Saturday nights in our house on Middle Street was always the same. Channel 11 had a double feature of horror movies and the show was called Chiller Theater. It was hosted by Chilly Billy Cardilly. He even had a cameo in George Romero’s original “Night of the Living Dead.” This became part of the Saturday night ritual for the brothers in our household. The movies would begin right after the 11 o’clock local news and we’d be up til 2:30am or until we fell asleep. This became such a popular part of our lives that we ordered monster posters for our bedroom. You’d come into our room and there you’d find Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3’ by 4’ black and white posters. I don’t know if you realize how large they were, but there’s something about having Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff staring at you all the time that can be pretty freaky for a kid. My personal favorite were the Godzilla movies. And the absolute favorite movie was King Kong vs. Godzilla. We loved having these movies scare the begeebers out of us. Dan was always the tough guy except for when he read “The Exorcist.” He came into the room in the middle of the night saying, “Buzz, wake up. Wake up. You gotta stay up with me. I just finished the Exorcist.” He’s saying this as he clutches a Bible to his chest. He was definitely in that wonderful state of “panic & fear” that was what we wanted. Jim on the other hand was the hider. When a scary part came on, he’d hide behind the couch and peek out to see when it was over. Now of course the tradition usually included some sort of food including but not limited to all sorts of soda along with chips, pretzels, snowballs, candybars and anything else we could get our hands on. If we were desperate we’d clean out the cereal, which drove our parents nuts. Everytime they went to get a bowl of cereal, we had eaten everything EXCEPT Corn Flakes. So, around an hour into the movie we would all agree that we had to go to the bathroom. And the movie was usually to a place where the suspense and tension was starting to build. We’d agree to go to the bathroom together. When the boys were younger, they’d make me hold their hands. So, up the stairs the three of us would go holding one another’s hands. We’d all go in together and if there was a way to go so we could continue holding one another’s hands we would have figured it out. But, so we didn’t spray the entire bathroom, we let go of one another’s hand. Brothers peeing together is interesting. We stood around the same toilet bowl together and we’d criss-cross the streams of urine playfully. Visually, you’d see your stream and the intersections of two others. It makes me think of the Three Musketeers, “All for one and one for all!” Yeah! Well, being the older brother, I would usually finish first and I would carefully zip up my trousers, turn slowly and then click off the bathroom light while the brothers are still going. And to top it off, I’d run down the stairs leaving the two brothers alone in the bathroom finishing their business. As I’m doing this, they would plead with me, “Buzz, no. don’t go downstairs.” And then they’d scream. I would scamper down the stairs two at a time gleeful and smiling that I had got one over on them. They would come down all serious and frightened. it was usually Dan that would say to me. “That wasn’t funny. It’s not o.k. to scare us that way. What if you were a little brother and we left you up there all alone. You wouldn’t like it.” But I loved it! They’d settle back in and if they were particularly distressed, I’d apologize knowing I would get them the next time. Yeah, I was a “bad brothuh!”
