It was Saturday morning, a friend woke me at an hour that seemed way too early. We set off on foot for campus rubbing sleep from our eyes. I will never forget the sight that met us as we walked into the Texas Union theater. There appeared to be a riot in progress. Rock music was blaring over the speakers. The auditorium was bursting with people, half of whom were standing, jumping, or running up and down the aisles. The air was filled with paper airplanes arcing from one side of the crowd to the other. It became apparent that the paper airplane "fight" was the major mover of people around the room. As we began to join in the fun the cares of the everyday world began to slip farther away until we were like most of the others in the room, transported to an earlier time when we were just kids and fun was just fun. Soon the lights dimmed, the riot quieted only slightly, and a cartoon from the early days of animation broke onto the screen. It is impossible to remember the details of the cartoon or the movie which followed, but it is also impossible to forget the cathartic release that took place that morning.

This was the Saturday Morning Fun Club. It was an organization in the early seventies actually sponsored by the Texas Union. Organization is too strong a word; it was an ever changing group of people brought together each week by the promise of unbridled fun and a film, too. It survived years of controversy only to die of apathy due to the loss of its venue (Union remodeling) and the end of an era. It was ostensibly an excuse to kick-off the weekend by watching a couple of cartoons and a feature-length, classic Hollywood movie. During its prime it attracted all manner of people from the greater university community. Attendees ranged from the wide-eyed undergraduate who had seen the listing in the Daily Texan to more colorful Austinites and their friends. Remember the politics, the long hair, the beads, the patchouli oil, concerts at the Armadillo, the fragrant aroma of nature's herbs... well, you get the idea.

The SMFC Website attempts to recall that long ago era. We have gathered our recollections and those of a few friends. The site includes descriptions of typical events at SMFC, recalls some of the films shown and provides links to other sites that are fun filled and should appeal to those who enjoyed, or might have enjoyed, the Saturday Morning Fun Club. We hope to attract others who attended the spectacle and invite them to add their memories to ours. Its been about 25 years since SMFC was an active concern and we caution younger viewers that the site might not seem relevant to them unless they are studying the cultural anthropology of the sixties (which ran well into the seventies in Texas) or they wonder what their parents really did when they said they went to the library to study every Saturday morning.