The All Night Movie Story
1962
How I
was almost arrested in Columbus Georgia
Written 6/2011, Re-written 07/02/2015
Howard Yasgar
In the summer of 1962, I received notice that
I needed to attend my two weeks summer training with the Army Reserves.
The two weeks of training was to be at
Fort Benning, which is located just outside of the city of Columbus Georgia.
At the time, I was living in Westville
Connecticut so going to a place like Georgia seemed like it was pretty far away.
I had always heard stories about there
being a lot of what we called “Red necks,” or people that lived in Georgia,
that were still fighting the civil war.
I had also heard that anyone coming from
the north had better be on guard when going to Georgia.
But at 23 years of age all that kind of talk
really didn’t concern me too much, as I had never had any experience dealing with
red necks.
I didn’t know it but all that was all
about to change in the summer of 1962.
When I had signed up with the Army
Reserves in New Haven, I was supposed to be a heavy tanker truck driver. At
first it sounded like a pretty good thing to me, driving a big truck and all,
but that was before I realized that
I was going to be driving a tanker truck with gasoline in it.
I felt that during wartime, it would be
like driving a big bomb. So when I joined up, I was glad our country was not at
war.
I
waited for the Army to send me my “Marching papers,” the orders telling me where
in Fort Benning I was being sent also my all my travel vouchers.
Because I was a truck driver, my training
every year was usually was with some Army unit that had military vehicles.
When I read my orders, I was being
attached to the 374th dump truck company, it was a Army
unit out of some small town in
Mississippi, and I was to meet up with them at “Tent City” in Fort Benning
Georgia.
I had heard Fort Benning was a large Army
base located next to the town of Columbus Georgia.
My being attached as a driver to
a dump truck unit seemed OK, even though I had never driven a dump truck in my
life.
I arrived at Fort Benning Georgia by bus.
As soon as the bus dropped me
off, I headed right to the administration and information building, where they
checked my papers over, and instructed to sit outside on a bench and wait for an
Army bus to take me to what they called “Tent City”.
As I
sat waiting on the bus bench, another soldier came and sat next to me. He was a
somewhat fragile looking guy with blond hair, his skin looked way too white, he
looked like he could have used a little more outdoor sunlight.
As we got to talking, I found that he was a
real nice fellow from Michigan, and he said he was also assigned to the same
374th dump truck unit that I was.
Eventually the Army bus came,
and we both boarded it, telling the driver to let us off at “Tent City”.
The driver let us off next to a homemade sign
had been put up, and it was pointing to a path leading into a pine forest.
So the both of us, carrying our duffle
bags on our shoulders walked down the wooded path, and into the heavy Georgia pine
forest.
As we walked, I asked the fellow if he had
ever stayed at “Tent City” before, and he said no, he said that he had never
even been to Georgia before, and he was very apprehensive about it.
It appears that in Michigan, he had heard the same rumors that I had heard in
Connecticut about Georgia red necks.
We eventually
entered into an open clearing in the woods. There appeared to be a lot of
activity going on.
There was a table set up, with three black
fellows sitting behind it, so we walked up, and one of the guys pointed to some
papers and pens laying on the table, it looked like a roster of some kind, so
we both signed it.
As we were signing, I could see to my
right, there was a dirt road going up a hill with two rows of large army tents
set up on both sides.
To me, the tents looked enormous, they
were so big that I thought at least thirty guys could easily sleep in each one.
I also could see that there were a lot of
soldiers just hanging around in front of each tent and I could see that they
were all black guys.
We were directed to a supply trailer that
was parked to our right, it was loaded with what looked like our bedding.
In
front of the trailer there was another table set up. behind it was another black
Staff Sergeant sitting in a chair.
He quickly looked over our papers and said
we were in tent fourteen. Then he instructed another black guy who was already inside
the trailer to get our bedding.
The Staff Sergeant pointed to the dirt
road, so we started to walk up the hill toward where tent fourteen was located.
As we walked, the blond fellow from
Michigan, poked my side, and leaned into me, he said very quietly, I think you
and I are the only white guys here. I didn’t say anything but he was right, we
were, the only white guys there.
I wasn’t particularly concerned about it, because
I was from New Haven, and the only black guy I knew was the class clown in my high
school and he was my friend.
However I knew that in the South, civil rights
was a big issue, but none of that stuff had anything to do with me, I was from
Connecticut.
As we walked along, it looked like everyone
there was staring at us, so I knew exactly what the guy from Michigan was concerned
about.
Before we got to tent number fourteen, all
I could think of was that the last thing I needed was to be in the middle of some
kind of race war in Georgia.
At
that moment I spotted a white army officer, he was a Captain, and he was
walking down the hill towards us.
As he approached, we saluted him and he
reached out to shake our hands. “Welcome to the 374th Dump Truck Company he
said.”
He was the Company Commander, and he told
us, that the tent for all of us temporary duty guys and reservists was number fourteen.
Tent Number fourteen eventually ended up
with about a dozen of us guys, all coming in from everywhere around the States,
and all of them were white Army Reservists, just like us.
After
we got situated, and had set up our beds, we saw there was a mess tent, attached
to a mobile kitchen, it was set up a short distance from where our tent was.
The big mess tent had open sides and a
dozen long picnic style tables set up for us to eat on.
When suppertime came we all walked down to
the mess tent. I wasn’t particularly concerned about where I was going to sit,
but I saw that most of the white guys were sitting together, and so where all
the black guys.
Other than that everything looked pretty
normal, the picnic style tables had napkins and salt and pepper shakers on them.
The only thing different was that each table had a giant bottle of red Louisiana
hot sauce on it. I had never seen Louisiana hot sauce before.
That first evening, as I stood in line
with my mess tray, standing in front of me was this big huge black guy, he must
have weighed over three hundred pounds.
As
we stood there, he turned around and looked at me, he studied me up and down
with a big menacing look on his face. Everyone in the mess tent got real quiet.
I had my name tag sewn on my uniform and I
saw his eyes reading it. He said loudly, “Hey Yasgar, how much cotton you chop?”
I didn’t know if the guy was serious or
what, so I smiled and told him jokingly, I’m from Connecticut I said, and I ain’t
never chopped no cotton, nor have I ever even seen any cotton in my whole life.
“You ain’t never seen no cotton” he replied,
in a shrill high pitched voice, and that’s when the whole mess area broke out
laughing, including the cooks in the kitchen.
It had broken the ice, I knew this guy was
just having fun at my expense but it was really funny, he said, “Where I come
from in Mississippi, everyone picks cotton, and I do seventy pounds.”
That night the supper was fried chicken, and
it was the best fried chicken I had ever eaten, it was also the first time I
had ever used Louisiana hot sauce.
After everyone had eaten, the head chef, who
was another big three hundred pound black guy, came over to our table with a
tray of extra fried chicken and asked did anyone want a second helping, it started
to appear that everyone in that 374th dump truck company, was trying
to be as hospitable and friendly as they could to us northern guys.
What I found strange was that over the
next few days, we had fried chicken almost every other night, and I started to
wonder where all hell all the chicken came from, I knew that the army usually
had something different for every meal, so I asked the cook, and I found out
that they had swapped all our steaks with other units to get more chicken. I
think, if they could, these guys would have eaten fried chicken every night.
In the evenings, all the black guys would
gather in one of the tents, and shoot craps, so I went into the tent to see
what was going on, but the heat was horrible, it was way over 100 degrees and
the stink of everyone sweating made it impossible stay there, but for some
reason the heat and the sweating didn’t seem to bother the guys that were gambling,
but I couldn’t stay.
As I left the gambling tent, I noticed
that most of the white guys had already disappeared, and I learned that they all
had left for the bars in Columbus Georgia.
I asked around and everyone said that if
you walked out of the pine forest, you could catch a taxi cab that would take
you to down town Columbus.
So, the first evening that I was free, I
decided to see what the town of Columbus, Georgia was all about, so I took a
cab to the main street which looked like the town’s only place that had any activity.
As I got out of the cab, there were lots
of bright lights and all I could see were rows of taverns and drinking joints that
were all within walking distance of each other.
It
looked pretty good, and I thought that some of the bars might actually have
some live entertainment, so I entered the closest one.
The first bar I went in to was bright outside
but looked pretty dark inside, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, I could
see the place was absolutely empty, so I sat at the bar and ordered a beer.
I
drank my beer, and as nothing was going on, I got up and walked out onto the
street, and walked to the next bar, which was also another dark and dingy joint,
so I again sat at the bar and ordered a beer.
I felt kind of conspicuous sitting there in
the dark alone, then, all of a sudden, a very gaunt looking girl who appeared to be about thirty years old, came up
and sat down next to me, she asked if I would buy her a beer, which I did.
I turned to look at her. She was
extremely homely and very bony in appearance, she had several of her front teeth
missing, and her chin sort of jutted out like the mountain people from the
Ozarks.
After we made a little small talk, like
her asking me where I was from, she said she said she was a prostitute, just trying
her luck in the big city.
She told me that she usually worked in taverns
on the rural highways in Georgia, where there were lots of truck drivers
hauling hogs. After listening to her story, I was happy to pay for her beer,
and get out of the place.
So
now here I was looking for something to do in Columbus Georgia. I was hoping to
bump into the other guys in my tent, but I never saw any of them.
I looked across the street there were the bright
lights of a movie theater.
It was about two blocks down the street and
as I got closer, I could see a big bright marquee that said “All Night Movie”,
seventy five cents, starts at 12: PM sharp.
I looked at the billboards, and I realized
that I had already seen the movie they were showing, however, the two movies
that were coming on for the “All Night Show,” I had never seen before.
My watch said it was just ten thirty in
the evening, so I realized that I would have to sit in the theater for an hour
and a half, watching the end of the movie that I had already seen, in order to
wait for the “All Night Movie” to begin.
Well as I had nothing better to do, I
crossed the street, went to the ticket booth, and told the girl I wanted a
ticket for the all night movie.
She charged me seventy five cents, and I got
the ticket.
So then I walked into the almost empty
theater lobby, gave my ticket to the usher, received my stub, and I proceeded
up the red carpeted lobby until I saw stairs leading to the balcony, and I walked
upstairs.
When I got to the balcony, there were
perhaps six other people sitting there, so I sat down to wait for the all night
movie to start.
At
exactly twelve PM, the lights came on and everyone got up and left the theater.
I stayed seated waiting for the all night
movie to start.
I sat there a long time and eventually an
usher came up to me and said I would have to leave. I simply told him that I
had just bought a ticket for the all night movie, but the usher became insistent
that I leave.
Pretty soon, I became irritated with him, and
I told him to get lost.
I
sat there for a few more minutes and when the theaters interior lights didn’t
go off, I realized that something was very wrong.
I
got up, and walked out of the balcony seating area, to where I could look down into
the lower lobby. That’s when I saw two big fat Columbus Georgia cops talking to
the usher. I also saw another fellow with them who appeared to be the theater manager,
and they were all talking to the ticket girl, who didn’t appear to be the same girl
that I had gotten my ticket from.
The
two cops looked up and saw me, and they came up the stairs to the balcony.
I
didn’t exactly know what to do, so I told them the story about my buying the all
night movie, and showed them my ticket stub.
They both grabbed me by the arms and
forcefully dragged me down the carpeted stairs to the lobby. They were really big
guys and they carried me down with my feet dragging and bouncing on the
carpeted stairs.
The two cops had such heavy southern Georgia
accents, that I could hardly understand them, but I could see they were both
very agitated, and I began to be afraid of what they would do to me.
I listened very carefully as one cop said
to the other, “We can arrest him for vagrancy”. I understood that, so I took
out my wallet and showed them that I had three hundred dollars, I was no vagrant.
All I could think of was all of the bad stories
I had heard about Georgia cops beating up and sometimes killing people who came
from the North, especially, guys that they considered troublemaker.
Now as I stood there, I could see the cops
were getting very agitated. I knew for sure that they were going to arrest me,
or worse.
I
saw one of the officers reaching for his handcuffs, I said, loudly. It’s easy
to see why the whole world knows about you guys and everyone looks down on you small
town hick red necks. That’s when everything suddenly got real quiet, and I knew
I was in for big trouble, so I braced myself for the worst.
Just then, while we were standing there in
the theater lobby, I looked out the front glass theater doors and I saw a
Military Police Jeep pull up in front of the theater.
There were two soldiers in the Jeep, One
was a tall lanky guy who was driving, and both fellows had “MP” armbands on.
They came right in the theater twirling
their night sticks, and asked what was going on?
At the time, I didn’t realize it, but
someone walking by the theater, had called Fort Benning Military Police, and
told them there was a problem at the theater, with a soldier.
I could see these two big fat Columbus
cops were not happy with the MP’s pushy intervention, but I proceeded to tell the
two MP’s about my buying the ticket to the all night movie.
I could immediately tell the tall lanky MP
had already sized up the situation and he knew what was going on.
I also detected he had a New York Brooklyn
accent.
The tall MP looked at the two big Georgia cops,
and said, “Because this guy is a soldier from Fort Benning, we will handle the
situation.
He said, “We can lock him up on base for a
few days and that will teach him a lesson.” As the tall MP said this, he
motioned to his partner who grabbed me forcefully by my arm and pulled me away from
the two cops and ushered me out the theaters doors, and into the back seat of
the Jeep.
That MP acted so fast by yanking me out of
there, that the two Columbus Cops, didn’t have time to react. They just stood
there with their mouths open, but I could see they were not happy.
Then the tall lanky MP, then came out of
the theater and got in the drivers seat, started the jeep and we drove off
towards the front gate of Fort Benning, leaving the cops and everyone standing
in the theater lobby.
I really
thought they were going to take me to the jail, like they had said, but instead,
the Jeep headed into the Georgia pine woods towards where my unit was in tent city.
When
we were about a hundred yards into the pine forest, the driver stopped the Jeep
and said, “Get out here, and don’t you ever go back into the town of Columbus”,
those two cops won’t fool around with you next time, they would like nothing
better than to beat your New England ass.
I shook his hand and said thank you, then
I walked the rest of the way back to tent city.
I never went back to the town of Columbus
Georgia again, and I never found out what the hell the all night movie was all
about.
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