Six-guns echo across the memory

CINEMA folk knew it as the Bug. But to folk like Ron Dixon it was the "theatre of dreams." A place where imaginative kids in short pants could dream themselves into film stardom.

And all performed from a threepenny front-form perch, right beneath the modest old picture screen.

With the Haydock Picturedrome show over, the lads would then bustle out on to the village streets, masquerading as tough-guy Leo Gorsey's East Side dead-enders; or pretending to hit the dusty trail with cowboy legends such as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry or Buck Jones.

Ron, from Prescot Road, St Helens, was among a cluster of readers who wrote in with their childhood memories. They were spurred on by a letter from pensioner Jim Garrett who had previously asked if anyone could remember the Haydock Bug.

Response immediately came from Ron Dixon, Kevin Heneghan, A. Harrison, Val Parkins and Frank Latham

Between them, they plucked out all the comical incidents and described the inimitable nature of the Bug staff, before the picture business shut down and the building became a car sales room, and later a convenience store.

Says Ron: "I still get a pleasant twinge whenever I recall some of the happy childhood days spent in Haydock .and probably none so great as my many visits to 'the Pictures.'

"It was not all muck and bullets from cowboy films and gangster movies when we sat on the three-penny forms, staring up at the screen, three or four feet away.

"Oh no! We were quite easily transformed into heartthrobs as we watched Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy and Clarke Gable in their memorable films. But we were quickly brought back to earth if we even tried a little peck on the cheek of any girls who were there."

The cinema owner, Harold Bracegirdle seemed to perform every cinema role. A show was not complete if he didn't switch all the lights on, halfway through the film, to eject someone for scuffling, talking too loudly or making some kind of weird noise.

He and his wife would walk up the centre aisle squirting disinfectant from "the biggest aerosol you will ever see in your life." The liquid content reached everyone in the packed little cinema...well, certainly the rough-heads in the cheap threepenny and sixpenny seats!

It was between 1939 and 1945, with rationing holding its grip. This meant a visit to Leach's shop, next door to the cinema, to buy a carrot to chew on during the performance. The Bracegirdles were not too pleased with all the peelings and cores chucked on the floor...or about any bits of carrot chucked at the screen.

Says Ron: "I bet the vast majority of those who visited the Picturedrome, peeled their carrots, looked up at the screen, laughed when the lights came on and got a drenching from Mr Bracegirdle's aerosol would love to go back in time..."

When Kevin Heneghan, then a Blackbrooker, visited the picture shows, it cost a penny for admission. "Two-pence for the seats further back, if you were a bloated plutocrat."

But why pay so much when the other penny would buy you two packets of Beech Nut chewing-gum or a packet of Wrigley's PK? "You paid your penny to plump proprietor, Mr Bracegirdle, who stood in the doorway. "The front seats were simply long, wooden forms. And if the attendant made the packed-tight kids at one end shove-up to make room, the child at the other end was certain to land in the aisle."

There he had a good chance of being sprayed with some choking, eye-watering disinfectant. "No bug ever born could have survived it!"

Saturday afternoon shows were 'following-ups.' A dozen episodes, each ending with a cliff-hanger, to make you come back next week. Kevin recalls Hurricane Express, made in 1932, in which the hero was 25-year-old John Wayne, said to perform all his own stunts. "One entailed jumping from a motorbike into a goods van. Thrilling stuff!

"If the main film happened to be a Western, the screen needed a lot of patching before the next show. "Lads with catapults (twangs) helped the goodies (white hats) by firing at the baddies (black hats).

"After the show, if our luck was in, Haydock Villa would be playing at home on their ground behind Stone Row. An afternoon well worth the mile-long walk each way."

Frank Latham's dad was the official 'shusher' at the Bug. Mr Bracegirdle was still there, "immaculate in dark three-piece suit with a watch-chain stretched across his ample frame." His son, Harold, later took over until the Bug shut in the early 1960s.

Patrolling the rowdy front seats, Len Latham had tried to keep order with the kids. "Most of the time, his frantic 'shhh!" was louder than all the noise being made."

Seating at the Bug was priced to fit all pockets The threepennies, sixpennies, ninepennies and the expensive shillings. "But the crème de la crème were the plush seats at the very back, two rows at one-shilling-and- sixpence each. Just over 7p in today's terms.

"You couldn't see much from back there, but the couples didn't care", chuckles Frank of Blackdown Grove, Parr. "Most of the time they were not looking at the screen (as my wife can confirm). We did a lot of courting in the one-and-sixpennies!"

A. Harrison of Billinge Crescent, Blackbrook, remembers the threepenny forms well. "Those in the front came out, after the show, with stiff necks, from staring upwards at the screen."

The usher was coal miner Leonard with his dazzlingly bright torch. "I think he was after some record, because he would try to press 100 kids on to each long form, stretching right across the room." A pennyworth of 'pea shulls' from Leach's also provided a welcome mid-film gnaw.

Mention of the Bug brought back pleasant memories, too, for Val Parkins of Karen Close, Burtonwood. "I was born and bred in Haydock and remember the Bracegirdles well." Each Saturday, she went with her parents to see the show from the 'mid-posh' shilling seats.

HAPPY days, never to return again...