Part 2 "TAUN-TAUNS AND TRANS-AMS: (THANKS UNCLE BRUCE)"

Another movie event that I will never forget was when STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK came to town. It opened up July 25th, 1980 at The ROXY Theater in Potsdam, New York, near where we were living at the time. The funny thing is, it wasn’t watching it for the first time that sticks out the most to me, but seeing it the second time. My Aunt Nancy was up visiting us, and somehow I overheard her and my Mom having a conversation about the new STAR WARS movie. (Who knew that either one of them would even be interested in such a thing?). When I heard them talking about going into town to see it together, I knew what I had to do. I waited for my opportunity, and when the moment was right, I snuck into the backseat of our car. Shortly after they pulled out of the driveway, I made my sneaky little presence known, and much to my surprise, they actually let me tag along. (I guess only having to take one kid to a movie theater was better than three). We arrived at the theater about ten or fifteen minutes into the film, so after watching the whole thing, we actually stayed until the next showing just to see the beginning part that we had missed. I, of course, didn’t object in the slightest. To this day, EMPIRE is my favorite STAR WARS movie. The third time that I saw EMPIRE was just as memorable. Later that winter, it came back around for another screening. This time, it was playing at The AMERICAN Theater in Canton, New York. With very little coaxing, my Uncle Bruce took my brother Jeremy and I, and our cousins Jay and Matt to see it again. Afterwards, we went to the AMES Department store in Potsdam to look at STAR WARS action figures, and, for what was definitely the highlight of the evening,(at least from a dopey ten-year olds perspective),he drove us around in his silver Trans-Am doing “doughnuts” in the store parking lot. Was he a good role model? Probably not. Was he a good uncle? No. He was the best. Thanks Uncle Bandit.