Mom's New Job

Early during my sophomore year in high school mom quit her job in the advertising department of the Winnipeg Tribune to go to work for one of her clients - the Odeon-Morton theatre (Canadian spelling) chain.

At the time I never questioned the wisdom of the move... In retrospect I can't imagine why the theatre chain would to hire a full time person to do their ads, but mom didn't worry about that kind of stuff. She just enjoyed her new job - and I got a free pass to get into any of the theatres whenever I wanted... Yeah - I saw a lot of movies during that period...

That was also when I found out why we now have those stupid megaplexes everywhere. The film distribution companies do package deals... If you want to show one good movie you have to agree to show a bunch of 'not so great' ones for a certain amount of time each... So in the days of the single screen theaters individual locations ended up losing money a lot of the time... The theater chains solved the problem by putting bunches of screens under the same roof so they can show both the good and not so good movies at the same time. That provides a relatively constant revenue stream and covers the fixed costs of the facility even if most of the mini-theaters are empty...
So the advent of the megaplexes had nothing to do with enhancing the viewing experience - it was all economics... Sigh - I really miss those big old theaters - and the drive-ins... I guess I'm a relic... But I digress :-)

My mom ended up being let go from that job during the summer of 1968. That was after she had showed the owner of the chain how she did the ad layouts. And her inability to find another job quickly was part of why we moved back to the states... But I'm getting ahead of myself...
I honestly don't think they hired her with the intention of letting her go - it just worked out the way. Strangely enough, the most significant factor contributing to her job loss was "2001 - A Space Odyssey". The package deal for that movie included so many clunkers that the chain was having serious cash flow problems for months afterward...

Aside: When I talk about all the significant events of 1968 I rarely think to mention the movie 2001. The special effects were beyond revolutionary... The whole "Hal" business reflected a general anxiety about emerging technology. Spaceflight was a very recent development and the Apollo missions had not yet left the earth's orbit so a lot of people were wondering exactly where we were headed and why we were in such a hurry to get there... And I won't even discuss the black monolith - I know how Cate feels about it :-)
The point is that the movie was a huge cultural phenomenon. It was a topic of discussion for months afterward. It's kind of hard to envision the impact if you weren't around at the time... But I really digress :-)

Regardless - mom had left a solid, relatively secure job for something iffy that eventually led to me being uprooted again...

Sigh - I'm still quite a few blog posts away from the point where we leave Winnipeg. That's when the "roller coaster" ride really begins... And no matter how many blog entries I write I will never begin to fathom the reasoning behind the decisions that were made during those years :-)