Wayne Bullard, D.Ph.

cwaynebullard@gmail.com I wasn’t a great student over there at Stonewall High, so I missed some fine points its excellent teachers tried to pound in my head. Fortunately, my dad owned and operated the Main Theatre over there and as one of his unvolunteered staff members I had to be at every movie. I worked there but I think that the most important stuff I learned I got from watching all those hundreds of movies. Yes, most of what I learned over at Stonewall, I learned at the Main Theatre.

I learned about guns. I learned early on that if you had to shoot someone, you shoot them in the hand. It only stings for a few moments, makes him drop his gun and want to be a better man. I learned from my cowboy instructors on the silver screen about honesty, to always do right and give money to the poor. I learned we should keep a guitar handy and sing to pretty girls. We should always wear a white hat and make sure it stays on your head, even in a fight or while dragging a bad guy off his horse.

I had a lot to learn but thankfully there were a lot of movies. One movie made by Frank Capra the socialist was called “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It featured a guy named George Bailey played by Jimmy Stewart. I learned from this movie that you don’t always get what you want from this life. George was a good guy but all he really wanted to do was flee Bedford Falls and have a carefree life traveling the world. But his older (more heroic) brother skipped out and the job of running the Savings and Loan there in Bedford Falls fell on poor old George. George marries a pretty girl and has a perfect-looking little bunch of kids but he wasn’t very happy.

George (basically a good guy) felt a need to help people borrow money and live the American Dream in a new house financed by his families Savings and Loan and was very good at it. The movie’s bad guy (a villain if there ever was one played by Lionel Barrymore as Henry Potter) who was the godless town banker who conspired in his own capitalistic demonic ways to force people to have to live in his shoddy houses and pay him rent. George was hurting the banker’s business. George also kept his worthless Uncle Billy on the payroll, but Billy misplaces a big bunch of cash meant for a deposit at Potter’s bank. Its lost and Potter recovers it and now has George right where he wants him.

Potters’ hateful actions to take over the poor savings and loan and ruin George drives George to consider suicide. But while George is pondering this awful idea, his guardian angel (a guy named Clarence) (Henry Travers) is sent to rescue George. The angel, a somewhat bumbling sort does what he can, but all George says is “I wish I had never been born.”

Clarence grants the wish and when George goes back to town, no one knows him. Naturally, he has never been born. George also soon has the law after him for a number of somewhat goofy reasons. Hard times here for the viewers as George discovers over and over what it meant not to ever have existed. His poor wife (now an old maid) doesn’t know him and screams for help. He can’t find his kids. Of course, they were never born. His mama doesn’t know him, and the law tries to arrest him as a nut.

Finally, George begs Clarence to reverse this phenomenon and he does. George is tickled pink, and so was I. I learned from “Wonderful Life” that the most wonderful thing we can have in life is friends. I learned that you have no idea how much your life impacts other people and history itself. The movie, as well it should, shows that good prevails and that everything you do has an impact, one way or the other.

Well, not too many movies hit the screen anymore like that. Movies with a clear story, a plot and an aim to improve the viewers life. I’ll probably share my impression of other movies, sometime.

Have a good week and be sure and go to church on Sunday.