Mae's Real Stories

"Imagine that it's 1935, and you are going to the movies on Saturday afternoon," I said to Miriam and Alice. "Besides a feature movie, you might see one episode of a series of movies called The Phantom Empire with a singing cowboy named Gene Autrey. It's about Radio Ranch, kids who are famous trick riders, and a huge underground empire called Murania with mysterious horsemen called the Thunder Riders."

"Would we go by ourselves even though we are only 5 and 7?"

"Yes, even little kids went to the movies then."

Miriam and Alice watched two episodes. The Thunder Riders wore strange helmets, and Alice decided that she would make her gift bag into a helmet while she was watching Gene Autrey get stuck in a tree.

In The Phantom Empire, a lot of things happened. Becky, the girl who lived on the ranch, could jump onto a quickly galloping horse and ride standing up. The radio show was on the air, and Gene Autrey sang a song about Noah's Ark. There was a plane crash, and Becky and her brother Frankie had to parachute out of it. They rescued Gene Autrey from the Thunder Riders. In underground Murania, robots did a lot of work. It was very complicated.

Miriam thought it was very good. "It's the oldest movie we have ever seen," she said.

Another thing we did today was to look at a sculpture on campus. When Evelyn was a little girl, she called it "The Amazing Cube." Miriam and Alice had fun spinning it around. When we got there, some men were climbing up onto the sculpture, which is very hard.