Finally, a theatre that’s easy on the budget

Son Daniel tells me the first time he saw me get teary-eyed was at the Grand Theater in Red Oak.
The movie was E.T. and I’d been caught off-guard. I went under the assumption E.T. was for children.  
Now fast forward 28 years.   Dan, his three little ones and I go to a movie.
We chose a multiplex in the city as they were showing something his kids wanted to see.  
This time the surprise wasn’t in the film, it was the price. The bill, which included popcorn and soda for them and a few gummy bears for me, came to $67.50. Not included was a long drive with children and the headache of city traffic.
Contrast this with a movie my wife and I took in on New Year’s at the Grand Theater in Red Oak.  No traffic.  Easy parking. Good seats in a clean and comfortable theater.   
A ticket was $2; the concession stand well-supplied at reasonable prices. A quick calculation told me the package that ran $70 in the city would have been about $18 here.
I visited briefly with Shelly Becker, Stacey Rolenc and Bob and Mary Fenstermann; people who are part of the group that set out last summer to save the Grand Theater.  The crowd streaming through the door gave an indication of how things were going, but I asked anyway.  
Now and then there was a slow night, I was told, but overall attendance has been good and on some nights the place is full.  
This project ought to do well. Newly released movies for $2 in a setting like the Grand is a rare bargain.  
The price is what it is because workers are all volunteers. No one, from the ticket taker to the projectionist, takes home a paycheck.  
If these volunteers are able to sustain this there will, some day, be a nice savings account.  If and when that happens the profit will be returned to the community in a manner the group thinks most appropriate.  
In the meantime, the Fenstermanns said, income is going for overhead, getting established, and there are numerous improvements yet to be made.  
With that we adjourned to watch the movie.  
“Unstoppable,” I’ve read, is a box office hit. Denzel Washington and Chris Pine pursue a runaway train that’s pulling thousands of tons of toxic, explosive, acne-causing chemicals and appears certain, at some point, to vaporize an entire city and cause, one excited reporter tells us, “one of the worst disasters in Pennsylvania history.”  
He was probably thinking of the Johnstown flood, which killed 2,209.  
The movie is typical Tony Scott; nonstop action with a chase scene that starts early and doesn’t end till the lights come up.  The film has less plot and character development than a demolition derby, is as predictable as sunset, but it was fun.  
The unscripted ground hog just before the train vaporizes a horse trailer was, of itself, worth the cost of admission.      
The Grand has four showings a week; Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m., plus a Sunday afternoon matinee.  
Take in a movie, folks.  Prices haven’t been like this since the 1950s.         
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.