The Wine Chronicles

Yes, I am a Star Wars geek. The second trilogy was not great, but I still love them anyway (I would love to know who was sleeping with who to get that kid the part in Phantom Menace).

I think it might have something to do (my embrace of my geekiness) with a single memory. It was a rough childhood. Not as bad as some, but definitely on the “traumatic” end of the spectrum. I grasp at the good memories because so many have been pushed away and erased. Sometimes, it is like trying to grab a fistful of minnows out of the water. But the Star Wars memory remains solid, catchable.

I don’t even remember watching the movie. I had to have been 6–the movie came out in 1977.

We were on our way home from Yeadon theater in my dad’s old Impala. I think even then it was more duct tape than car. I still remember the feel of the interior, that rough fabric that lined the bench seats with the bits of stuffing coming out of the tears. There was a smell as well, Viceroy’s and something else.

“You’ll be taking your kids to see the final one,” my dad said to me and my brother. We giggled.

That’s all I remember.

A New Hope is a good name for the movie. Somehow I grasped it and held onto it as a hope. The new movies came as I tumbled through life and good triumphed over evil in the end.

Maybe I’ll be taking my grandchild to see the final one? –or borrowing somebody’s little kid for a night at the movies. And I will tell the story of my trip home from Yeadon in 1977, of a bright light of my youth. I’ll be just as much of a geek then as I am now and was then. Jedi’s and Deathstars and redemptions and Millennium Falcons (yes, for any people thinking of gifts, I always wanted one of those and never got it).

The Star Wars franchise became a bulwark of my youth, a part of the safety net, and, for that, I will always be a faithful geek.

Afterword: The Wine Chronicles is something new and there will not be too many of them–my typing skills turn to crap real quick after the first glass. But check out my Coffee Chronicles if you would like at www.thechrischronicles.com. I’ll be adding more as time permits and as I learn how to.

Peace