Bats In The Theater

College: Take One

In a humorously bizarre film that features the stylings of the great costume designer Edith Head, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid blends classic film noir clips with twentieth-century Steve Martin antics.  The story line, while sometimes challenging to follow in order to tie together the old and new, climaxes with the destruction of key US cities, and the first to fall is Terre Haute, Indiana.  Poor Terre Haute, the protagonist muses, and they were just about to get a public library.  So what does Terre Haute have?  A prison, a couple post-secondary schools, yucky tap water, and a funky smell – at least it did a couple decades ago when I first went to college.

Admittedly, I began my college career on three simple premises: my college did not require math to graduate, my college offered me a little scholarship, and my college hosted Florida-based corporations offering internships and a ticket out of the Midwest.  I have select memories about my year and a half along the western edge of the Hoosier State, most of them dull and lifeless.  I remember the names of no one with whom I went to school, I remember skipping class if it was snowing too hard, and I remember living in a ground-floor dorm next to the railroad track.  I remember hating it (see “Conan the Hoosier” from February 2012).

Into The Darkness

In the heart of the city, just a few blocks from the campus, stood the Indiana Theater – a 1922 throwback to the classic movie houses where the silent films illuminated the cinema bringing it to life, where Movietone News had brought the War to the American Heartland, and where the motion pictures of the waning decades of the previous century allowed me a brief escape from my studies and the miserable dorm life that accompanied my collegiate experience.  If one arrived in time for the early show, the second show would be free to those who stayed; of course, the second film was a repeat of the first film.  Nevertheless, my dorm mates spent nearly two weeks at the old building watching Patrick Swayze sweep an average-looking girl off her feet in the Catskills twice a night.

This theater, which I remembered being larger than its current photo suggests, lifted upward into the heights of the first balcony, and onward into the darkness of the second balcony.  I never recall getting a good look at the ceiling, nor did I ever venture into the first balcony.  I vaguely recall dark cloths stretched over walls and seats to keep patrons out of the upper reaches of the now historic landmark. The structure, like my first college experience, draped its shadowy, gloomy pallor over what ought to have been an energizing time of my life.  The coeds generally believed that bats lived in the upper levels, despite the obvious absence of guano and my never seeing them, but its dark mystique made the building perfect for such tales and the ideal space to watch a scary movie.  Maybe we’d even stay beyond the bewitching hour to be scared again during its encore performance, although looking back, my life in Terre Haute may have been its own horror story.

Waiting

Their Departure

Carlsbad Caverns rank as my most favorite caves, partly because they are the first caves I ever explored, but mostly because they are grand and open and completely unclaustrophobically enjoyable (see “Hidden Beauty” from March 2012).  When I had the body of teenager, I squeezed through some much tighter openings to see caverns in northern Arizona, but on my road trip to the American Southwest, I chose to skip reliving that childhood experience.  Instead, I drove Son #1 and Son #2 near the Texas border to descend into my favorite caves.  And in advance of our day below the earth, I convinced the boys to drive out the night before to see the bats take flight into the darkening night.

We sat in an open amphitheater on historic and uncomfortable stone benches curving toward the entrance of the cavern.  We listened to a park ranger who seemed more of an angry, rule-follower than any park ranger I have ever met.  (Pun intended, I have to believe he was bat-shit crazy the way he treated us simple tourists, to use my brother’s terminology.)  We turned off every electronic device we carried – our cell phones, our cameras, everything – so as to not distract the audio-stupendous bats from finding their way to the river where the mosquitos foolishly gathered to be dinner for a million hungry flying mammals.  And we waited, watching for the first early birds to lead the rest of their relatives out for their midnight adventure.  And we waited, sitting nearly silent so as to not to disturb the swirling, spiraling pattern that would soon rise above us.  And we waited, wondering if they were ever going to make an appearance.

Our Departure

First one or two, so swift and darting, that I do not even see them swoop and swirl.  And with a reprimand from the ranger, the onslaught of little black creatures forms an exodus from the dark depths of the cavern over our heads.  And in the dark, moonless sky, in the middle of the New Mexican desert, we squint our eyes to see the never-ending stream of creatures faintly silhouetting themselves against the last light of dusk.  Their collective flapping and high-pitched squeaking emit far less sound than a million of any other creature might generate.  And they continue to pour forth from their deep recesses disappearing into the darkness.

Families with small children, who manage to keep them still as long as imaginably possible (despite the admonitions from the rotten ranger) are the first to follow the bats and depart into the night.  And much like the bats, once one departs, a continuous wave of tourists take flight in their minivans and rented campers.  But we wait, to see how long the bats continue, and I plan to stick it out until they have headed southward.  And we wait as more people depart, vacating their cold perches on the hard stones for the luxury of their car seats, and later their warm beds.  So we wait, watching the dark swirls seemingly dissipate, but in truth, against the black sky, the flying rodents are nearly invisible and may still be overhead, but we cannot tell.  We wait no more, and we succumb to the darkness of a late summer evening, leaving the bats to their night of frolicking and feeding.