Breaking and Entering.

The Eastwood Theater opened in 1936 in the neighborhood of the same name. The property was designed by W. Scott Dunne, the architect responsible for many theaters of that era and area, including Houston’s Tower and Alabama theaters, the Martini in Galveston and the Texas in Palestine, which functions today as a live theater.

A boxy convergence of art deco geometry, the most prominent portion of the façade initially loomed, devoid of extraneous signage, above a discreet, horizontal marquee. A set of matching two-dimensional tower–shaped contrivances lay flat against this expanse, as if someone had twice rubberstamped the wall with a silhouette of the Empire State Building. Attached to the side of the theater was a monolith of a sign, which pierced the sky like a radio tower – or the mooring mast for a dirigible. This was all scaled down a bit, of course, to fit neatly in a modest Houston neighborhood.

In the forties, the tower adornments were painted over. This may have been an attempt to modernize the look of the building, and eschew any outdated notions of pre-war frivolity. I’m only guessing, of course.

In the fifties, sometime between The Outcasts of Poker Flats and The Boy From Oklahoma, a larger, more dominant marquee replaced the original, sleek model. The name of the establishment, simply Eastwood, perched in duplicate above this new sign in uninspired sans-serif metal and neon. This utilitarian addition consumed the lower two-thirds of the façade and further squelched the glorious aesthetic arrogance of the original design. What was once an art deco movie palace became a rather nondescript cement box with too many corners and a huge phallic sign.

A decade later I showed up with a quarter in my hand to see The Flesh Eaters.

This was my neighborhood for most of the sixties and seventies. And the Eastwood was my neighborhood theater, until it closed in the mid-sixties and I was forced to take my business downtown. In addition to The Flesh Eaters, I remember seeing Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Mr. Hobbes Takes a Vacation, Hell is for Heroes, Zotz!, 13 Ghosts and Gypsy at the Eastwood. In fact, I went most Saturdays, no matter what was playing.

Once the doors were permanently closed, this prominent landmark quickly became a crumbling eyesore awaiting inevitable demolition. Before that happened, however, I visited the place two more times.

Between 1965 and 1969, I hung around with a bad egg we’ll just call Sean. Sean and I shared three interests. We both liked Marvel Comics (a habit never discussed publicly in those days) we both loved the world of James Bond and we both had a healthy and burgeoning fondness for girls. Beyond that, we had nothing in common. Unlike my introverted, bespectacled young self, Sean already claimed empirical knowledge of the female anatomy, and could discuss that landscape for hours. He also possessed an unapologetically criminal mind. In fact, his primary goal in life was the pursuit of crime. Luckily for me, I was a philosophical invertebrate who feared all forms of punishment and retribution. So, I mostly avoided trouble. And, because one or more of my parents was an alcoholic, I felt guilty about everything, all the time. Sean only had one parent, and feared nothing.

Clearly, I was no one’s partner in crime, so during the time we were friends most of Sean’s plans went unrealized. But, there was this one day in the 10th or 11th grade…

School had been out for about an hour. For some reason, we were standing behind the shuttered Eastwood Theater, looking up at fresh graffiti. Someone had spray-painted the words SLUMS RULE on the building. A bit farther down, much closer to the ground, a window beckoned.

An open window.

The next thing I knew, we were inside what appeared to be a utility annex, and were surrounded by dusty boxes, fluorescent bulbs and stacks of yellowed press kits and newspapers. Old-fashioned fuse boxes lined the walls and wires hung like vines. Musty, acrid air invaded my nose and throat. More importantly, an iron ladder and a square hatch led to the floor above us. Up there, we discovered more of the same, plus twin metal doors that led to ducts into which one could simply walk. We didn’t venture too far into that darkness, however, as the ladder continued upward. More boxes, more wiring, and identical metal doors waited above. The ladder stopped at the ceiling, beneath a trapdoor we did not hesitate to force open.

And this took us right back outside – up on the roof, but not to the summit. We could see that by clambering up another wall one could reach yet another ladder and climb to the very top of the building. And because we were both at the age of clambering, we soon found ourselves on the massive tar-covered roof of the Eastwood Theater.

It did not occur to me at the time, or for some time to come, that I was pursuing the commission of a felony. But I knew I was a badass. That much was certain. This was an unfamiliar intoxicant, and one I found most compelling. And I would have been perfectly happy to just hang out on that roof, which we obviously now owned, but this was not our destiny – and it only took a few moments to locate the trapdoor that lead down into the projection booth.

And just like that, we were inside a place where dust disguised itself as air, and the proliferation of mildew overwhelmed four of the five senses. The projection booth was a cluttered wonderland of film snippets, film cans and workplace minutia. The projector was still in place. A life-sized cutout of Jerry Lewis stood by an exit, leading us to the mezzanine, where a dizzying expanse of spoiled, geometric carpeting led to the foot of the stairs that climbed to the balcony.

We headed downstairs, instead.

We were perfectly respectful guests, stealing nothing, destroying nothing, disturbing nothing. I think we were in awe of the place, and spoke in whispers, even though we were completely alone. We sat in the seats, explored the mysterious world behind the screen, opened doors and peered around corners. We spent hours just looking. We headed off in different directions and lost all track of time.

Eventually, I found myself back on the second floor, where I spent a very long time looking at the stairs that led to the balcony. I gazed a bit too long at the blackness of the landing, and slowly came to the chilling realization that I was incapable of going up there. I ascended three carpeted steps, and froze. I don’t really know what I was afraid of, but I knew I couldn’t continue. It was the only part of the building that frightened me. And I still can’t say why. Occasionally, in dreams, I have the opportunity to finish the climb, but I always wake up before reaching the top.

We left the building after dark, and went our separate ways – dusty and delirious and giddy with misconduct. All I could think about was going back.

So, the next day we went back. Something very unusual and completely unrelated occurred as we loitered behind the theater, waiting for the perfect, unseen moment to climb through the window. Perhaps it was an omen.

An old, dark sedan full of young punks squealed around the corner, and a pockmarked gunman leaned out the window and fired several shots at us, laughing manically. In retrospect, I realize he was either firing blanks or brandishing a cap pistol (or he was just a terrible shot) because once the car was gone, it was like nothing had happened. Sean and I both blinked, patted our chests, and shrugged. Then we climbed through the window.

Just like the previous afternoon, we ascended both ladders to the roof and opened the trapdoor to the projection booth. Sean lowered himself into the square hole and froze. His eyes took full possession of his now colorless face, and he gasped like a beached grouper.

“Run! Someone’s got me!” He was jerked into the blackness.

I ran. I cleared the parapet, sailing over the ladder and hitting the roof of the annex with a resounding thud. I slid down the ladder to the second floor before I heard the ominous noises above my head. Someone was right behind me, and coming fast. I knew it wasn’t Sean. I calculated the difficulty of continued ladder navigation and the awkwardness of scrambling through the window on the ground floor. I considered the improbability of outrunning someone if I actually made it outside – and out of sheer desperation, I ducked into a duct. This ploy seemed like a preamble to failure, but I had little choice. As I cowered in the darkness, my future was pretty clear. I was going to jail. I was going straight to jail. And even if I wasn’t going to jail, I knew my father had a leather belt that could remove flesh from bone. Either way, I was doomed.

Heavy boots descended the ladder, and continued to the ground floor. A second pair arrived a few moments later, and paused, scrabbling just outside my tenuous hiding place. After a breathless eternity, the first pair of boots returned, and two muffled voices bemoaned my brilliant escape. All four boots returned to the roof, and I was alone – breathing rapidly through my nose.

I refused to believe I had gotten away with this. I stayed in that duct for at least a half-hour before quietly exiting the building and heading home. I really wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do about my fallen comrade, so I filled the evening with my usual pursuits. I watched network television, read comic books, lied about my homework, and went to bed.

The following morning, at school, Sean was atypically aloof. He stoically shrugged off the incident as mere fortunes of war. After a bit of coaxing he finally explained that the men inside the theater were quite amused by our flagrant and clumsy interloping. Rather than calling Sean’s parents or HPD, they simply put him to work. After a few hours of sweeping and hauling trash, he was released with the threat of severe consequences should he ever decide to return to the scene of our crime.

And that was it.

Not long after this dubious adventure, Sean moved away. We immediately lost touch. Many years later, I was informed by a mutual acquaintance that Sean had perished in an explosion on a Galveston shrimp boat. I have no way of knowing if this is true. The theater was eventually torn down. I don’t really know when this occurred, but I had probably moved to another neighborhood by then. I certainly don’t recall feeling any remorse or sense of loss for the old place -- although the Google image of the parking lot that replaced it makes me a little wistful.

That pretty much ended my life of crime. Unless you count all that partying I did in the eighties.