One day in the early 70’s instead of tossing out my .75 cent movie ticket for a creature double feature, I saved it. And I never stopped. Almost 40 years later, my ticket collection represents hundreds of moments in my life captured on tiny pieces of paper.
At the bottom of my box is a confetti mix of colorful stubs from the old Salem Cinema on Essex Street, now a condo complex. My friends and I would ride our bikes to the Saturday afternoon double feature. Back then, movie tickets were generic and the color rotated to keep you from sneaking in. I would write the movie name and date on the stub along with my own rating system. As a budding critic, I made some solid choices such as giving American Graffiti and Jaws four stars each, but also had some questionable reviews like calling Roddy McDowell “CUTE” in The Legend of Hell House, which I also gave four stars (huh?).
Eventually, I left the security of Salem Cinema for the excitement of live theatre. My stubs attest that I have seen just about every musical ever made multiple times from Boston to Broadway, and was a regular guest of my Uncle Walter who had season tickets to the North Shore Music Theatre back when it was a summer only theatre in a tent. My most memorable theatre experience was scoring front row seats for my mother and I to see Damn Yankees starring Jerry Lewis at the Wang Theatre. As I smugly marched up to the best seats of my life, I found out they really were the best seats- but for the prior night’s performance. The pain of that mistake hurt my ego as much as the folding wooden chairs they kindly set up for us near the lighting booth by the exit door.
Before age caused me to worry about such things as finding parking spots and getting up early for work the next day, the highlight of my summer was the announcement of the concert tours. My stubs document performances by timeless musicians such as Stevie Wonder, The Eagles, U2, Aerosmith and Eric Clapton, as well as an intimate performance by The Wallflowers, who inexplicably performed at a Beverly High School dance in 1997 at the peak of their popularity (does anyone else remember this?). My most memorable concert experience was Don Henley at Harborlights in 2000. I was sitting in the ‘cheap seats’ when a stranger asked me if I wanted an upgrade as her friend could not attend. And an upgrade it was- front row center so close to Don Henley I could see the pills on his flannel shirt.
Along with my good concert experiences came the memorable fiasco that was the Parliament & Funkadelic concert in 1979 at the Peabody Ice Rink on Rt. 114. At the age of 19, I naïvely thought it was appropriate to dress up for concerts, including my nana’s antique watch necklace, which I last saw laced through someone’s fingers as they ripped it off my neck in the riot and mugging that ensued in the parking lot. Good times!
Thanks to working at the Boston Herald for nearly 20 years, I often served as host for our Boston Garden box where I attended such classic sports rivalries as Bruins/Canadians and Celtics/Lakers- complete with birds flying around in the rafters and fog hovering over the parquet floor. And my ticket stub to the US Open reminded me that before Map Quest and GPS, a wrong turn at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night coming home from New York can quickly land you in the middle of a scene reminiscent of the movie Judgement Night.
As I smiled at memories of these moments and the people I shared them with, I came across a raffle ticket with my name scrawled across the top in my brother’s handwriting.
I was at a newspaper conference in Philadelphia fall 1998, and returned to my hotel room to find a message to call Stephen as soon as possible. We barely talked at home, never mind when I was away, so a flurry of worst case scenarios controlled my thoughts as I nervously called to find out what the emergency was. As it turned out, he was trying to sell the last $100 ticket to the Boys & Girls Club $5,000 raffle, and had run out of prospects. It was the first time he had ever asked me for a donation or even talked about the Club for that matter, and I gladly committed to buying the last ticket with a verbal IOU. Before I got on the plane to return home, he had left me another message telling me that I won. It was not until his wake a year later than I found out he had tried to put my ticket aside and draw another as he didn’t want it to look “fixed”. Seeing that ticket with my name in Stephen’s handwriting made me smile, as it was he who had saved it, not me; I had found it tucked amongst his own ticket collection.
As I proceed to pack up my memories, I notice a dramatic drop off over the years. The collection I once added to several times a week slowly dropped to once a week, to once a month, to several times a year. And while I can vividly recall most of the events the stubs represent, I can hardly tell you what else I filled up my time with in recent years aside from work. In fact, this collection is as much a reflection of time lost as it is of experiences gained. And with that, I promise to not let my collection gather as much dust on the shelf, making more time in my life for the type of adventures and experiences that filled it up in the first place.
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