Whenever my friends and I went to California, it was our clothes, our diction, and our license plates that betrayed us. Locals called us Zonies, their version of haole for Arizonan tourists. Zonies fed the local economy, but we also clogged the narrow streets, took the parking spots, made the wait at restaurants longer, and, worse, got in the way in the water.
During the beginning of North Shore, whenever people ask Rick where he’s from, he searches for an honest yet sufficiently vague reply: “Oh, the mainland,” he tells them, or, “Um, like, kinda outside LA—sorta.” When faced with a similar situation in California, one of my close friends used to stammer, “Oh, well, uh,” and eventually spit out, “San Diego.” He hated driving around the beach with that maroon albatross of a license plate on our car, the word Arizona broadcast in bright white letters beside a saguaro cactus emblem.
One night, when I was sixteen, my friends and I were walking down a side street in Newport, California—a surfing town—when we came upon a party at a beach house. People filled the tiny yard. A keg sat in one corner near a stack of beach cruisers. Attractive girls in tiny shirts stood beside guys with sun-bleached hair and muscular forearms. As we walked past one guy called out, “Nice haircuts! What, you all get them cut at the same place?” A couple of dudes laughed, a girl sniggered. I tried to keep my head up, trying to maintain a modicum of dignity in the face of harassment, but when my eyes met this guy’s, I couldn’t scowl like I wanted to. I could only look away. The Rick I saw in me wasn’t there. As we skulked by he yelled, “Go home!”
LEAVING TATOOINE
At age twenty-four, I sold my vintage Star Wars toys to buy a thousand dollar mountain bike that I barely rode for the next ten years. Purging my favorite action figures and spaceships felt like euthanizing the family pet, but at my age it seemed time to eliminate the anchors of childhood.
Although I was only dimly aware of it, that sale traded artifacts from the first part of my life for what resembled a harbinger of adulthood. Not the bicycle itself but the price tag: who but a grown-up could invest such an outrageous sum in a bike? What I didn’t recognize was that, although bikes were commuter vehicles for many people, the one I planned to buy was just another toy. I already had a car that needed gas and insurance. I had cats to feed and rent to pay on an apartment that I shared with mygirlfriend, Kari, and I owned a perfectly functional vintage beach cruiser. A thousand dollar off-road bike was an irresponsible indulgence, and dropping that much cash on a flashy plaything offered proof that I still thought like a kid, that and the fact that I began to miss my action figures even before I sold them. Greedo, Boba Fett, IG-88, three separate Jawas, one with the rare vinyl cape—trying to calculate the value of my collection while agonizing about the pending sale, I kept wondering: how was I going to live without them?
The figures lived in original Star Wars action figure cases under my parents’ stairs. Wedged in a dark secondary enclosure in the back of a closet, my prized childhood possessions sat amid special occasion dishes, a short artificial Christmas tree, and other things my folks didn’t frequently access. It wasn’t the figures’ absence from daily life that terrified me. It was the idea that, if I sold them, they would no longer be available. Granted, I’d stored them in the closet so no one would see that I still owned toys, but it always comforted me to know that my Star Wars toys were there, remaining their little droid and Jedi selves, their consistency and fidelity serving as bulwarks against the small, smothering landslides caused by the shifting substrates of adolescence.
Even if I no longer played with them, I did check on them. During my high school and early college years, whenever I got the urge, I would crawl under the stairwell, pry open the wooden hatch, and duck into the dark rear area. Inside the musty enclosure, my flashlight beam cut through dust that rose from the cardboard boxes. Stored in a black case shaped like Darth Vader, a gold case shaped like C-3PO, and a gray one shaped like a laser rifle, I’d carry the figures into the light aboveground, and I’d open the lid. The tiny latches clicked when you popped them. Even after a decade, the smell of plastic remained strong. Upstairs in the hallway or in my childhood room, I’d lay the cases on the carpet, pull out my favorite characters and study them: the fine striations on Darth Vader’s pant legs; the yellow eyes of Jawas. I liked running my fingers across Death Star Droid’s cold silver body, and squeezing the squishy foam on 4-LOM’s robe. Other times I’d just stare. Locked in their assigned slots, labeled by name with a sticker that Kenner toys provided, the figures stood rigid and lifeless, their unbendable arms flat against their sides. Their faces registered nothing, yet to me their molded expressions and painted-on eyes resembled those of family. These characters, like my parents, had always shared this house with me.
I was born on May 25, 1975. Star Wars came out on May 25, 1977. When I first saw the movie, I fell asleep in the seat next to my parents in the theater. My dad didn’t care for the film; he’s never been into sci-fi. My mom liked it, though she wasn’t initially as taken by it as she was Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, later, 9 to 5. Only after repeat viewings transformed my affection into an obsession did she come to love the movie. Star Wars became our filial glue, one of many things that bound us together.
My mom liked to shop. When she went to the mall or a department store, she brought me with her, and we visited the toy department to check for new Star Wars figures. The Kenner toy company released action figures in waves, partly as a marketing ploy to maintain consumer interest. The tactic worked. Hunting for a new set of miniature plastic characters offered the sort of thrill that any Tusken Raider could appreciate. Even those of us not otherwise prone to that compulsive collector’s condition called “completism” soon found ourselves stricken with it. Lando Calrissian’s aid Lobot, Jaba the Hutt’s henchman Klaatu, the Bespin Security Guard—I wanted them all, including the boring ones.
Stores used to stack their figures in enormous displays, multiple rows high and wide, so pawing through them took time. To streamline my hunt, I developed a technique. While flipping through the figures hanging on racks, I would tilt the cardboard backing to the side; that way I could see which characters hung in the rear and middle of each row. When I spotted figures that I didn’t own, I’d swipe them from the rack, pile them in my arms, and rush over to my mom, where I presented them like a housecat delivering a dead bird.
Reminiscing about these moments now, I often picture myself jumping up and down like an electrocuted Jawa, yammering on about my discoveries while lobbying for their purchase. In fact, my displays were the standing still, eyes-bulging, head-going-to-explode-with-joy type. If Mom had enough money, she’d buy me a figure or two. Back in the late 1970s and early ’80s, they cost two to three dollars, depending on the store. I’m sure that every time I found new characters, I begged to get them all, and my mom had to explain that, for whatever reason, we couldn’t do that. These were lean years for us. I wasn’t a crier. I didn’t throw tantrums. Yet thanks to my parents, my collection expanded, figure by figure, until I owned so many that trips to the toy store presented me with the same figures over and over: Imperial Snowtrooper, Dengar the Bounty Hunter, Hoth Rebel Commander, Leia Organa in Bespin Gown. It seemed like whenever I started to worry that I’d have to wait for the release of a new movie in order to revitalize store stock, Kenner would release a few more figures, and the space in my storage cases shrunk.
During the first decade of my life, my family was pretty broke. We lived in a Phoenix apartment. Then we moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Later we rented a small, yellow, cinder block house on Phoenix’s west side. Then a mixed neighborhood of lower to middle class white people, Native Americans, and Latino families. Low riders trolled our streets. Metal heads with feathered hair circled the block in muscle cars. My parents drove a long, brown 1970’s Cadillac which they bought from an elderly couple in Sun City. It was the archetypal “old lady grocery store car,” where the paint was faded but the ashtrays and trunk had never been used. My fat
her quickly stained the tray with his Benson & Hedges 100s, and my clambering feet helped wear the bench seats’ brown fabric. The neighborhood muscle cars always reminded me of cockroaches. With their fronts dropped and rears raised on large, racing tires, their upturned butts seemed ready to squirt enemies with some noxious chemical. The comparison was easy. Our backyard was infested with roaches. Dad went out back most nights and smashed them with a flyswatter. He was struggling to find work. Mom had a job, but to generate additional income, she renovated and resold antique furniture and glassware that she culled from yard sales. Seeing our need, my mom’s father offered my dad a job at his men’s clothing store.
The Haber Dasher was located in Chris-Town Mall. Built in 1961, Chris-Town was Phoenix’s third mall, and Arizona’s first enclosed one. Many mid-century malls used flashy design elements to lure shoppers: fountains, glittery Terrazzo flooring, strange Space Age lamps and light fixtures. When I started hanging out there, Chris-Town was still noticeably Space Age in its architectural accents—the flagstone, some slipper-shaped stairs by a fountain, even Woolworth’s logo font—but it had outlived its elegant heyday by over a decade. The pink and powder blue air of its early-1960s origins had long since given way to an ’80s brown, yellow, and orange schema. Everything in the early Regan Era seemed to have the sickly tint of used cigarette butts. The Mall’s floor tiles were marbled browns. A faux wood pattern coated the trashcans and ashtrays. Brass poles and fixtures were common, most visibly the ones holding up the navy blue ropes at the UA Cinema 6 box office.
My grandfather’s store stood near the food court and movie theater, an echoey hall enlivened by the greasy orange aroma of Pizza D’Amore and the sweet froth of Orange Julius. While Dad worked, I wandered. I spent hours playing Tron and Galaga at the Red Baron video game arcade. I made frequent stops at a tiny gyro stall to eat free samples of slow-cooked meat, and I hid inside department stores’ circular shirt racks where I eavesdropped on conversations. Crouched inside, I debated whether to jump out and scare people. I always chose more subtle things to confuse them: tapping the toes of their shoes, scratching their leg with a hanger, whispering “pssst, over here” and watching them turn around. I spent a lot of my time looking at the Star Wars figures.
The mall had a Mervyns and Woolworth with sizeable toy departments, but Kay Bee Toys was closer to Grandpa’s store. It stood underneath the tall escalator that led into UA Cinema, and, looking up from below, the theater’s geometric light fixtures seemed a mix of disco club and Empire Strikes Back. Its long light beams resembled those in the scene where Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker fight in the carbonite encasing room in Cloud City.
Once, Mom and I were in Kay Bee, and a man started talking to us. My mother is attractive and fit, so I imagine the guy was flirting with her. That happened a lot. One time at a department store cash register, I stepped out from behind her leg and told a man, “She’s married.” I don’t recall him saying anything vulgar or pushy, only that he stuck around after paying his bill and wouldn’t stop talking to her during her transaction. The man in Kay Bee walked past us and commented on the Star Wars toys we had in our hands. “I love those movies,” he said. “You can see a few continuity issues, but the movies are too good for them to matter.” Continuity issues, my mom explained to me, were mistakes. I thought, Mistakes? I never noticed any. The man mentioned the way Darth Vader’s chest plate faces two different directions in the same scene, and the way the shoulder pad on Luke Skywalker’s Stormtrooper outfit disappears in one scene in the Death Star, then reappears later. I looked up at him as he spoke. Was this true? He smiled at me, but he seemed serious. His words were a revelation: if there were errors in the films, then the worlds they depicted were make-believe. My mom must have understood that make-believe worlds often meant more to people than the world in which they lived. Here she was, feeding my fascination with Dagoba and Tatooine, while we drove a hand-me-down.
I was an only child. Without siblings to filter any of the affection or finances, all my parents’ love arrived directly to me. They bought me Star Wars sheets, a Star Wars toothbrush and Star Wars shampoo. A few of my birthdays were Star Wars themed, as were my lunchboxes, t-shirts and shoes. Between 1978 and 1985, Kenner released around one hundred and fifteen different Star Wars action figures. I ended up with nearly every one. I was a fanatic. Under most definitions, I was also spoiled, though by all accounts I didn’t act like it. I now often wonder how my parents afforded this bounty. “We were struggling,” Mom once told me, “but we tried to live beyond our means and enjoy nice things.” They also cut corners. During the months preceding Return of the Jedi’s release, she stopped at Burger Kings and other stores to ask if she could have one of the promotional posters for her obsessed son. She framed the poster and hung it in my bedroom: “Revenge of the Jedi Coming May 25, 1983 to your galaxy.” Nearby stood a life-size cardboard standee of C-3PO. He held a box of C-3PO Cereal. “New! Kellogg’s C-3PO’s,” the motto said. “A New Force at Breakfast.” Mom got it from a grocery store.
As with so many aspects of childhood, I only noticed the self-sacrifice of parenting later: the way our parents labor to improve our station and, in giving us a better life, they drain themselves of their own through fatigue, credit card debt, heart disease, and emotional overeating. Here my parents were, in the prime of their lives, working long days at jobs and collecting antiques at yard sales on weekends to resell, so that they could buy me toys and eventually move into a nicer house. I didn’t think we were poor. I didn’t think I was spoiled. I only thought we were a family that had an ugly car and an ugly house, and so did most everyone around us, and life was great. This simple perception is as much the product of the child’s limited vision as it is the imperfect nature of memory.
Childhood is strange pabulum. It’s nonfiction partially fermented into fiction by the passing of time, and its effervescent strength makes us woozy and prone to swooning. Our vision of it is equal parts illusion and delusion, yet it’s as real as the joy we felt, the scars we carry, the photographic proof. Because it’s an incomplete portrait, for those adults who survived it, childhood is as much a feeling as it is a bundle of facts. It’s dates, events, anecdotes, names, fused together by questionable emulsifiers and stretched into what is often the thinnest of narratives. As a whole, it’s as impressionistic as a Jackson Pollock, its splatters suggesting patterns that aren’t necessarily there, and it often resembles a mess of colors, emotionally charged fragrances, and feelings. What it felt like to be a kid in a certain place in time. What it feels like to remember it. For me, that era felt and looked like Star Wars.
Even though the films take place in a distant galaxy, Star Wars is a product of 1970s and ’80s Earth. Beneath the moisture farm sets and costumes of Cloud City lay the same Chris-Town Mall universe I grew up in: the garish earth-tone color schemes of Montgomery Ward clothing; men’s hairy chests showing through unbuttoned shirts. I recognize my own life in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Greedo’s vest, worn over a green turtleneck track suit, resembled something my New York relatives would have worn. Snaggletooth could have purchased his maroon jumper at the same store as Evil Knievel. I had a sixth grade music teacher who owned an aquamarine velour top with ruffled neckline similar to Hammerhead’s. No matter the lengths George Lucas went to disguise his stories’ origins, my childhood had the same desert sky, the same orange and brown clothes, the same feathered hair, as the people of Tatooine.
As the details of even our strongest memories fade, it’s easy to wonder if any of it ever really happened. My action figures held clear imprints. No hazy edges, no conflicting accounts, the chiseled plastic stood as unyielding evidence of my early years. Look, Greedo and the Jawas seemed to say, it was real, just as you remember it. Like a moon rock proving an astronaut’s visit, when I looked at my toys, I not only had confirmation, I felt my childhood again—a rush of sensations, colors, smells. I could see and feel what it was like when my dad drove me to school, and how it felt when he woul
d slip into my bedroom most weekday mornings and sing “Reveley” through cupped hands, like a trumpet, then rub my back and whisper, “Time to get up.” I could picture how Mom sat on my bed and pet my hair when I screamed from a nightmare: “It’s okay,” she’d say. “It’s just a dream.” And remember the way it felt to scout yard sales with her on Sunday mornings, and then sit at a yellow table to share breakfast at McDonald’s. It wasn’t that I couldn’t part with my toys or that I refused to grow up. It was that I couldn’t accept that those days were done, and that my parents, once so youthful and energetic, now faced memory problems and biopsies, heart problems and diabetes. And I, nearly a quarter century old, feared severing the most powerful link to our shared past: the action figures which stood on my shelves as witness to so many of these formative moments. Liquidating them felt akin to burning family photos. Considering my parents’ struggle, eliminating my collection seemed no different than throwing away the fruits of their labor, the evidence of their striving and upward mobility. As an adult, seeing those toys brought up dismal thoughts: I want to go back there. We can never go back there. We will never know those days again. Which might have been the best reason to get rid of them.
This story shocks most people for practical reasons: “You made a thousand dollars selling toys?” I had a lot of them, and they were in great shape. No scratches, no sun-fading, no animal chew marks—had I sold each toy individually myself, I would have made a lot more. To save time and effort, I sold them to a store that specialized in collectible, vintage toys. The first prequel, The Phantom Menace, had just come out, and I wanted to cash in on America’s renewed interest. Had I held on to them longer, their value would have increased, but half the issue was that I’d held onto them long enough.
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