Westhampton Requiem
Richmond doesn’t get much snow. I spent the first 19 years of my life here, and in that time we got exactly two real snowstorms, one in the late Seventies and one in the winter of 1986-7. Even when the rest of the Commonwealth gets hammered, we get nothing. A few years ago, all of Virginia was under a foot-deep blanket of snow; Charlottesville got more than twenty inches, Appomattox had an ice storm that killed every tree in my grandparents’ neighborhood, literally made 200-year-old trees simply collapse under the weight, and the City didn’t even get dusted. It’s just a weird thing, I guess.
This means that, as a child longing for snow to play in, I was largely disappointed. Of course, it also means that even an inch of snow is a major disaster here. As I write this, I’m remembering a day in 1980 or ‘81, when the threat of snow had closed the schools for the day. Pop was unexpectedly left in charge of me, and was at a loss for what to do until he discovered that a local theater was showing a double feature, The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Guns of Navarone, movies he had loved as a boy. I was just at the right age to get caught up in the general war-ness of those pictures, the explosions, the courage, the dedication to duty and to fellow servicemen. I remember discussing the films with Pop afterwards at Hardee’s, and him explaining the complex motivations behind Alec Guiness’ character in The Bridge on the River Kwai. It was a high point in our frequently tempestuous relationship. Often when I think of him, I remember him being angry or frustrated with me (I was as unmanageable as a boy as I am now, and he was a demanding man), but that’s one of the treasured memories that I hold on to. It’s a day I think of when I want to remember him at his best.
The theater that had that double feature was the Westhampton, on the western edge of the city. It isn’t a grand movie palace like the Byrd; it’s just a nice little leftover from the Fifties that we used to go to a lot. You know the scene in The Blob where the creature starts oozing through the vents to attack the audience at a picture show? The Westhampton is that theater, basically. I remember seeing Chariots of Fire there and hearing Bony M playing on the P.A. when we left. I remember seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark there as well, and Mama covering Teddy’s eyes at the end, but I was out of her reach and got to watch Toht melt. When there was the big mid-Eighties re-release of the five films that Hitchcock had put in the vault to provide financial security for his daughter after he was gone, I saw most of those there. I’m sure I caught The Man Who Knew Too Much at the Byrd, but Rear Window, Vertigo, and The Trouble With Harry I saw at the Westhampton (I think I missed Rope altogether, I’m sorry to say).
It’s a place full of memories. So when I learned this week that it was closing, that mattered to me. I’m part of the problem, of course...it isn’t really within walking distance of my apartment (at a guess, I’d call it a two-hour walk, but it might be longer), so I haven’t been there since I moved back to town. It’s as much my fault as anyone’s that they’re going out of business. Also I know that nothing lasts forever, that the days of two-screen theaters are long since over and it’s amazing that this little place held on as long as it did. And of course, my memories will remain intact, and for me the place was little more than a memory anyway.
Still, it was a comfort to know it was there, to see it among the local theater listings (which I check two or three times a week). I’m not crushed that it’s going away, but it is still an occasion that cannot pass without mention. So tonight I raise a glass to Harrison Ford and William Holden and Grace Kelly and Gregory Peck and Vangelis, all of whom are forever tied to the Westhampton Theater, an oasis of my childhood. I don’t know what this is worth to them, but as long as I’m alive, they’ll never be forgotten.