The Super-50 really was an important part of the community. One point of interest that would NOT have been news in 1952, but is probably noteworthy today is that the entire theatre was divided right down the middle - blacks (colored back then) on the north side and whites on the south. Everyone entered off Rt. 50 but at the one ticket booth, blacks were directed around the north end of the screen to the north parking lot, and whites around the south end of the screen to the south parking lot. There were "colored men" and "colored women" toilets on the north side of the snack bar and white on the south. The snack bar had a serving window on the north for blacks and another on the south for whites. There wasn't a lot of room in the snack bar but there was a partition down the middle of the customer area separating the "north and south". It all seems crazy 56 years later, but such "standards" were rigidly adhered to in the 50s and I guess that's what the whites wanted (thought was right) and the blacks accepted it as just the way things were, even if they didn't like it. If fact, at the time I suspect that some preferred it that way. At least at the Super-50 "separate but equal" really was.
        The roof of the projection booth/snack bar was flat, and because the movie couldn't start until dusk, they sometimes had special "stage shows" on the roof - mostly country singers or something like that. I think there may have been an Easter sunrise service there.
        There was one night during the week that was "buck night" - no, people didn't come buck necked - admission was $1.00 per carload regardless of how many were in the car. I think we managed to get through the gate on a tandem bicycle one night with six head onboard. The other nights admission was based on the number of people in the car and of course some managed to get in through devious means by either riding in the trunk, or getting out on the highway and walking in through the woods after the show started. Now I don't think we need to say too much about some of the things that went on on the back rows except possibly that some didn't come to watch the movie!
        When it first opened, it was a good family place. They had some good, if not the best movies, and we still had the state board of censorship. During the last years of operation the movies became trashier and trashier until finally almost everything was XXX rated.
        Then there were always a few inattentive folks, possibly influenced by too much liquid libation, who would drive off without removing the speaker from the car window. Sometimes the window won, sometimes the speaker. They kept spare speakers and someone was kept busy installing replacements.
        Oh yes - the mosquitoes! They sold these little things called "Pic". It was a green colored coil of what looked like pressed sawdust and glue that was impregnated with insecticides - probably cyanide or DDT or something nice like that. It came with a little metal holder and an "ash tray" base and one would light it and place it on the dashboard of the car and if it didn't asphyxiate the occupants, it would keep the mosquitoes away. Later on they got a fogger, which did a fair job on the bugs and who knows what it did to the people.

by Robert Croswell