To the editor:

The January 23 Journal story regarding the 100th anniversary of the building at 212 North Minnesota Street reminded me of events from mid-1942. I was 10 years old. On a sunny Saturday afternoon I’d jump on my blue Schwinn Roadmaster bike and ride from our home on South Washington Street to downtown for the Time Theater’s 1 p.m. show.

In those days the Time was third-run theater. They were showing films barely out of the silent movies of the 1920’s, and were playing “talkies” from the early 1930’s already ten years old. Stars were grand old names like Greta Garbo, Wallace Beery, Myrna Loy, Boris Karloff, and Bette Davis.

Admission was 10 cents for kids. The nation was about 6 months into World War Two and the government had added a penny war tax to make admission 11 cents. There was a serious shortage of metal for the war effort, and one of the first non-essentials to disappear were steel clothing hangers. Clothing stores and dry-cleaners became desperate for hangers. They made a deal with the Theater to make the admission 10 coat hangers to be re-sold by the Theater to the stores, plus the penny tax which had to be paid in cash. And so it was.

George L. Glotzbach

New Ulm