RECORD STORE TALES 1213: Ghosts Of Summers Past

I would have met Searle over 45 years ago now.  Our cottage was built on this land in 1980, and we have a photo of Searle straining to look at a load of wood siding and windows, being delivered here, dated July 1980.  Indeed, it was his curiosity that brought him here.  A project as big as building a cottage draws onlookers, and he was only a couple properties over.

We were the same age and both of us from Kitchener.  In fact, his other step-brother Paul taught science at a highschool in my neighborhood.  Paul Marrow would become my favourite science teacher in grade 10.  He even appears in a music video I made in the 11th grade.

Since Searle and I were the same age, it stood to reason that we had in common the only thing that mattered in 1980:  Star Wars.  He and I were playmates during that eternal, infernal stretch of time during which Han Solo was frozen in carbonite at the end of the Empire Strikes Back.  Any games that we played with our figures had to work around that time frame if we wanted to incorporate Solo into the story.  As it happened, Kenner’s Empire Solo figure, in the snowsuit with the working gun holster was one of my favourite figures of the entire line.  Still is!  Of course we wanted to use Solo in our games.

“It’s weird how Han Solo got frozen, but it was hot,” I mused to Searle one afternoon while playing Star Wars in his cottage’s yard.

“Yeah,” he responded.  “There was smoke but he got frozen.”

“I should freeze my Han Solo in ice,” I suddenly thought.  “I’ll put him in a glass and freeze him.”

From that point on in my young life, my mom was never surprised to find a glass with water and an action figure in her freezer.  Part of being a mom to a Star Wars kid.

The last time I saw Searle was in the early 1990s.  He was big, and bald, and very tough looking.  He stopped by the cottage to say hello.  By then, I remember he was into the music of Phil Collins.  And that was it.  Never saw him again.

Until August 31, 2025.  Forty-five years after the fact, a big bald man and a smaller companion walked right past me down the road.  He was unmistakable, but he didn’t look or stop.  He probably assumed there was no way the same guy still lived here.  He walked up the way to his parents’ cottage, and stopped to linger a while.  Then he moved on down the road and away again, like a ghost.

The ghosts of summers past still live on, and with them the memories.  I should try to freeze my new $2 Darth Vader figure in the ice.