The former Fox Theatre and long-ago Portland

I sang with a band in the early 1970's in Portland, Ore., but I also had a day job working at the Fox Theatre in downtown Portland. It was a classic theater, demolished in 1997, but was built in 1911 as a movie palace. It still had ornate ceilings, and balconies with red velvet curtains.
It was remodeled in 1954 at a cost of $230,000, and was torn down to make room for the Fox Tower, a current blight on the downtown cityscape.
When I worked there it was a bit on the seedy side and was a second-run theatre showing some first-run films. Its early elegance was a match for the Paramount up Broadway.
For the Fox showing of "Young Frankenstein," the theater manager contributed a Vandegraaf generator and old posters from his collection of '20s and '30's film memorabilia for the display cases. We also had lines around the block for the popular Bruce Lee kung fu films.
I especially hated the uniforms, which were Mann Theatre blue and yellow, and did not exactly fit my shape. I also hated working behind the candy counter, which smelled like stale popcorn. Working the front booth meant if your cash register was low for some reason, you had to make it up on the spot. I believe the same policy was in effect at the candy counter, but it was not quite as stringently applied. Not many girls wanted to work the ticket booth, and I often ended up in that tiny prison, freezing or roasting behind the glass on holidays or someone else's missed shifts.
The backstage area of the Fox was quite intimidating, a maze of working theater passages and subareas. Going for supplies was an adventure of the cobwebby sort.
I let the young kids of a friend, Nancy King, into the theater for free to see Bruce Lee films, and that was never challenged, but a boyfriend was not entirely welcome. I suspect the theater manager watched us when I went backstage on a break to hang out with him for 10 or 15 minutes. I soon broke off that affair; I think the theatre manager hoped he could watch us again from behind the red velvet curtains.
While working at the theater, I had a side venture going in addition to the band. I went to Oregon Leather, down on the other side of Burnside in the Park blocks, and purchased remnants of leather and other fabrics that I sewed (often using my great grandmother's treadle) into items sold on consignment in little boutiques. Among them was a certain little blue and green upholstery backpack that was quite distinctive. It had an antique rounded button as a fastener, grass green webbing straps, and a blue-green slub-patterned upholstery fabric body. It didn't sell, so I used it for awhile myself. Then I consigned it to a dumpster, replacing it with something more utilitarian.
I often worked for other people in the Fox ticket booth when they didn't want to work on unpopular shifts, including holidays. One Christmas, no one else would work, so I showed up the morning of Christmas Day.
As I sat in the isolated front window, the streets almost deserted, I saw a familiar old man who was a regular on Broadway, a down-and-outer who lacked the vices of some of the more obnoxious street people. He was a slumped-over old man simply trying to survive, and on his back that morning for the first time was a familiar item that I had discarded within the last 24 hours in a Northwest Portland dumpster --- the green and blue backpack. It was a Christmas gift to him from me, a sign to never take my misery for granted. I was glad that someone else could utilize a discard with a value, a creative object.
I can still see it on his back.