A Long Time Ago: Growing Up With And Out Of Star Wars
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Like just about every other boy I knew, Nathan shared my ardour for Star Wars, which expressed itself chiefly in a large collection of Kenner toys. Maybe because he was a year younger than me, or maybe because his parents’ fortunes were suddenly (and temporarily) rising at the time, Nathan’s collection consisted mostly of Empire tie-ins: the AT-AT, a Rebel Armoured Snowspeeder with its pulsating yellow laser lights and removable harpoon gun, a Tauntaun with the wonderfully named “Open Belly Rescue Feature”, an R2-D2 with retractable periscope, and just about every other action figure from the second film. Conversely, my collection featured more original Star Wars items: the Millennium Falcon, a TIE Fighter, Luke’s landspeeder, a Dewback. Between us we had a fair portion of Kenner’s entire production by 1981. But we both wanted more.
Nathan’s mother received the Sears Wish Book catalogue in the mail every autumn. The Wish Book was a thick, glossy, newsprint-format catalogue for Christmas shopping. Almost every one of its 400-plus pages was crammed full of colour photographs displaying the thousands of items available from Sears on mail order: clothing, appliances, furniture, electronics, linens, kitchenware, garden tools, pool tables, cosmetics, typewriters, hockey gear, bicycles and of course toys. The toy section devoted one or two full pages to Star Wars, sometimes displaying Kenner’s figures and other offerings in dioramas. Nathan and I studied these pages like scholars when the catalogue first arrived, starting with the toy section but later scouring the rest of the catalogue, too, as Star Wars products were increasingly finding their way into other sections: children’s clothing, bedding, even costume jewellery. (My sister once owned a gold-coloured C-3PO pendant.) Anything new excited our greatest attention, but old items were also of interest if we did not yet have them. Some weeks later, when the novelty of the catalogue had worn off, we would still come back to it from time to time, just to admire its arrangements of figurines and vehicles—or perhaps to stare, with an interest I still found inexplicable, at photographs elsewhere in the catalogue of women modelling modest lingerie.
Even better than the Sears catalogues were Kenner’s own promotional pamphlets. These were glossy rectangular booklets, roughly the dimensions of a postcard, inserted by Kenner into the packaging of its larger toys. Each of the dozen or so pages of these mini catalogues displayed action figures, vehicles, playsets and various oddball items like Switcheroos (Star-Wars-themed faceplates for light switches) and Play-Doh Action Play Sets, all in full colour photos displayed on black pages with white text. At seven years old, there was little I wanted out of life that was not contained within the pages of one of these booklets.
Nathan was my best friend but also the victim of my second Star-Wars-motivated crime. IG-88 was a tall, especially mechanical-looking droid who stood in line with Boba Fett, Bossk and Dengar in the brief scene in Empire when Vader instructs the bounty hunters he has recruited to find Luke Skywalker. IG-88 made no other appearance in the film, or any of the films. (Predictably, the droid has been given a long and convoluted backstory in the so-called Expanded Universe.) IG-88 had no lines to speak and no part to play in the film other than standing to attention in one brief scene. Nevertheless Kenner made a figure out of the thing, and I had it. But somehow I lost its gun. This was highly unusual for me. I was meticulous about knowing which weapon belonged to which figurine and ensuring that none got lost or even misfiled in some other figure’s slot in my Kenner carrying cases. IG-88’s gun was a slight variation on the gun found on Kenner’s snowtrooper figures: a long blaster rifle, but bearing one grip instead of two. No other Kenner figure came with this distinctive weapon. So I was very disappointed to have lost it—so much so that I stole Nathan’s right from under his nose while we played together one day. He detected the theft immediately and rightly accused me. I denied everything and told him he must have lost his IG-88 rifle because this one was mine. He did not believe me, but somehow I must have persuaded him because when I left his house that day I had the weapon with me. I still have it today, in my basement with the rest of my collection. I felt guilty over what I had done almost immediately, but I was too embarrassed to admit my dishonesty, apologize and return the pilfered accessory. Having gone this far down the path of petty criminality, it was hard to turn back, much easier to pretend that I had never turned down it at all. I expected to one day forget my lie, or conveniently come to believe it. I never did.
Despite this shabby episode, Nathan was undoubtedly my best friend. I hardly remember having any others at the time. Star Wars and vomit were not all we had in common. We walked to school together, played street hockey on weekends and palled around in the summers and holidays. We once fell out of a tree together. He landed on a rock and smashed his head. I then landed on him and smashed it again. The tree was a pine or fir beside Nathan’s duplex, across the street from our own duplex. As I fell I saw my mother, standing at our living room’s picture window, watching with horror as we tumbled out of the platform Nathan’s brothers had built in the tree.
Clearer still is my recollection of Nathan’s departure from Penticton. His father had got a new job in Flin Flon, Manitoba, a mining town on the Saskatchewan border that made Penticton look like Vienna. The news that Nathan was moving away was a shock to me. I had had the good fortune of never suffering an emotional loss before—none of my relatives had died, none of my pets had run away, and my parents were still married. As the day of Nathan’s departure approached, I experienced for the first time the sensation of dread. Finally one summer evening it was time for Nathan and his family to go. The movers had taken their things away already. As Nathan’s parents finished packing up their Chevy Suburban for the first leg of the 2,000 kilometre drive, friends and neighbours gathered to see the family off. One of Nathan’s uncles tried to teach me how to catch a football but I was not concentrating. Nathan was as cheerful as ever, smiling and looking forward to the trip. As the day faded, Nathan’s dad pulled the truck out of the driveway and into the cul-de-sac. We all said our final goodbyes in the blue-violet light. Nathan and his brothers climbed into the back seat of the truck and waved to us through the rear window as they drove away. My sister and I waved back, and I ran a little ways after the truck. Nathan was still smiling, but I had a lump in my throat.
*
From the beginning of my Star Wars obsession, my sister had joined in. This was partly out of ardour for Star Wars and partly the natural behaviour of a younger sister towards her big brother; she was always joining in, as reliably as Momma Cat followed us around the cul-de-sac. Sissy Bobo, as I still call her, played Star Wars with me but also Lego, hide-and-seek, ball hockey, grasshopper-catching and just about everything else. But by the time Empire came out, Sissy (now five) was developing her own interests, especially books and horses. Her interest in Star Wars remained, but waned. It may be that Kenner’s tendency to market its products to boys, especially in television commercials, was giving her the impression that this was not a suitable enthusiasm for a girl. Or perhaps she just got a little bored with what was, after all, a fairly repetitive pastime.
What became my Star Wars toy collection was based in large part on toys given to my sister, almost always from my grandparents at Christmas or during our visits to Dallas. After some squabbling about which action figures belonged to whom, my mother began marking those belonging to my sister with a dab of pink nail polish applied to the sole of the figure’s foot. About half of the figures now stored in my basement, and dating from the original film, are marked in this way. Some of my Empire-era figurines are also so marked. My mother did not mark the vehicles or playsets, but many of these were once my sister’s, too. A year or two after Empire came out, my sister offered to give me her entire collection. All she asked in return was that I let her play with me sometimes. She has since told me that I had become impatient with playing Star Wars with her, and that by offering me her entire collection—roughly as large as my own at that point—she sought to bargain her way back into my playtime. She wanted to spend more time with h
er older brother, and she knew that Star Wars was the way to his heart. I readily accepted this hugely one-sided deal and moved the entire mass of figurines, vehicles and playsets into my room.
In later years the inequity of this bargain grew all-the-more obvious. My sister cunningly reminded me of it at strategically advantageous moments. For the rest of our childhoods, and even beyond, at any time Sissy sought some concession or favour from me she would invoke this monumental gift and invite me to redress the great imbalance that had hung over our relationship from that day forward by letting her come along, sharing my ice cream sandwich with her, helping with her chores, lending her my stereo, driving her to her friend’s house, not telling mum, and so on. Valuing these toys as highly as I did, this technique was usually effective on me. When, years later, my sister married, her gift of Star Wars toys and the years of emotional blackmail that had come with it figured prominently in my Toast to the Bride.
[JEDI] DOWN WITH THE SHIP
There has never been a more anticipated film than Return of the Jedi. For three years after the release of The Empire Strikes Back, audiences around the world had to wait to learn the fate of Han Solo, to know what would come of Darth Vader’s shocking revelation, and to see if the Rebellion would finally overcome the Empire. For that part of the world’s film-going population over the age of ten, this wait was probably not terribly onerous. For me and many of my boyhood friends, it was agonizing. The Empire Strikes Back was a cliff I hung from for three years. The same was not true in the period between Star Wars and Empire. Star Wars was not a cliff-hanger and I was not immediately aware of an impending sequel. In any case I was too young to sustain a long anticipation of anything. Between Empire and Jedi, however, I was acutely aware of what the future would bring. The way Empire ended was proof enough that a sequel was coming. Television, newspapers and magazines—all of which I began to understand and pay attention to at this time—provided occasional confirmation of the obvious, sometimes offering tantalizing hints of what the sequel had in store. But it was years away. In the meantime, this fantasy world that had become my obsession was placed in suspended animation, like Han Solo frozen in carbonite.
Three years is a long time to wait for anything. All the more so for a seven year old for whom three years is almost half a life. As obsessed as I was, I could not fill three years’ worth of a first-world child’s spare time with nothing but Star Wars. I had to find other things to do with myself. I briefly played hockey, baseball and soccer but was no good at any of them and did not keep them up. I remained interested in hockey, however. Penticton was a hockey-crazed town with a glorious history. The 1954 Allan Cup champions, the Penticton Vees, represented Canada in the 1955 world championship, defeating the Soviet Union 5-0 in the final game of the tournament. Penticton had a strong team again in the 1980s, the Penticton Knights. My family billeted one of the team’s sixteen-year-old players, Morey Gare (younger brother to Danny, the well-known Buffalo Sabre). We often went to the games at Memorial Arena, a beautiful old rink that also serves as a shrine to the Vees and other Penticton teams of old. During intermissions I walked around the rink studying the dozens of old photographs, trophies and news clippings proudly displayed on the arena’s walls. If I was not at the game I listened to the play-by-play on the local AM radio station, the risibly-named CKOK. My father and I also watched the Vancouver Canucks on television as they made their surprise run in the 1982 Stanley Cup playoffs, winning the Campbell Conference championship but losing the Cup final four games to none to the extraordinary New York Islanders.
Around this time my parents bought me a BMX-style bike, the first real bike I ever had. Shortly after Nathan left town we moved a few blocks away, from Highland Place to Allison Street (another duplex). Riding for hours in the evenings and weekends, I minutely explored the new neighbourhood. Though I was never more than eight blocks from home, I took an exhilarating sense of freedom from these excursions. On summer evenings when school was out I climbed the hill up Allison Street to Lawrence Avenue and beyond to Jodi Little’s house, in the hope of catching a sight of her. On the way I thought of what to say if I did happen to find her—how to make it seem like a fortunate accident rather than the half-understood pre-pubescent urge that it was. But on the rare occasions when I did find her, on her front lawn or walking with her parents, I got nervous, made a mess of it and quickly headed home in a self-inflicted rout.
Rudimentary home computing was beginning at this time. My great-uncle Kenney (Clawpa’s younger brother) and his wife Evelyn gave my sister and me an Atari 2600. Kenney and Evelyn were excessively generous with us. But they never gave me Star Wars presents, and I was always initially disappointed with their gifts for that reason. Later my paternal grandmother, whom I barely knew, gave us a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer. I hooked it up to our television (these first computers never came with monitors) and began to teach myself BASIC. I showed some talent for it, and I enjoyed it. But I did not keep it up.
There was ample time between 1980 and 1983 for me to develop other interests. There was time enough even to lose interest in Star Wars altogether, to move on to something new. I never did. I had other pastimes, other enthusiasms, but nothing supplanted, or even rivalled, Star Wars. Everything gave way to it.
*
By late 1982 the marketing push for the next film was under way—before its title had been finally decided upon. Twentieth Century Fox famously released a teaser poster for “Revenge of the Jedi” featuring Luke and Vader duelling against a red and black background of Vader’s masked head. I have a memory of seeing this poster on display outside the Pen-Mar cinema, but I may be mistaken as the poster was apparently rare. Another part of the 1982 marketing hype was Kenner’s latest mail-in offer, a free Admiral Ackbar figure from “Star Wars: Revenge of the Jedi”. I never sent away for it, but the promotion had the desired effect of intriguing me even further about the upcoming film.
It was probably not a coincidence that 1982 was also the year Star Wars first appeared on VHS, pay-per-view and cable television. Pay television began in Canada in early 1983 with the debut of a national service called First Choice (later First Choice Superchannel). The service was free for a fourteen-day preview period during which Star Wars was shown repeatedly. After that the signal was scrambled and would-be viewers were invited to subscribe. We did not do so. I doubt we could have afforded it. In any case there was no need as my father had figured out a way to pick up the signal using rabbit ears and tin foil, and neither he nor my mother had any compunction about doing so. The picture was not always clear, and we often had to get off the couch and play with the antenna to improve the reception. I sometimes stood for half an hour holding the rabbit ears at just the right angle to keep the picture steady while I watched a program from less than a foot away. But it mostly worked. Suddenly there was a way for me to see Star Wars, and later Empire, repeatedly.
The First Choice viewing guide came out once a month in magazine format on glossy newsprint. Despite our illicit access to the service, we always seemed to have a copy of the viewing guide. Every month, when the new guide appeared, I scoured the listings for showtimes. First Choice was not very obliging; it would show Star Wars at 11 am on a Tuesday, while I was at school, or at 9 pm on a weeknight, when I was supposed to be in bed. More than once I was driven to faking illness to catch the movie the only time it was showing that week, or even that month. Having identified the showtime days in advance, I carefully laid the foundations of my alibi. A cough two or three days before, well within earshot of my mother. A stomach ache after dinner the night before. Then, that morning, listlessness in bed. My mother, who never suspected me of any dishonesty, fell for the routine easily. If I played it especially well, I need not even tell her I was sick. She made the decision for me: I was staying home from school today. Then, come 11 am, snug in blankets and propped up with pillows in the living room, perhaps with a bowl of tomato soup in my hands, First Choice announced its “Feature Presentation”
. The screen fell black, and then the famous words appeared: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... Look mum, Star Wars is on!
*
Star Wars, and popular movies in general, are routinely described as a form of escapism. That concept has little application to a four-year-old boy, however. In early childhood, fantasy and reality are places on the same continuum. Learning to distinguish between the two is one of the things we mean by growing up. Even as the distinction becomes apparent, however, a happy child does not need to escape from reality. Fantasy is a pleasure, not a refuge. Neither Star Wars nor Empire was escapism for me. But in the years between Empire and Jedi, I did have something to escape from. My parents’ fortunes, and their marriage, were increasingly strained.
My father changed jobs nearly as often as my mother changed religions. He was a bank teller, a debt collector, a car salesman, an event photographer, an ice cream man, a car salesman again (now at a different dealership), a real estate agent, and more. Some of the jobs my father switched in and out of were joint efforts between my mother and father to start their own business, a would-be solution to their financial problems which allowed my mother to express her creativity while also accommodating my father’s constitutional inability to be anyone’s employee. My mother increasingly felt that if my sister and I were to have any stability and security in our lives, she was going to have to provide it herself. She would have to become the income-earner. From this realization it was only a short step to divorce, a prospect she began to look forward to as eagerly as I awaited Return of the Jedi. Arguments between my parents increased in frequency and unpleasantness, though thankfully without ever being drunken or violent. While I did not appreciate it at the time, the frequent trips my mother, sister and I made to Dallas were not only to visit my grandparents but to give my mother some respite from her failing marriage.