20 Cartoons Not Downtown

Once upon a time, Downtown Rochester was a wonderland. We had first run distributor theaters like the Loew's, The RKO Palace and the Paramount. We had massive department stores stores like Sibley's, McCurdy's, Niesners, Woolworth's and Penny's. Woolworth's and Neisners were call five and dimes. If you had a nickel or a dime, you could get something.  We  had music stores like Levis and Midtown Records We had book stores like Scrantom's. We had a philharmonic orchestra at the George Eastman Theater. We had a YMCA a YWCA and a CYO. We had shoe stores galore. We even had a Mister Peanuts. We had top shelf restaurants like Eddie's Chop House. We had convenience places where you could get a quick burger or two at the White Tower. We had convenient bus routes. We had a War Memorial where we could go to see our very own Rochester Americans hockey team and rock and roll concerts.

We were pretty much an American Toronto, whicxh swas our sister city across Lake Ontario.

Beautiful.

The movie houses were palaces indeed, not just the RKO. On Saturdays, they filled up with kids like me to see I Was A Teenage Werewolf,  The Blob, The House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, The Creatures with Atom Brains and From the Black Lagoon and a Beast from 20,00 Fathoms not to mention Hercules with Steve Reeves.

Then, they tore down the Loew's to make room for Xerox towers and the first of it's kind downtown mall...Midtown.

Around the time of the construction of Midtown, veterans using the GI Bill began moving their families into the suburbs. Shopping plazas were erupting everywhere. Downtown began to slowly suffocate/disintegrate

Prior to Midtown, I had learned how to use the bus system. We had a bus loop at the top of Parsells Avenue. All we had to do was walk up to the top of the Avenue, catch the bus and disembark DOWNTOWN.

Simple really. I was 10 years old. I knew how to use the bus. I taught everybody how to use it. We all went downtown together. Some of the kids were afraId to go at first until I explained to them how simple and safe it was.

Rochester was at its peak and DOWNTOWN was the heart of the city.

The downtown movie houses had the best movies and we could get there easily.

On the outskirts of the city, we had smaller neighborhood movie houses. Although they were smaller, they still opened curtains before every showing. The neighborhood theater nearest to me but off the bus route was the Waring. We had to get our folks to drive us to the Waring. The Waring didn't play A movies until,they were at the end of their run. The Waring played films that were oftren rated B by the Legion of Decency in the days when Jews made the movies, Catholics censored them and Protestants went to see them. Nuns discouraged us form going to the Waring which to them was a near occasion of sin.

The Waring had one thing that the downtown palaces didn't have. The Waring had an annual event called 20 cartoons. Cartoons used to play when the curtain first went up at the downtown theaters. They would show one cartoon before the matinee. We loved 'em.

The idea of 20 cartoons in a row was unbelievable.

The Waring distributed Warner Brother's films which means they had first crack at Warner Brothers cartoons. They would bunch 20 of them together and have their biggest kid show of the year.

I remember my friend telling me about the existence of 20 cartoons and I thought he was fibbing. Surely, no such event actually existed. Nothing could be that good, I checked the Democat and Chronicle every day to see what movies had come to town. The downtown theaters had the biggest advertisements. One day, I noticed that the Waring was advertising 20 Cartoons. The damned thing actually existed.

I talked my parents into taking a carload of my friends to the Waring that day. Sure enough, 2o Warner brother cartoons played one after the other. Everybody was laughing and yelling for Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Tweety and Porky Pig.

The Waring was packed.

One cartoon after another.

We were delighted.

I'll never forget that afternoon when actualization lived up to expectation.

The first cartoon was Daffy Duck.