I do not now recall when I first watched the 1984 film "Gremlins" that I have been watching again this morning on DVD. I was in boot camp in June 1984 and I do not ever recall going to see a film in the theatre while I was in basic training at the United States Navy base in Orlando Florida. I arrived there the night of 14 May 1984 after an airplane flight from Texarkana Arkansas and I was inducted into the United States Navy on 15 May 1984. My company of United States Navy sailors that I was assigned a barracks with and that we all trained together in boot camp in the United States Navy graduated United States Navy basic training on 16 July 1984. I remember we had almost a week of nothing to do before that graduation on 16 July 1984 and the company commanders had explained to us that we had entered early the training calendar and since several companies would all graduate on the same day, then we had a few days of down time as we waited for graduation day.
So anyway, what I started off here to write about was the sheriff in this film. I don't recall when I first watched it, I don't even recall if I watched it while out to sea on the USS Taylor FFG 50 or the USS Wainwright CG 28 or if I watched it on video for the first time in the 1990's, I just have absolutely no idea when I watched it the first time or even when I watched it before I got this current DVD in the mail a few years ago, although I know I watched it before that and I feel certain I had seen it more than once before I watched this DVD I have now and that I got back in 2007 I think it was.
So what I wanted to write about is how every time I watch this film I think about how the sheriff reminds me in his resemblance to Donald Mills from Wilton Arkansas.
In 1981, we had moved from De Queen Arkansas down to Ashdown Arkansas and my step-father, who was the supervisor at the local gravel mine pit, got me an after-school job at the general store that Donald Mills owned in Wilton Arkansas, which I thought of as kind of the center of the town. I was a temporary employee, of course, but I worked there regularly until I gave notice a few weeks before I was scheduled to leave on 14 May 1984 for basic training at the United States Navy base in Orlando Florida.
As I recall, about a year or two before that, which I best recall was during my junior year at Ashdown High School, which was 1982 to 1983, Donald Mills was elected mayor of Wilton Arkansas. He still worked at the Mills Store and I did too but he also gave me work for the City of Wilton, which included a time in the summer when he made me the supervisor of a federal youth work program. He arranged for kids my age from Ashdown to work for the City of Wilton and Donald Mills as mayor wanted me to supervise the work we did for the town which included a lot grass cutting and fixing holes in the roads of the town.
I don't recall how many days I normally worked for Donald Mills between 1981 and 1984 but I think for certain I worked at least four days a week during that time while I attended high school and I might have worked at least five days a week during the summer. I might have even worked five days a week during the school year, where my work hours was only about three hours a day during the school year.
I remember that the town of Wilton did not have a police officer until Donald Mills hired somebody after he became mayor. The town, and his store, was situated on a main highway in that area of Arkansas and there was a lot traffic that ignored the speed limit through the area. The new constable demonstrated the radar device to me and my step-brother Michael one evening as we talked to him in the parking lot of a nearby convenience store and I saw the numbers on the radar device clearly indicated the automobile was exceeding the speed limit and I asked him if he was going to stop that car for speeding but he said he was not going to. I also remember, as I think back to those times, that the police car Donald Mills bought for the constable has some mechanical problems and Donald Mills had me driving his pickup truck, which I drove a lot, towing the police car somewhere for repair and I did not know how to tow the car and when we got to an intersection I hit the brakes too fast and the constable ran into the bumper of the pickup and he told me later that when reaching an intersection I should let the car I am towing slow me down with its brakes.
I just looked on Google maps and the building for Donald Mills store is still there but it looks abandoned. Across a side street is an old building which was decrepit when I worked there and it seems to have collapsed. That was the building where he stored PVC pipe and I dreaded going in there because I always worried about getting bit by snakes. On the other side is the frame building where he stored canned food and where he would send me with a list of items to retrieve and that I would bring the boxes into the store to stock the shelves. The large building to the north at the corner of Douglas and Highway 71 & 59 is completely gone. That was close to the post office and where he store furniture items and maybe some other stuff I don't now recall. I can remember summers being soaked in sweat from working in there in that store with its twenty foot ceiling and concrete floors and moving boxes of canned food around and sweeping floors and mowing grass and delivering groceries and a hundred different activities around there and I was proud to work there.
Oh, yeah, Donald Mills also had me dress up as Santa Claus every year.
I also remember when I first met the recruiter from Texarkana for the United States Navy and I gave him directions to meet me at Donald Mills store in Wilton Arkansas and from there we went to where I lived so he could talk to me and my parents about me enlisting in the United States Navy in the Advanced Electronics Field for the Electronics Technician rating which I later, a couple years later, changed to the Advanced Electronics Field rating Fire Control Technician, or as it was redesignated around that time, Fire Controlman.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087363/quotes
IMDb
The Internet Movie Database
Memorable quotes for
Gremlins (1984)
Deputy Brent: Let me drive.
Sheriff Frank: No, you're drunk.
Deputy Brent: You always get to drive.
Sheriff Frank: That's cause I'm the sheriff, asshole.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087363/releaseinfo
IMDb
The Internet Movie Database
Release dates for
Gremlins (1984)
Country Date
USA 8 June 1984
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087363/quotes
IMDb
The Internet Movie Database
Memorable quotes for
Gremlins (1984)
Ruby Deagle: Mrs Harris, what are you trying to tell me?
Mrs. Joe Harris: I'm afraid none of us can pay for two weeks. Couldn't you just get Mr.Corben to just give us a little more time?
Ruby Deagle: Mrs Harris, the bank and I have the same purpose in life - to make money. Not to support a lot of... deadbeats!
Mrs. Joe Harris: Mrs Deagle! It's Christmas!
Ruby Deagle: Well, now you know what to ask Santa for, don't you?
