The McNea children’s father, Bill was an
accountant for the liquor control board in the 30’s. Unfortunately, when the Conservative
government lost power to the Liberals back then, he and several other employees
lost their jobs.
Bill McNea

No worries, Bill changed careers, becoming a professional milkman complete with a horse drawn wagon. One of the products he delivered for a dairy in town was a chocolate milk flavoured drink sold in miniature glass bottles called “Krim-Ko”. The dairy promoted the beverage by offering a prize for whoever saved the most bottle caps. Of course, the McNea kids had an advantage over the other collectors in town.
Not only did their dad quickly became the local #1 salesman for the Krim-Ko brand, but the kids acquired enough of the bottle caps to win top prize; a genuine hand crank 16mm movie projector with focusing lens. The projector speed could be adjusted depending on how fast the crank was turned.
The prize also included Charlie Chaplin and Chester Conklin’s 1914 silent film “Dough and Dynamite” in which Chaplin and Conklin work as bakers. One hilarious scene in particular stood out for the kids. Chaplin waddles into one of the “oven” scenes, hastily (yet delicately) removes his coat, brushing and neatly folding it. Suddenly he throws it on the floor and proceeds to wipe his shoes off on it.
Decades later, Bob and his son Mike
would use this particular film character as inspiration
for developing “Billy Baker” in the Oopsy the Clown TV show.
Well, word spread fast in St. Thomas that
the McNea kids had won the Krim-Ko prize projector, with the neighborhood gang around
Elizabeth Street wanting to see the film. After a bit of brainstorming, Bobby
determined that it could be lucrative to turn the McNea basement into a movie house. He
gathered up wooden orange crates from the neighbourhood, dragged them down the
stairs, and created a seating area.
Getting to the basement was a challenge to
say the least since the entrance was through a trap door located on the pantry
floor inside the house. Bobby knew that his mother Pearl wouldn’t think of
allowing line-ups of kids to wander through her kitchen, so he had to figure
out another way to get the audience into his “theatre”. As fate would have it, a
mountain of coal, which was designated as furnace fuel, was soon delivered
through the basement window creating a marvelous, albeit rocky, slide down to
the dirt floor. After a few test runs, Bobby knew he could turn that coal into diamonds
because movie goers would enjoy such a dramatic entrance!
Bobby announced to his chums that the movie
would be shown on specific days for a one cent admission fee. Kids came in
droves, shimmying down the filthy hill of coal onto the damp basement floor. Interesting
that his parents never said anything negative about the enterprise, nor did the young audience members get into trouble from their parents for arriving home with
head-to-toe dirty clothes. After a few movie showings the coal heap dwindled in
size and was eventually used up. Not to be discouraged, Bobby simply reconfigured
the orange crates into a window staircase, but then they were used to start the
furnace.

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