Remembering 38th Street

BY ED FELIEN

When I was 10 years old my mother would put me on the 28th Avenue bus at noon and send me to the Saturday Movies. I would take the bus to 38th Street and 23rd Avenue and the Nile Theater. She gave me 27 cents. A nickel for the bus each way. Twelve cents for the movie: 20 cartoons, three short subjects, two serials and a double feature. My heroes were Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Dennis Morgan, Humphrey Bogart and Wallace Beery. There was a nickel left over for a candy bar. It was a world that amazed my sensibilities.

The Nile Theater is long gone. Providence Place is there now. Bryant Junior High School, where my oldest daughter went, is now Sabathani Community Center. Folwell Junior High School, where I went, is scheduled to close at the end of this school year. Everett’s meat counter is one of the last reminders of simpler times.
Our children and grandchildren are growing up in a much more complex and culturally diverse world.

There are still some Swedes and Norwegians running small shops on 38th Street, but they’ve been joined now by Asians, Latinos and African-Americans. It’s a much wider horizon for our children, with much greater possibilities—possibilities that could never have been imagined looking out the window of the 28th Avenue bus over 50 years ago.