"Two Boys and the Titanic" (Image & Text Copyright Wylddane Productions, LLC)
The Empire Theatre stood like a red-bricked sentry on the corner of Main Street, its marquee glowing in the summer sun, its velvet seats promising mystery, wonder, and stories far larger than the small town of Hudson, Wisconsin could contain. On this particular afternoon in 1958, it was showing A Night to Remember.
Doug and I—Dane—were nine years old that summer. We lived across the street from each other in a quiet neighborhood where bicycles lined driveways and sprinkler arcs danced over trimmed lawns. From the outside, we were like any other pair of boys—tangled hair, scraped knees, and secret handshakes. But inside, we were already explorers, dreamers, historians.
And we were obsessed with ships.
Not just any ships—ocean liners. Majestic ones. The RMS Mauretania, the Normandie, the Queen Mary, the Olympic. But none held our imaginations like the Titanic.
It began with a book—a Brown & Bigelow edition of transatlantic liners. It was beautifully bound, heavy in the hands, the kind of book that felt like a treasure chest when opened. Doug’s older cousin had left it behind one summer, and from that day on, it became ours. We would sit cross-legged on the cool floor of Doug’s front porch, flipping through its glossy pages, our fingers trailing over black-and-white images of steel giants.
The Titanic, with her sleek profile and towering funnels, looked more like a floating palace than a ship. To our nine-year-old eyes, she seemed invincible.
But it was the photos of the disaster that arrested us—lifeboats adrift in an endless sea, the headlines screaming loss, the grainy portraits of passengers who had stepped aboard never to return. And then we found Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. The words were dense and grown-up, but we understood the shape of the story. The hubris. The heroism. The heartbreak. We read it together, aloud sometimes, decoding the unfamiliar language with the unspoken loyalty of two boys bound by curiosity.
And then, one day, the movie came to town.
We’d seen the posters first—tall and dramatic in the glass case outside the Hudson Theatre. A Night to Remember, it read, in bold white letters over the image of a ship sailing into fate. We stared at it with the reverence usually reserved for sacred things.
It took two weeks to save up our allowances. Two weeks of raking lawns, running errands, and skipping bubble gum and comic books. And when we finally had enough, we clutched our coins like sacred offerings and walked together to the Empire.
I remember the theater was cool inside, dark and cavernous, and smelled of popcorn and dusty velvet. We found seats in the center row and settled in, just as the lights dimmed and the projector hummed to life.
There we sat—two boys, knees just barely clearing the seats in front of us—as the screen flickered to life.
And then it began.
The ship. The music. The elegance. The iceberg. The silence.
We didn’t talk during the movie, not once. Our eyes stayed fixed on the screen, our small hands gripping the armrests. When the ship began to tilt, I felt my stomach lurch with it. When the lights flickered out on the Titanic, the entire theater seemed to hold its breath.
By the time the credits rolled, we were changed.
We walked home in silence, the sunlight too bright, the world too ordinary. I remember looking up at the clouds and thinking of lifeboats adrift, of stars over a frozen ocean. We didn’t know then that the Titanic marked the end of something—the end of the Gilded Age, they say now. The end of blind belief in technology and power. We didn’t know that, but maybe… we felt it.
What we did know was this: we had shared something important. Not just a movie. Not just a story. But a moment that would anchor itself deep in memory.
Now, so many years later, that afternoon still lives in me. The darkened theater. The hush before the iceberg.
Doug’s shoulder just barely brushing mine. We were two boys—full of wonder, full of questions, beginning to understand that the world was vast, fragile, and never quite what it seemed.
I think of who we were, and who we became. And I am grateful for that day. For the ship that would not fade. For the friendship that still sails through the ocean of memory.
~Wylddane
Doug and I—Dane—were nine years old that summer. We lived across the street from each other in a quiet neighborhood where bicycles lined driveways and sprinkler arcs danced over trimmed lawns. From the outside, we were like any other pair of boys—tangled hair, scraped knees, and secret handshakes. But inside, we were already explorers, dreamers, historians.
And we were obsessed with ships.
Not just any ships—ocean liners. Majestic ones. The RMS Mauretania, the Normandie, the Queen Mary, the Olympic. But none held our imaginations like the Titanic.
It began with a book—a Brown & Bigelow edition of transatlantic liners. It was beautifully bound, heavy in the hands, the kind of book that felt like a treasure chest when opened. Doug’s older cousin had left it behind one summer, and from that day on, it became ours. We would sit cross-legged on the cool floor of Doug’s front porch, flipping through its glossy pages, our fingers trailing over black-and-white images of steel giants.
The Titanic, with her sleek profile and towering funnels, looked more like a floating palace than a ship. To our nine-year-old eyes, she seemed invincible.
But it was the photos of the disaster that arrested us—lifeboats adrift in an endless sea, the headlines screaming loss, the grainy portraits of passengers who had stepped aboard never to return. And then we found Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. The words were dense and grown-up, but we understood the shape of the story. The hubris. The heroism. The heartbreak. We read it together, aloud sometimes, decoding the unfamiliar language with the unspoken loyalty of two boys bound by curiosity.
And then, one day, the movie came to town.
We’d seen the posters first—tall and dramatic in the glass case outside the Hudson Theatre. A Night to Remember, it read, in bold white letters over the image of a ship sailing into fate. We stared at it with the reverence usually reserved for sacred things.
It took two weeks to save up our allowances. Two weeks of raking lawns, running errands, and skipping bubble gum and comic books. And when we finally had enough, we clutched our coins like sacred offerings and walked together to the Empire.
I remember the theater was cool inside, dark and cavernous, and smelled of popcorn and dusty velvet. We found seats in the center row and settled in, just as the lights dimmed and the projector hummed to life.
There we sat—two boys, knees just barely clearing the seats in front of us—as the screen flickered to life.
And then it began.
The ship. The music. The elegance. The iceberg. The silence.
We didn’t talk during the movie, not once. Our eyes stayed fixed on the screen, our small hands gripping the armrests. When the ship began to tilt, I felt my stomach lurch with it. When the lights flickered out on the Titanic, the entire theater seemed to hold its breath.
By the time the credits rolled, we were changed.
We walked home in silence, the sunlight too bright, the world too ordinary. I remember looking up at the clouds and thinking of lifeboats adrift, of stars over a frozen ocean. We didn’t know then that the Titanic marked the end of something—the end of the Gilded Age, they say now. The end of blind belief in technology and power. We didn’t know that, but maybe… we felt it.
What we did know was this: we had shared something important. Not just a movie. Not just a story. But a moment that would anchor itself deep in memory.
Now, so many years later, that afternoon still lives in me. The darkened theater. The hush before the iceberg.
Doug’s shoulder just barely brushing mine. We were two boys—full of wonder, full of questions, beginning to understand that the world was vast, fragile, and never quite what it seemed.
I think of who we were, and who we became. And I am grateful for that day. For the ship that would not fade. For the friendship that still sails through the ocean of memory.
~Wylddane
RSS Feed