(A Personal Reminiscence)
Motion pictures in the early part of the century were not an exclusively Carrington entertainment; traveling shows made frequent appearances in the smaller communities. Word would go out to the residents on the farms around the neighborhood that the moving picture man was in town putting on a show that evening. The exhibitor who came on the afternoon train would have his projector and screen set up when the audience started to arrive as soon as supper was over and the evening chores done. I remember seeing shows of this sort in the Odd Fellows Hall over Fife's store in Barlow. I suppose it was during the period just before and during World War I. At any rate I was old enough to read the subtitles as they flashed by on the screen. At Barlow, anyway, there was no music for the shows (no piano) but the operator would often make a running commentary and supply sound effects as he turned the crank on the projector. I have only dim recollections of the pictures or actors we saw but I think the pictures were usually what we call "westerns" now with lots of shooting, ambushes, and chases over the hills and around the rocks. One reel I do remember showing Buffalo Bill's troupe performing their trick riding stunts in an arena where they went round and round.
I have no definite idea who may have presented these shows. According to the newspaper records a Mr. R. R. Mooney was making one night stands in the villages in 1910. A little later, 1917, the Independent for November 18, 1917, reported: "Meirbach and Abrahamson who have been buying junk here purchased a moving picture outfit this week and started giving shows along the Turtle Lake Branch. They plan to make the towns weekly." Without a doubt these are the individuals who showed the movies in Barlow.
There is one other movie I remember seeing in these early days, probably the middle teens. A medicine show set up its tent in the vacant lot across the road from the Northern Pacific depot in Barlow for, I suppose, a week's stand. It seemed to me to be an elaborate affair with a stage with draw curtains at one end of the tent and bleachers along the sides as well as reserved seats in the center. The troupe consisted of four or five people including a clown.
The show started with a number of vaudeville skits before an intermission when the pitch for the medicine was delivered. As the pitchman made his spiel the clown hawked the medicine to the audience with the promise of moving pictures after a sufficient number of bottles had been sold. I was anxious for my father to buy at least one to insure my seeing the movie. Dad, however, did not fall for this line; but the movies, of course, were shown anyway. It, too, was a western with a Mexican or Spanish setting. The one thing I remember specifically about the show was the effect of time passing by being able to see the cactus along the wall of the fort grow visibly taller as we watched. After the show I questioned Dad about the growing cactus and he assured me that it was all just trick photography.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 423