The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Opinion

Discussion

June 20, 2009

Guest columnist: Of cabbages and kings and a father's words

Editor’s note: Joseph Porter Wittich, is the son of the late Porter Wittich, who was a Globe sports editor and the author of a column “Of Cabbages and Kings.”

Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927. I didn’t hit 60 until 2008. This summer I hit 61. Ever since that stroke, I don’t do much, and time runs way ahead of me. But this nastily concocted arrangement of letters is not about me. Thank the good Lord above for that. It’s about a fellow with whom I share a middle and last name.

But it’s not so much about William Porter Wittich as it is about the powerful emotions he was able to conjure up with 26 measly letters. Consider his description of the old Rex Theater as he remembered it (the place had just been torn down):

“So in they went, by ones and twos, noisy and talkative kids. Then a quiet hush as the lights were dimmed and the film projector whirred, quick flashes on the screen then into focus. Only sounds thereafter were the crackling of paper sacks or a girl’s sharp command: ‘Don’t’; or maybe a small baby crying. But mostly it was bug-eyed youngsters with full mouths and busy jaws sitting there in silent excitement as dust swirled up from beating hooves, as Indians, tomahawks poised, crept closer and closer to the girl beside the lake, as the boat swirled down the rapids and neared the deadly falls. Those were the days ...”

Such were Porter Wittich’s descriptive powers. But what about emotion? His column about the Rex continues: “Now the screen is gone, the tense drama, the rollicking comedies, the Western pioneers, the escaped convicts, the brutal fights, the lynchings, the scalpings, the plunges over the cliff all have gone forever. The screen and stage are gone. The seats removed. No more ticket office, no smell of popping corn. No more do the two little lights shine at the exits. No long lines awaiting their turn. The beams are removed, the rafters are down.

“Nothing but a pile of bricks remains at Fifteenth and Main streets, which for years was a place of sheer enchantment. Grown up now are a lot of the little boys and girls who sat enchanted years and years ago, who saw those silent films unfold in the magic of sound. Nothing now but memories to bring back those pulsing moments of the past.

“The old theater is gone — except for a pile of bricks — never to breathe fire and thunder again. And it must be fact that the old movie house, as it was torn to the ground, didn’t surrender and fall to its knees without a struggle.”

I didn’t know my father very well. A distant, gruff sort of man who loved Westerns on television. “Old blood and thunder,” he would call them.

I knew some of his shortcomings, but I knew nothing of his greatness. How could I have been so blind?

Joseph Porter Wittich lives in Joplin.

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