PROJECTIONIST RETURNS TO PALACE John Floyd, of the Spur High School Class of 1963, returned Oct. 7, 2024, to revisit the movie house where he served as a projectionist during his teenage years. Floyd, who scheduled a tour of Spur’s historic Palace Theater during a swing through Texas with his son last fall. “My son and I are doing a road trip of my old haunts (Spur, Slaton, Kermit, Marfa, El Paso, San Antonio, etc.),” he wrote in a note to the newspaper. “I would like very much to show him the Palace theater, as it was a significant place in my life. I began working for the theater in elementary school, delivering theater leaflets door to door. By the time my family moved to Slaton, I was a projectionist at the Palace and the Hi-Ho drive in. During two summers I also worked at the Spanish-language theater across the street from the Palace.” While Floyd and his son regretted that the old film projectors were long since absent from the second-floor projection room, he was able to describe in great technical detail the process of switching reels mid-movie, and rewinding films for use in the next showing. “As an aside,” Floyd wrote, “I also worked for the Texas Spur when the office and printer were next to the Palace. You are probably not old enough to know what I’m talking about, but in that office in addition to sweeping the floor, one of my other chores was to replace the lead/antimony/tin ‘slugs’ as they were consumed in the linotype melting pot. For a young boy, the linotype was a magical machine. I’m sure all that equipment disappeared many years ago.” Floyd’s correct that those machines are long gone, but current staff were delighted to show him remnants of lead scraps and a few other artifacts from the era. We hope you’ll visit again soon! For classmates of Floyd’s who’d like to get in touch, drop us a note and we’ll be glad to forward it.
PROJECTIONIST RETURNS TO PALACE
