcorn and all. Not only had I lied, I had caused someone else to lie, someone whose intentions were honorable. Linda sincerely believed I was only 11, and she had staked her reputation on that belief. But that wasn’t all. What aboutI my little brother? What message had I sent him?

I have reflected on that incident many times over the years, reminding myself that I had traded my integrity for a bag of popcorn. Experience tells us, however, there is redeeming virtue in making mistakes; errors can be indelibly instructive. The fare fiasco gave me invaluable insight into how real heroes live their lives. I came to understand that I didn’t need to go to a movie theater to see them, and they didn’t carry six-shooters; they ate at my kitchen table, lived in the house next door, and drove school buses.

Comments