Our first outside play that I can remember was 'Star Wars'. Mom and Dad took us to see it at the Coralville Drive-In when it came out in 1977. I was five.
As I remember it, I was usually Luke and Kyle was usually Han (at an age when Luke still seemed the more desirable role). The Millenium Falcon was the bed of Dad's truck, when it was there. We'd tuck down against the sides of the truck, semi-reclined against the wheel-wells. There were plenty of places to climb and run to reenact scenes from the interior of the Death Star.
Getting bikes added a lot to our 'Star Wars' play. We didn't have many places to ride them to, down around the corn crib and back, but that didn't seem to bother us. It worked for the illusion of distance - Tatooine to Alderaan, the Death Star to Yavin 4 and back (of course, we didn't remember all of the names).
We got really into 'Star Wars guys' in this period, the action figures and the vehicles and locales that went with them. They were usually our primary destination in the toy aisle at KMart of Target: 'Let's go see the Star Wars guys.' We got the tri-level Death Star playset, an X-Wing fighter, and a TIE fighter. We always wanted more: the Millenium Falcon, a snow speeder, an AT-AT Walker.
It's hard to even remember how much was left to imagination, comparatively, in 1977. 'Star Wars' wasn't released on video tape for years. There weren't the same number of tie-ins. We waited years for the sequels (I read the book before I saw the movie for 'The Empire Strikes Back', "Return of the Jedi', and 'The Phantom Menace'. I just couldn't stand the suspense). We did a lot of playing, a lot of imagining, a lot of making up the subsequent stories. I later latched on to semi-apocryphal intervening stories like 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye' and some of the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian novels.
I was unequivocally in love with Princess Leia and, by extension, Carrie Fisher. It pains me to this day that she has grown old. The subsequent revelation that Leia was Luke's sister still sends pangs of concern through me, even incest-guilt: do you have any idea how many times I played out that romance (albeit chastely)?
As I have become fond of saying: the five year old me will love Carrie Fisher from 1977 until the day that I die :-)
