picture show
Krista Eastman In the olden days, in my hometown of Reedsburg, Wisconsin, my friends and I were told by Elmer V. Krueger, the lonesome proprietor of the Badger Theatre, that the movie would not play unless there were eight paying customers. A skinny tower of thick brown suiting, a writer of deeply felt verse, Elmer had been operating this theater since 1960. I know this and many facts of his life because he self-published in faux-leather binding an autobiography called Endless Echoes. It was one of a trilogy of his books that were always on display behind glass at the back of the theater, one of its pages open to the improbable sight of John F. Kennedy standing on the theater’s stage during a campaign stop in 1959, Jackie sitting beside him. Endless Echoes compiles Elmer’s original poetry, his treasured Biblical verse, literary quotations, favorite psalms as well as favorite non-religious melodies, the nicknames of every kid he knew growing up (Biff, Slug, Zizzie, Mud, Goosey, Gusky), the number of people who attended Crocodile Dundee in 1987, the number who attended the sequel in 1988, photos of every theater employee, every note written in his high school yearbook, as well as the story of how Elmer became “an entrepreneur in small-town America during the Depression.” In brief, by the 1950s, Elmer was traveling from farm town to farm town nearly every night of the week showing movies outdoors with a portable projector, screen, and popcorn popper.