Search falls short

I was not prepared for a marathon showing of “American Chopper.”
It was a Friday afternoon. I was scheduled to work Friday night. So I had some time off, and — much to my surprise — there was something I wanted to watch on television.
My Portland High classmate Kit Galloway had alerted me that there was a guilty indulgence on the schedule Friday afternoon.
Kit and I weren’t friends in high school, though we were aware of one another. But these days we’re in communication via email at least once or twice a week. Such is the new reality of the Internet.
We’ve learned that we not only have close friends in common — like Ron Cole — but that we also share a special fondness for a particular era of our childhood, roughly circa 1957, a time marked by schlocky horror movies at the Hines and fuzzy TV transmissions on a handful of stations.
Movies were a big part of that.
I’ll always regret that I was never able to see a movie at the Main in Dunkirk. I did see “West Side Story” at the Key in Redkey, long before the late Charlie Noble turned it into a blues club.
Portland, during my childhood, had two moviehouses, each with their shortcomings.
The Hines had a bat (at least one). The Princess had rats. (Plural.)
But while the Princess still evokes memories of Roy Rogers and other Western heroes, it was the Hines that brought 1950s and 1960s horror movies to Jay County.
And it was horror movies that prompted Kit’s email last week.
There was going to be a broadcast, he said, of a documentary about William Castle. It was a must-see.
Never heard of William Castle?
That’s not surprising.
But for about a decade, he was the king of horror movie schlock coming out of Hollywood.
Castle’s greatest skill wasn’t in making the movies. They weren’t, honestly, all that good.
His skill was in marketing them.
He’s the guy who introduced the life insurance policy that wimpy moviegoers could buy — while others jeered — just in case you might be frightened to death by what was on the screen.
He used every trick in the book.
Special buzzers under the seats of a few members of the audience for “The Tingler.” You got it.
Glow in the dark thumbs up or thumbs down verdict card so people could vote on the fate of a character. Of course.
To say these were not great movies is to make a huge understatement.
They were crap.
They were entertainment guiltily consumed.
I still can recall the sense of stupidity and shame that came from forking over 75 cents to see “Mr. Sardonicus.”
I also remember being scared about half out of my wits.
So Friday, I was all set to get a peek behind the curtain, find out about this guy who had taken my quarters and scared me silly.
Instead, I found “American Choppers.”
I worked my way through the remote channels until my thumb was crying out in exhaustion. Nothing remotely resembling what I was looking for appeared.
A few hours later, the computer made a beeping sound. There was incoming email.
It was from Kit.
You know that thing I told you was on the Discovery  Channel this afternoon? It was really on the Documentary Channel, he said.
Which I do not receive.
Was I irritated? Sure, for a minute of two. Then I counted myself grateful that I hadn’t purchased any extra life insurance to cover being scared to death.[[In-content Ad]]