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LYRIC.TXT
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From netcom.com!netcomsv!decwrl!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!convex!news.duke.edu!acpub.duke.edu!jfurr Sat May 28 10:59:52 1994
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From: jfurr@acpub.duke.edu (Joel Furr)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.joel-furr,rec.arts.prose,alt.folklore.ghost-stories,bburg.general
Subject: Ghost story
Supersedes: <2rudq5$k1j@news.duke.edu>
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Date: 25 May 1994 02:50:41 GMT
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I wrote this a long time ago -- a non-fiction, chatty account of a cool
old theater. It's not immortal prose but I still get requests for it, so
here's a repost for old times' sake.
The Ghosts of the Lyric:
Part I: The Lyric Theater: An Unusual Place
Part II: The Ghosts of the Lyric
Part III: The Lyric Today
Part I: The Lyric Theater: An Unusual Place
The stories I have to tell you are set at the old Lyric
Theater in downtown Blacksburg, Virginia. The theater
belonged to some friends of mine, the Kelseys, who had owned
various incarnations of the business for decades. When I
was just starting graduate school at Virginia Tech, in 1988,
the theater was past its prime, aging, soon to suffer a
death blow when an eight-screen theater complex opened at a
new mall south of town. Still, the family held out and kept
the place open, both out of pride (I think) and because the
theater seemed to be the only thing keeping Grandfather
Kelsey alive. It was a nice old place, even if the some of
the seats were torn and the floor had a stickiness scrubbing
couldn't completely eliminate, and some nights I would
wander by after class got out at 10:00 p.m. to chat with
Beth Kelsey and her husband Bud Bennett.
Beth had been a classmate of mine in high school, though we
really hadn't become chatting friends until after gradua-
tion. She'd married Bud Bennett, four years her senior, in
the summer of 1988 and the two of them worked days at the
Virginia Tech library and then spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Thursday evenings running the theater. They hated the
necessity of spending three evenings a week watching the
meager crowds trickle in and out, but since they worked
unpaid it permitted the theater to stay open a little while
longer. Profitable once, the days of competition with the
eight-screen cineplex at the mall and the burgeoning video-
rental businesses had reduced the Lyric to the point where
the bank account balance spiralled downwards rather than
creeping upwards or staying even. Without the clout to get
the must-see movies, they showed what they could get, often
having to show several also-rans as part of the package that
brought them their rare popular film.
I wondered why the Kelseys kept the place open, since they
knew full well that they would never make a profit again.
One day I asked. Beth explained to me that, to be quite
honest, it was only until her grandfather died. Without the
Lyric, he'd have no reason to exist; even in his advanced
years he would wander down to the theater in the evening and
poke uselessly around for a while before leaving.
Evenings spent chatting with Beth and Bud while we waited
for the late showing of whatever dubious blockbuster they
had that week to finish generally included at least a half
hour of extensive complaining about the Virginia Tech stu-
dents who vandalized the building during the day, when the
University leased the space for large lecture classes. Each
evening's crew would find a few new depredations, whether
it be Coca-Cola syrup emptied out onto the snack counter
floor, or wooden lap-boards shoved up under the carpet, or
graffiti written on the bathroom walls in magic marker. We
called the students "ingrates" out of a sense of irritation
with the casual way they destroyed property that
belonged to people who had never done them any harm. After
Beth and Bud got that out of their systems we'd chat about
life for a while, and then the movie would end and the
twenty or thirty patrons would wander out and we'd close up.
I felt odd about staying after closing with them, worried
that they'd think that I had nowhere else to be, but I did
enjoy talking and truth to tell they were about the only
people outside my cluster of fellow students with whom I did
get to talk on a regular basis. And it was interesting
getting to go in the places most patrons wouldn't even know
existed: the back stairwell that must have been used
decades ago by black theater-goers, the vast empty stage
behind the movie screen where once, long ago, theatrical
plays had been presented; the eerie crawlspace under the
stage where no one had much desire to explore; the boiler
room with Russell's 55-gallon drum of stale popcorn; the odd
crawlspaces ABOVE the projection booth where we found stacks
of 1940's-era phonograph records, hopelessly warped.
There were all manner of little nooks and crannies in the
Lyric building, stuck as it was in the middle of a city
block, part of one huge interconnected building that else-
where had stores on the street level and apartments above.
The Lyric was owned by the Kelseys but the land it sat on
was the property of the HCMF corporation, the local real
estate barons with a finger in every pie and little interest
in preserving a fine old movie theater when there were rent
checks to be cashed. The money that had to be paid to HCMF
was in large part the reason for the perpetual cycle of
weekly losses, and Beth and Bud believed that HCMF would
like nothing better than to take the Lyric and raze it and
replace it with modern apartments, which would probably have
made them a lot of money since the theater was a block from
campus.
Nevertheless, Grandfather Kelsey was still hanging on and
while he was, the Kelseys managed to keep the place open. I
had the vague idea that they had money saved up from the
flush years of decades past and that they were paying the
deficits out of that, but for all I really knew, they were
taking out huge loans each week to keep paying the power
bill. It wasn't the sort of thing I felt comfortable in-
quiring into. So while the place stayed open and the one
dozen or two dozen people per night came in to see the
movies the Lyric had to show, I'd drop by as often as I felt
safe doing and would chatter with Beth and Bud until 11:00
when they'd lock up and I'd help them with closing.
There were certain things that had to be done each evening
and eventually I learned them and was able to help out.
They had to make sure everyone was out of the place, then
lock up. Then Bud would go up to the projection booth and
start the movie feeding off the big platter it had collected
onto and backwards onto another platter for the next show-
ing. Or, if the movie was being shipped out in the morning,
we'd collect it into two massively heavy movie canisters and
lug it down the back stairs to the street entrance. Beth
would go down to the right-side emergency exit passage and
get the piles of wooden lap boards out for the students to
use in classes the next day, and wheel out the overhead
projector and microphone and slid