Thirty years? Really?
That summer exists to me as some sort of pure bliss, a state of innocence that was about to be destroyed. I don't know why I remember it so vividly: the languid, lazy days in rapt attention of comic books, Famous Monsters Of Filmland or assorted science fiction anthologies; late afternoons with a bowl of chocolate marshmallow ice cream and reruns of All In The Family, evenings spent scribbling in my notebooks, words and drawings and the occasional five or six page comic book drawn to amuse my brother.
But there was change in the air. At least one night a week, my sister Julie had her boyfriend over for the evening, the boyfriend she'd eventually marry, another departure following my brothers Mike and Keith and my sister Ann, all of whom had moved away one by one, leaving me more alone.
But these departures meant I could move into their rooms as they left, and that summer I finally had a real room of my own, with a door to shut out the rest of the world. An AM radio came with the room, and I began to regularly listen to Top Forty radio, as well as the records I owned. Music became so much a part of my life, it was a form of dreaming.
Dreaming of...what? I started to become aware of the wider world that summer, of places beyond my own sheltered existence, places wonderful and terrible. For some reason, I also developed an absolute fear of tornadoes, certain that every humid, still day was going to bring about the end of my world.
But mostly, I remember this: On my birthday, a somewhat cryptic ad appeared in The Des Moines Register, for a movie that didn't even open for two weeks. I'd never heard of it, knew nothing about it, but its title alone made me determined to see it.
Despite attempts to convince my brother John to take me, it was my sister Ann who drove me the fifty-some miles from the farm to Des Moines, to the one theater in the whole state playing this movie. I couldn't tell you what I did two days ago, but I remember every detail of that day, from my impression of local tire pitchman Bernie Marks to the stop at Methodist Hospital where Ann, a nursing student, had some business to take care of while I sat in front of a TV and watched The Gong Show to hanging out at the airport just to watch planes take off.
Finally, we headed to the theater, the venerable old River Hills. No weekday matinees back then; the movie didn't even start until 7:40, but by the time we arrived, shortly after six, the line already snaked around the block. A long wait in a circus-like atmosphere, everyone full of anticipation, nobody knowing what was about to happen.
The lights dimmed. No trailers, no nothing. The curtain opened as the Fox logo filled the magnificent 70-foot screen. Then:
Then, of course, the camera moving down to Tatooine, the Imperial Cruiser travelling endlessly over our heads, the first bit of dialogue, spoken by a robot(!)...and so much more, marvel upon marvel, surprise upon surprise.
I'd fallen in love with movies before. Two years earlier, I'd had the doors of my mind blown open by 2001, Blazing Saddles had made me laugh harder than anything I'd ever known, and I'd seen three Ray Harryhausen movies by that point.
But Star Wars--none of that Episode IV crap in those days--was different, as if someone had injected pure pleasure into my veins, making me giddy and hysterical. Like so many that summer, I longed to see it again and again, to re-experience the joy that seemed so lacking in my life. I'd see it four more times that summer, no small achievement when you live on a farm and have to depend on someone else to drive you.
Summer ended, school began. I entered seventh grade, officially in junior high now, my world expanding slightly, my perspective altering, my tastes evolving. Somewhere along the line I discovered the notion of Serious Cinema, and what a great time the late seventies were for filmgoing: Days Of Heaven, Manhattan, Being There, All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now. I felt so adult, so sophisticated, that by 1980, when the sequel to Star Wars arrived, I barely cared.
Then I saw The Empire Strikes Back, and, well...
