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Dear Editor,

Being eighty nine years old, I can remember happenings at the LanTex Theater in the mid to late thirties.

At that time, it was owned and operated by a man and wife named Garner. She worked in the ticket booth, while he managed the finances and made decisions as to what movies to run.

They showed Westerns on Saturdays with a 10-chapter serial. It cost a dime for teenagers. That was during the Depression and it was hard to come up with a dime. I missed some chapters, so I finally got up enough nerve to ask for a job.

They let me deliver circulars door to door for an admission to the Saturday movies. In a few months this job ended.

By the time this ended I had another job and I saved my dimes for shows.

On Wednesdays they would run a cartoon of 10 men. Each man had a number on his shirt and a printed tag with the same number. They kept losing their tags in different ways. It was quite funny. If the winner’s tag matched your ticket stub, you would win a set of dishes. I was never lucky enough to win.

On Saturday and Sunday the movies would run continually from 1 in the afternoon until 11 at night.

The projectionist was Orville Tumlinson. He took a liking to me and began to teach me how to operate the projectors, unknown to the Garners.

There was no air conditioning at that time, so the carbon arc lamps kept the temperature around 90 degrees. It was pretty rough for Orville to stay in the projection booth for that long, so he would let me operate the equipment while he took a break outside the booth.

Everything went well until I forgot to turn the sound down when changing from the feature to the cartoons and the audience got a loud blast. Mr. Garner and Orville hit the projection booth at the same time and my career as a projectionist ended.

Later on in the forties, teens would go to the early Sunday movie, then to the Yellow Jacket Nest operated by Damon and Lottie Wycoff. They would play cards, mostly bridge.

Those were some of the best days of my life.

Archie T. Loftis

Portland, Oregon

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Dear Editor,

As one person who vowed not to miss Dr. Robin E. Clark’s weekly January presentations at Mason’s Odeon Theatre; I would like to warn your readers that her final program in this series will be next Tuesday, the 31st. Her topic will be Andrew Wyeth.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Russell and ‘Grandma’ Moses have been ‘visited’ earlier.

Her talks about these fascinating artists have been informative and very visual with their works, photos, writings, etc. presented on the screen. I have appreciated her programs and the time and effort that she has put into each one of them.

The Odeon Preservation Board deserves a thank you for inviting Dr. Clark to give these talks. If you appreciate these early artists, don’t ignore this final program.

Sincerely,

Judy Uherek

Mason, Texas

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Dear Editor,

Bad news first: The City of Llano hired Sparks Engineering of Round Rock to assess the eminent danger to tourists at the old Llano County Jail. They concurred that the jail was unstable and recommended that regular tours should stop until the foundation is stabilized with 32 piers. In case you haven’t heard, the central core of the Red Top Jail sunk over an inch in February, 2011 during the severe cold spell of three days and subsequent thaw.

This means that new visitors can’t take a tour of the jail and donate to its restoration. Therefore, we need you, the Llano people, to help us reach our goal.

The good news? The Summerlee Foundation in Dallas has donated $10,000 toward the restoration of this piece of wild Texas history. This complements the $25,000 that we received from the Texas Historical Commission — the only grant to be funded by the THC in 2011! In addition, the Friends of the Llano Red Top Jail has raised over $17,000 through an “Adopt-A-Pier” Campaign and other fundraising efforts to supplement this effort.

Did you know that the ultimate goal is to convert this gem of the Hill Country into a major tourist attraction? We have plans for a modern museum in the works and are collecting oral/family histories from people as early as the first jailor of the Red Top Jail.

We need a few more dollars to help stabilize this jail. Our goal is to rely on donations, not handouts from the City of Llano, the owners.

To donate, please call Sandy Shaw, Secretary, Friends of the Llano Red Top Jail, 325-247-1787. The foundation of the jail CAN be fixed. We just need a little help from our Friends.

Sincerely,

Sheri Zoch,

Grantwriter/editor

Friends of the Llano Red Top Jail