The Old Cody Theatre

 
On Main Street in Cody sits the old Cody Theatre...looking the way that movie theatres used to look, with the red velvet portieres and the old fashioned popcorn machine.  For a while, I remember that they  even sold old fashioned penny candy in the lobby.  I especially liked it because it is just a few blocks from my house, so my husband and I were able to walk there on summer evenings to catch a show.

So it was with real dismay that I read in the paper that it was closing.  People were opting for the newer multiplex theatre out on the Powell highway with cushioned rocking chair type seats and surround sound (I can't blame them, I like those cushioned seats myself).  But I wondered what would happen to the old Cody Theatre.  I hoped it would not be boarded up and abandoned like so many other small town Main Street theatres.

Luckily, the old theatre found a new use!  From mid May each year until the third week in September, it is home to Dan Miller's Cowboy Music Review...a 'fast paced, family friendly show featuring songs of the American West, cowboy poetry and comedy' every night but Sunday.  They put on quite a show, so it you wind up in Cody this summer take it from me, it is worth every dollar!

In addition, the Cody Wild West Show sponsors the Cody Concert Series in the winter.  As you can see on the marquee in the picture, Billy Dean will perform this month (remember the song about missing Billy the Kid?), and I heard a rumor that the Kentucky Head Hunters are coming next.  Past performers were Lacy J Dalton, TG Sheppard, Mel Tillis (I am still kicking myself for not getting tickets to that concert), Suzy Bogguss, Gary Morris, Waddie Mitchell and BJ Thomas (who I believed performed at the Wynona Thompson Auditorium for a Christmas Concert).  Let me tell you, for a small town in the dead of winter, these concerts are big doings!

But what I like most of all is that an old building has found a new use, and won't be torn down or abandoned.  Behind those velvet portieres are lots of happy memories...and while memories are stored in your mind, the visual reminder of them stirs up a cozy sort of nostalgic feeling in a world that is zipping by, and changing too darn fast for its own good!    DLB