It’s almost summer and we are downtown at the Eric 5 movie theatre standing outside waiting to get in. I am six years old, first grade going on second. We see a girl from school I’ve got a crush on, Zoe Bassett and her sister Hannah. I find out later Hannah became a stripper and got tangled up in drugs but for right now it’s 1977 and everything is just fine. In fact the days are getting longer and the sky is turning pink as we enter the theatre with the blue carpeting and the old men in vests who take our tickets.

Mom and dad let me sit down front with Zoe’s family and I can see her freckles in the dark when the screen flashes on her face. It is 1977 and I am six, we are at the Eric 5 which means they show five movies here a day. We are underground in this dark cool space, and when the movie starts everything goes black and the music comes up and a million stars twinkle on the screen.

No one knows who Mark Hamill is but he’s Luke Skywalker and his parents just got killed, and they’re burning his town. Luke looks out across the desert landscape as the sun goes down and everything turns pink. You can tell he’s about to cry as he gets on his Landspeeder and takes off. It’s really Tunisia but looks like another planet.

Luke and all the rebels wear earth tone garb while the Empire uses more of a Nazi color palette. They are the bureaucrats who represent big business and crush independent stores. Princess Leia is played by Carrie Fisher and she gets tangled up in drugs too. Harrison Ford was just a carpenter in real life before he became Han Solo. Darth Vader’s voice is done by James Earl Jones who’s black and when they take his helmet off you can tell why he always wore it, his head is melted.

I am sitting next to Zoe Bassett and it’s like we’re in a dream. She could be wearing a white sheet with her hair tied in buns and me swinging a light saber, using the Force. She has red-brown hair and dark brown eyes and once on the playground I could smell her shampoo, we got so close. We will always be in the Eric 5 together watching Star Wars for the first time. The carpeting is blue with blocky designs like the video game Qbert. The men who take our tickets are old with vests and bow ties and probably smoke. The sign out front glows green-blue. It is still light when we empty the theater and time for the men with vests to sweep the floors. It is 1977 and summer hasn’t started yet and by November I’ll be seven. Zoe is wearing a white sheet and looks like an angel turning in the sun. She is six and 9/11 hasn’t happened yet or the pandemic from 2020 that’s named after the nineteenth strain, COVID. I am standing on the corner of 4th and Hamilton where the Eric 5 used to be but now it’s been gutted by a construction project and you can see the insides of the earth, the different textures in the strata where the soil composition changes. They are using machines with metal teeth and long necks to dig it out. The movie theater is gone.

I am in our garage looking for a tool when I spot the Darth Vader action figure case. It opens in half and you can fit about 50 Star Wars figures inside. I rarely open it because why would you? I’m never going to sell them or give them away. Our girls weren’t interested and now they’re grown up. The case looks down at me quiet, the big eyes empty. It’s 44 years now since that movie came out, that magical night at the Eric 5. Why do I keep the Darth Vader case? Because it’s one thing they can’t tear down. That or what bits of that place I remember. A time that seems apart from time, forever.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, star wars