I’ve always loved going to the movies. Sitting in a dark theater, the hush before the previews, the first flicker of light on the screen—it feels like being transported somewhere else entirely. Movies, like books, invite you into worlds shaped by imagination. For a couple of hours, you can step out of your own life and into another. I’ve flown X-wings with Red Squadron, pedaled across the moon on a bicycle with an extra terrestrial, and run from dinosaurs through a doomed amusement park. Every time the lights dim, the same quiet magic stirs inside me.
When I visit my parents in West Virginia, I like to take my dad to the movies. It gives us something to share, something to talk about afterward. Movies have always been our constant, a thread running through every stage of life.
Before the farm, before South Carolina, my parents lived in West Virginia for a short time. They managed The Woodlands apartments in the late 1990s. In 1999, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was the movie everyone was waiting for. I was living near Cleveland at the time, and every theater was sold out on opening night. Then my dad called and asked what I was doing that Thursday. When I said I had no plans, he told me he’d managed to get three tickets to a midnight showing in Bridgeport. “Get in your car and meet us there,” he said.
I left work late and drove faster than usual, pushing through the night, wanting to get there on time. The air was warm, and the roads between Ohio and West Virginia seemed to hum with anticipation. When I arrived at the Carmike Meadowbrook 6, the parking lot was full and the crowd was buzzing. People swapped stories about how Star Wars had changed their lives. My parents were waiting outside, smiling, and for a moment I felt like that same four-year-old kid sitting between them at the drive-in, watching Luke Skywalker light up the night sky for the first time.
Inside, a local news crew interviewed fans, and someone mentioned that I’d driven three hours just to be there. Suddenly, I was the one being interviewed. When the lights dimmed and the 20th Century Fox fanfare began, the entire audience fell into an excited hush, then erupted into cheers when those familiar words appeared: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Living on the farm never dulled my appetite for movies. If anything, it made them more of an event. My dad still loved going, but his sense of timing didn’t match mine. He was late for everything, and nothing tested my patience more than missing a movie preview. The roads didn’t help either—narrow, one-lane curves winding up and around the hills, impossible to pass a slow coal or logging truck. If you needed to be somewhere at a certain time, you might as well give up. I’d grow quiet on those drives, sulking as the clock ticked closer to showtime.
Eventually, I learned to adapt. I started telling my dad the movie started fifteen minutes earlier than it actually did. It worked. One evening he noticed we were early, but I just shrugged and acted surprised.
The Carmike Meadowbrook 6 had already seen better days by then. Projectors broke down, sound cut in and out, and the staff never seemed to know what was going on. Once, my dad and I went to see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 on opening day. We showed up for the noon screening, but the ticket clerk told us to come back at 4:30—they were missing three of the six film reels and had to drive an hour to fetch them. We passed the time wandering around Barnes & Noble before returning later that afternoon.
Kill Bill was supposed to play in Theater 1, but the projector bulb had burned out, so they moved it to Theater 3. Theater 3 had been showing Ella Enchanted, a sweet kids’ movie. Unfortunately, no one told the ticket counter about the switch, so they kept selling tickets to both films. My dad and I found our seats as families filed in with their daughters dressed as princesses. I remember sitting there thinking, This isn’t going to go well.
The lights dimmed. No previews. Then, without warning, blood splattered across the screen as Kill Bill: Vol. 2 began. Little girls screamed. Parents gasped. People shouted words I can’t repeat. Moms and dads scrambled for the exits, dragging their children out of the theater in a panic. My dad sat frozen, wide-eyed, like a deer in headlights. I didn’t say a word—I was caught between thinking it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen and feeling terrible for finding it funny. Now that I have kids, I can only imagine how horrifying that must have been for those parents. I regret laughing about it, even if it was funny at the time.
A few weeks later, I went back to see Troy. That one I saw alone, which was probably for the best. About half an hour in, I regretted my choice. The movie dragged, every line delivered with painful seriousness. Then, as if the heavens intervened, the fire alarm went off. People groaned, thinking it was part of the movie, until the lights came on and the siren kept blaring. The theater wiring was so old that the alarm malfunctioned, and no one could turn it off. The fire department had to come in with axes to shut it down. I got my money back and took it as divine deliverance from an awful film. Soon after, the Carmike Meadowbrook 6 closed for good and was torn down to make way for a massive twenty-screen multiplex.
Months later, I tried to convince my dad to see Shaun of the Dead with me. It was only showing at The Warner Theater in Morgantown, about forty-five minutes away. We made the drive, only to learn that the theater wasn’t playing it after all. The clerk offered Napoleon Dynamite instead, which hadn’t started yet. We figured we might as well stay.
For the first twenty minutes, I sat there wondering why anyone found it funny. I could feel my dad’s silence beside me and started to dread the moment he’d not only ask for his ticket money back but ask for gas money too. Then Uncle Rico showed up on screen with his football and camcorder, and suddenly we were both laughing. Napoleon Dynamite turned out to be exactly the kind of oddball humor we both appreciated. I still never got to see Shaun of the Dead, but I didn’t mind.
Our favorite place eventually became Tygart Valley Cinema in White Hall. From the outside, it looked like a converted strip mall—hardly glamorous—but inside it had the warm, nostalgic feel of an old hometown theater. The smell of popcorn hung thick in the air, movie posters lined the walls, and the staff always greeted you like they were happy you showed up. It was closer to the farm and easier to reach, even with coal trucks in the way. My dad and I saw dozens of movies there over the years.
I still have all the ticket stubs. They sit in a small box designed just for that purpose, each one a memory fragment from another time—tiny paper windows into the worlds I escaped to and the nights I spent with my dad.
Looking back, I realize it was never just about the movies. It was about sharing something that pulled us out of our daily routines and into a space where we could just be—father and son, laughing in the dark, lost in someone else’s story. Every movie we saw together became a chapter in our own story, a quiet reminder that joy can be found in the simple act of sitting side by side, waiting for the lights to dim, and letting the world fall away for a little while.