Poole's Roxy
Saturday was the high spot of the week. It was the day we went to Poole’s Roxy, the cinema at Westfield near Gorgie. On Saturday mornings, between ten and twelve o’clock, the Roxy ran a hugely popular children’s club. Nearly every child between the ages of eight and fourteen (and many much younger) living within a radius of a mile or two would make their way to it on foot – no mummies in four-by-fours in those days. We’d walk, rain or shine, winter or summer.
I would be with a small group of pals, latterly including my younger brother Bobby. We’d set off at nine or even earlier – it would take the best part of an hour to cover the mile from Roseburn to Gorgie because there were so many distractions on the way. Under our arms we’d be carrying bundles of American comics – Superman, Spiderman, India Rubber Man – that we’d be hoping to swap for ones we hadn’t read. This swapping took place in the queue waiting to get into the cinema. Kids would walk up and down the queue holding up comics and shouting “Anyone want Batman and Robin?” and “Anyone got any Tom Mixes?” and “I’ve got three Gene Autrys. Swap you for Captain Marvels”.
At precisely ten o’clock the doors would be opened and we’d file into the foyer where often Mr Poole himself would greet us. Mr Poole was, to us kids, a superhuman figure. He actually owned the cinema. He was reputed to be a millionaire and his millions grew over time to reach astronomical proportions. He lived, it was conjectured, in a huge palace in an ultra-posh place like Balerno and kept a herd of pure white stallions. He drove a white Cadillac with enormous tailfins and with a statuette of Mickey Mouse as mascot atop its chromed radiator. He parked this ostentatiously at the side of the cinema and kids would peer inside its windows and marvel at the lambskin cushions and the bulging fascia with its huge indecipherable dials, and the radio – can you believe it? A radio in a car!
And he dressed the part. He wore the kind of clothes a well-off cowboy might wear going to church - well-cut light trousers with knife-sharp creases, a long ‘drape’ jacket over a sequinned waistcoat, a ribbon tie or sometimes a jewelled bow tie. On his head he would always have a white or very light beige stetson and on his feet would be a pair of cowboy boots. And occasionally these boots would have spurs. And we’d spot them and point them out –
“Look, see, he’s got spurs on. I bet they’re gold. Silver or gold.”
“Naw”
“Aye. Silver or gold. That’s the only two kinds o’ metal that dinnae rust.”
“Is that right?”
“Aye. See, if spurs rust and you stick them into a horse’s side the horse can get poisoned and die. They have to be silver or gold.”
Once we’d examined Mr Poole and his clothes, the next thing would be to look for the notice telling what films were to be shown that morning. There were no shiny coloured posters. Just a single black board onto which white letters were stuck by hand. Every week the programme had the same form. There would be four films. First a cartoon – Tom and Jerry, Tweetie Pie, Popeye. This would be followed by a short comedy – The Bowery Boys, Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy. Then there would be a longer feature film, usually about cowboys. Finally there would be ‘the serial’ – yet another episode of a seemingly endless series of loosely linked tales, usually about some intrepid detective or spy. The previous week (if we could remember that far back), the hero would have been left in a seemingly impossible position and we would be looking forward to seeing how he extricated himself. One episode I remember well had the hero, possibly Dick Tracy, lying flat on a bed, bound hand and foot, gagged and blindfolded. A large heavy sword was falling, point down, directly onto his stomach. The episode ended with the sword about one foot above him. Escape seemed impossible.
At the start of the next episode his blonde assistant managed to shout a warning and he was able, just in time, to squirm enough to avoid the blade which then miraculously cut through his bonds. We were unaware of the finite speed of sound or the hero’s finite reaction time which would have rendered such an escape infeasible. And anyway, we knew that it was infeasible and we knew we’d been cheated, but it was good fun.
The feature film that stands out in my memory over all others was ‘The Green Grass of Wyoming’ – a film that stunned me with the sheer breathtaking beauty of its scenery. It left me believing that the whole of America was just endless green plains cut by blue rivers with pure white rapids and populated by horses, cattle, and clean-cut incorruptible cowboys with impossibly beautiful girlfriends. This belief lingered until, much later in my life, I visited the wastelands of the rust belt and saw towns like Youngstown and Pittsburgh and discovered, with deep disappointment, that while Wyoming might be a rural paradise, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other mid-west states certainly are not.
We all had our favourites among the other items too. The Three Stooges were always number one comedy with a majority of the kids. Why it should be so much fun to watch a stupid fat guy sticking two fingers sharply into the eyes of an even stupider and fatter guy who would then run around going “Nyee, nyee, nyee”, I don’t know, but we loved it. At the bottom of the list were the Marx Brothers, closely followed by Charlie Chaplin. There was something about these comedians that was too precious, too ‘watch us and listen – we’re really clever’. And there was always the unasked, and unanswerable, question – what is Harpo there for? And of course, since we knew that these were the favourites of our parents (but were they really?) we would naturally reject them anyway.
So, we’d pay our threepence and file into the auditorium. We were all very well behaved. There was never any trouble. We’d watch the films and eat the ice-creams we bought at the interval. At the end of the show (with the hero yet again left requiring a miracle) there would be a struggle to get out of the cinema before “The Queen”. It was an unspoken, but unbroken, law that anyone still in their seat or in the aisles when the anthem started had to stand to attention till it finished.
Once outside, the slow drift home would get underway. We’d make our way back down the Westfield road, past the rugby ground and the primary school we all had attended, and some still did. All the way we’d be talking about what we’d seen, and arguing about which bit of the show was best. Then it was up the stairs to our ravenously anticipated dinners and our plans for the afternoon.
Though I must have visited The Roxy every week for five years, I only once found myself on the stage. This was when the yoyo craze was at its height. Every kid had a yoyo in his or her pocket. Everyone was trying to master various tricks with names like ‘Taking the dog for a walk’ and ‘Loop the loop’ and ‘The swing’, most of which depended on getting the yoyo to remain spinning at the bottom of the string without climbing back up it. It was not hard to work out that this could only be done if the string was loose and that this needed the string to be uncoiled. Once I had understood this I managed to master several tricks.
On the Saturday in question Mr Poole unexpectedly got up on the stage at the interval and announced that, there and then, there was to be a yoyo competition for ‘big prizes’. He asked for competitors to come up on stage. He introduced a young man in a narrow-trousered bright blue suit and baseball cap as ‘The American Yoyo Champion’ who was representing the Lumar Yoyo Company. He was to be the judge. Mr Poole walked backwards off the stage with his hand outstretched towards the champion who immediately brought both hands out from behind his back to reveal a yoyo in each. These he started to spin them out and in in a dazzling display of yoyomanship, ending by taking two dogs for a walk side by side. This was greeted by loud enthusiastic clapping.
My pals, knowing of my slight skill at yoyo, cajoled and pushed me to get up on the stage. I was never a very confident child and it went completely against my character to show myself off. However, their pleas, and threats, got through to me and I very nervously made my way up the side steps onto the stage where I joined half a dozen other children. And I won! Three of the six clearly had not worked out the uncoiled string strategy and could only do some very limited tricks not requiring static spinning. The rest of us all managed ‘loop the loop’, but mine looped out farthest. And I managed to take the dog for a longer walk than any of the others. For this, Mr Lumar presented me with, unaccountably, a football. I was filled with pride as I carried my ‘big prize’ back to show to my envious pals.
The Westfield Road held several other points of great interest to us children. About halfway along, across from the rugby ground, was Ross’ sweet factory where the famous Edinburgh Castle Rock was made. The smell of the confectionery hung over the neighbourhood in a sickly miasma. As the primary school was just along the road many of its pupils must have suffered severe pangs of sweetie-lust especially on hot days when the factory threw its doors open. We soon got to know the girls who worked there. None of them seemed to be local. All appeared to live in places like Winchburgh, Bathgate and Broxburn, and would rush up the street to the main Glasgow Road to catch their buses home at the end of each shift. If we hung about the doors of the factory long enough we could usually induce one of these girls to smuggle us out a box of rock. This was strictly forbidden of course but the girls took pity on us. I think they knew that we would get the rock anyway, by hook or by crook.
By crook was by sneaking into the factory through an open door and, by keeping hidden behind piles of boxes and sliding along beneath conveyors, getting close enough to the production line to grab a fistful and run out. This was dangerous and one or two of us were caught. We’d be told off by the manager and lectured on crime and criminality. But we knew we would never be in real trouble. It is likely that the management would have got into more trouble than we did, for poor security.
By hook was a lot worse and can make me cringe to this day. At the end of each shift the factory floor was brushed clean. The detritus of the day’s production was swept up and deposited in large dustbins held in a railed-off enclosure at the front of the building. The railings were of the sharp-pointed kind once so common but now, thankfully, prohibited. We would wait for an opportunity to climb over the railings and raid the dustbins for lumps of rock. We would fill our pockets with this dust-covered rubble then take it down to the burn and wash the dust off before guzzling it down. It is hard to believe now, but we continued this practice even after we had been warned, by our school teachers who knew what we were doing, that the sweepings were contaminated with rat poison!
Saturday was the high spot of the week. It was the day we went to Poole’s Roxy, the cinema at Westfield near Gorgie. On Saturday mornings, between ten and twelve o’clock, the Roxy ran a hugely popular children’s club. Nearly every child between the ages of eight and fourteen (and many much younger) living within a radius of a mile or two would make their way to it on foot – no mummies in four-by-fours in those days. We’d walk, rain or shine, winter or summer.
I would be with a small group of pals, latterly including my younger brother Bobby. We’d set off at nine or even earlier – it would take the best part of an hour to cover the mile from Roseburn to Gorgie because there were so many distractions on the way. Under our arms we’d be carrying bundles of American comics – Superman, Spiderman, India Rubber Man – that we’d be hoping to swap for ones we hadn’t read. This swapping took place in the queue waiting to get into the cinema. Kids would walk up and down the queue holding up comics and shouting “Anyone want Batman and Robin?” and “Anyone got any Tom Mixes?” and “I’ve got three Gene Autrys. Swap you for Captain Marvels”.
At precisely ten o’clock the doors would be opened and we’d file into the foyer where often Mr Poole himself would greet us. Mr Poole was, to us kids, a superhuman figure. He actually owned the cinema. He was reputed to be a millionaire and his millions grew over time to reach astronomical proportions. He lived, it was conjectured, in a huge palace in an ultra-posh place like Balerno and kept a herd of pure white stallions. He drove a white Cadillac with enormous tailfins and with a statuette of Mickey Mouse as mascot atop its chromed radiator. He parked this ostentatiously at the side of the cinema and kids would peer inside its windows and marvel at the lambskin cushions and the bulging fascia with its huge indecipherable dials, and the radio – can you believe it? A radio in a car!
And he dressed the part. He wore the kind of clothes a well-off cowboy might wear going to church - well-cut light trousers with knife-sharp creases, a long ‘drape’ jacket over a sequinned waistcoat, a ribbon tie or sometimes a jewelled bow tie. On his head he would always have a white or very light beige stetson and on his feet would be a pair of cowboy boots. And occasionally these boots would have spurs. And we’d spot them and point them out –
“Look, see, he’s got spurs on. I bet they’re gold. Silver or gold.”
“Naw”
“Aye. Silver or gold. That’s the only two kinds o’ metal that dinnae rust.”
“Is that right?”
“Aye. See, if spurs rust and you stick them into a horse’s side the horse can get poisoned and die. They have to be silver or gold.”
Once we’d examined Mr Poole and his clothes, the next thing would be to look for the notice telling what films were to be shown that morning. There were no shiny coloured posters. Just a single black board onto which white letters were stuck by hand. Every week the programme had the same form. There would be four films. First a cartoon – Tom and Jerry, Tweetie Pie, Popeye. This would be followed by a short comedy – The Bowery Boys, Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy. Then there would be a longer feature film, usually about cowboys. Finally there would be ‘the serial’ – yet another episode of a seemingly endless series of loosely linked tales, usually about some intrepid detective or spy. The previous week (if we could remember that far back), the hero would have been left in a seemingly impossible position and we would be looking forward to seeing how he extricated himself. One episode I remember well had the hero, possibly Dick Tracy, lying flat on a bed, bound hand and foot, gagged and blindfolded. A large heavy sword was falling, point down, directly onto his stomach. The episode ended with the sword about one foot above him. Escape seemed impossible.
At the start of the next episode his blonde assistant managed to shout a warning and he was able, just in time, to squirm enough to avoid the blade which then miraculously cut through his bonds. We were unaware of the finite speed of sound or the hero’s finite reaction time which would have rendered such an escape infeasible. And anyway, we knew that it was infeasible and we knew we’d been cheated, but it was good fun.
The feature film that stands out in my memory over all others was ‘The Green Grass of Wyoming’ – a film that stunned me with the sheer breathtaking beauty of its scenery. It left me believing that the whole of America was just endless green plains cut by blue rivers with pure white rapids and populated by horses, cattle, and clean-cut incorruptible cowboys with impossibly beautiful girlfriends. This belief lingered until, much later in my life, I visited the wastelands of the rust belt and saw towns like Youngstown and Pittsburgh and discovered, with deep disappointment, that while Wyoming might be a rural paradise, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other mid-west states certainly are not.
We all had our favourites among the other items too. The Three Stooges were always number one comedy with a majority of the kids. Why it should be so much fun to watch a stupid fat guy sticking two fingers sharply into the eyes of an even stupider and fatter guy who would then run around going “Nyee, nyee, nyee”, I don’t know, but we loved it. At the bottom of the list were the Marx Brothers, closely followed by Charlie Chaplin. There was something about these comedians that was too precious, too ‘watch us and listen – we’re really clever’. And there was always the unasked, and unanswerable, question – what is Harpo there for? And of course, since we knew that these were the favourites of our parents (but were they really?) we would naturally reject them anyway.
So, we’d pay our threepence and file into the auditorium. We were all very well behaved. There was never any trouble. We’d watch the films and eat the ice-creams we bought at the interval. At the end of the show (with the hero yet again left requiring a miracle) there would be a struggle to get out of the cinema before “The Queen”. It was an unspoken, but unbroken, law that anyone still in their seat or in the aisles when the anthem started had to stand to attention till it finished.
Once outside, the slow drift home would get underway. We’d make our way back down the Westfield road, past the rugby ground and the primary school we all had attended, and some still did. All the way we’d be talking about what we’d seen, and arguing about which bit of the show was best. Then it was up the stairs to our ravenously anticipated dinners and our plans for the afternoon.
Though I must have visited The Roxy every week for five years, I only once found myself on the stage. This was when the yoyo craze was at its height. Every kid had a yoyo in his or her pocket. Everyone was trying to master various tricks with names like ‘Taking the dog for a walk’ and ‘Loop the loop’ and ‘The swing’, most of which depended on getting the yoyo to remain spinning at the bottom of the string without climbing back up it. It was not hard to work out that this could only be done if the string was loose and that this needed the string to be uncoiled. Once I had understood this I managed to master several tricks.
On the Saturday in question Mr Poole unexpectedly got up on the stage at the interval and announced that, there and then, there was to be a yoyo competition for ‘big prizes’. He asked for competitors to come up on stage. He introduced a young man in a narrow-trousered bright blue suit and baseball cap as ‘The American Yoyo Champion’ who was representing the Lumar Yoyo Company. He was to be the judge. Mr Poole walked backwards off the stage with his hand outstretched towards the champion who immediately brought both hands out from behind his back to reveal a yoyo in each. These he started to spin them out and in in a dazzling display of yoyomanship, ending by taking two dogs for a walk side by side. This was greeted by loud enthusiastic clapping.
My pals, knowing of my slight skill at yoyo, cajoled and pushed me to get up on the stage. I was never a very confident child and it went completely against my character to show myself off. However, their pleas, and threats, got through to me and I very nervously made my way up the side steps onto the stage where I joined half a dozen other children. And I won! Three of the six clearly had not worked out the uncoiled string strategy and could only do some very limited tricks not requiring static spinning. The rest of us all managed ‘loop the loop’, but mine looped out farthest. And I managed to take the dog for a longer walk than any of the others. For this, Mr Lumar presented me with, unaccountably, a football. I was filled with pride as I carried my ‘big prize’ back to show to my envious pals.
The Westfield Road held several other points of great interest to us children. About halfway along, across from the rugby ground, was Ross’ sweet factory where the famous Edinburgh Castle Rock was made. The smell of the confectionery hung over the neighbourhood in a sickly miasma. As the primary school was just along the road many of its pupils must have suffered severe pangs of sweetie-lust especially on hot days when the factory threw its doors open. We soon got to know the girls who worked there. None of them seemed to be local. All appeared to live in places like Winchburgh, Bathgate and Broxburn, and would rush up the street to the main Glasgow Road to catch their buses home at the end of each shift. If we hung about the doors of the factory long enough we could usually induce one of these girls to smuggle us out a box of rock. This was strictly forbidden of course but the girls took pity on us. I think they knew that we would get the rock anyway, by hook or by crook.
By crook was by sneaking into the factory through an open door and, by keeping hidden behind piles of boxes and sliding along beneath conveyors, getting close enough to the production line to grab a fistful and run out. This was dangerous and one or two of us were caught. We’d be told off by the manager and lectured on crime and criminality. But we knew we would never be in real trouble. It is likely that the management would have got into more trouble than we did, for poor security.
By hook was a lot worse and can make me cringe to this day. At the end of each shift the factory floor was brushed clean. The detritus of the day’s production was swept up and deposited in large dustbins held in a railed-off enclosure at the front of the building. The railings were of the sharp-pointed kind once so common but now, thankfully, prohibited. We would wait for an opportunity to climb over the railings and raid the dustbins for lumps of rock. We would fill our pockets with this dust-covered rubble then take it down to the burn and wash the dust off before guzzling it down. It is hard to believe now, but we continued this practice even after we had been warned, by our school teachers who knew what we were doing, that the sweepings were contaminated with rat poison!
