movies, popcorn, and video games

photo taken from the Chico ER article

As many of you know, I grew up in the small town of Willows, California. A town where you graduate high school with the same kids you started kindergarten. The entire town has a total of 5 stoplights. It's like many other small towns in this regard, but the one thing that made Willows better than Orland (our high school rival) - was the fact that we had a movie theater (AMH opus theaters). A decent place to watch or rent movies. It's a small theater with 4 screens- theater 2 is the big theater where all the new top movies would always play. Theater 1 was smaller, but closer to a bathroom and theater 4 had a creepy mannequin in the back.
I grew up with that theater.

I most likely saw my first movie in a theater there (even though I was too young to remember).

According to my mom we watched the Little Mermaid enough times that by the end I was singing all the songs.

School field trips often ended up happening at AMH.

I slammed my thumb in my Aunt Ed's car out side of AMH and set it in a cup of ice, probably while still watching a movie.

My mom always liked the fact that you could buy regular sized candy bars, not just the king size ones.

In high school, we often walked to AMH from campus for lunch - pretzel with cheese and a medium diet vanilla pepsi (not the pre-made vanilla, but the vanilla that they would squirt in for you) was always my favorite

Getting into rated R movies before I was supposed to

Stolen kisses when the lights turned down low

My A. Ed tricked me into thinking we were going the night before to get tickets to the 1st Harry Potter movie and .... surprise we ended up watching the movie at a midnight showing the night before it opened!

The best Ms. Pac Man game in the entire world. It's awesome because it's a table top, not the kind that stands. I eventually made the high score board.

My A. Ed and I would walk down and play video games. You know the new touch screen video games where there are multiple games to play at once. Like find the differences in the pictures, or word search, etc. Well, I bet that you didn't know they have a dirty version of those games. Andy (the owner of AMH) turned off the sensor so A. Ed and I played the dirty version. (don't know if I ever told my parents that one)

AMH was a staple, a solid part of my childhood and the memories that I have of home. I am sad to say that Andy Houston, the owner recently passed away. He provided for Willows, so much more than movies. He was an icon and a wonderful friend to many. He was always at the theater, there was never a time when I was there without him stopping me to say hi.
I have pasted links to articles about his passing and the history of AMH below. He apparently rented videos out of his parents house before he opened the theater. He was always into movies and dreamed of owning his own theater. In recent years, it has been harder and harder for him to stay afloat, but Andy never gave up. He loved that theater it was his baby and his dream.

The community of Willows truly has suffered a great loss. Thank you Andy for all the memories.

chico er article
Willows journal article