Velociworld

I'LL BRING THE POPCORN

That earlier post on drive-ins got me to laughing about my mother. I have to tell you, Patient Readers, my Mother never bought popcorn at a movie theater. Unto her last days she would smuggle her own Orville Redenbacher's into the show.

Why? Several reasons, I think. One, she preferred her own low salt, low butter variety. Two, she deep down thought that was wasteful shit. She grew up during the Depression, recall, and I honestly don't think she ever had the nickel for the odeon-bought stuff in her childhood, and probably thought, with 800 dollars in her pocket, that $4 for popcorn was obscene. She used to make us kids mule foodstuffs into the drive-in and walk-in as kids. She'd buy us Goobers, or Raisinets, or Dots. But she wouldn't eat them. Strange.

The popcorn thing reminds me of a story: I have a friend (haven't seen him in a few years) who owns a popcorn store on River Street in Savannah. His dad owns one on Hilton Head. Bert and I became good friends, and he told of the time he went to a popcorn industry function (yes, they have them, this would have been late 80's, maybe 1990). Orville was strutting around the scene like a peacock (don't let me go down that path), bragging that he was the King of Corn.

The sad fact is, Orville had just sold out to Pillsbury, or some like minded conglomerate. As Orville was proclaiming he was the King, Bert called his chit.

"You're not the King of Corn, you sell-out cocksucker! I'M THE KING OF CORN!"

I'm told you had to be there, but it was a paradigm shift in the world of variety popped corn. They tell me Bert became a God that night.