Star Wars Episode V: A Memorable Day Spent at Omaha's Cinema Center

By Stew Magnuson

As a new Star Wars movie opens this week, and the sign for the now-closed Cinema Center in Omaha has reportedly come down for good, I’m reminded of one of the oddest experiences of my childhood growing up in Omaha, Nebraska: the afternoon I spent with two jailbirds waiting in line to see Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

It was May 21, 1980, and I was a junior at Omaha Central High School, and the much-anticipated sequel to Star Wars was debuting at the Cinema Center.

At that point in U.S. history, we as a society were not yet camping out days ahead of time to be first in line for a big movie. But that day would be a small step in that direction.

My plan was relatively simple. I would write a forged note from my Mom excusing myself from classes after lunch for an orthodontics appointment and then take a series of city buses to the multiplex and get in line as soon as I could. I reckoned that I would be close to the first in line if I arrived there by 1 p.m.

I did confess to my Honors English teacher Mrs. Bernstein that I planned on carrying out this caper. Not only didn’t she mind, or rat me out, she asked if I could hold a spot for her and her college-aged daughter.

It all went as planned, although I was not the first in line. About eight or nine fellow nerds who liked to call themselves the Red Squadron beat me there. They were dressed as X-wing fighter pilots, Princess Leia, and so on. This movie really was a harbinger of things to come.

Content to be about number nine in line, I began my long wait for the 4:30 matinee screening with nothing but a paperback book to keep me occupied.

I was returning to where I saw the first Star Wars as an eighth grader in 1977. Like most kids, I had no inkling that the phenomenon was coming. I had seen the move poster, but no trailers, and I hadn’t given the movie much thought. But a kid in my shop class at Lewis and Clark Junior High had seen the movie on its opening night and was gushing. “You gotta see this movie,” he kept saying over and over. A fan of science fiction and comic books at the time, I didn’t take much convincing.

So a buddy of mine went that weekend. I remember an usher coming up to us to hand out blue “May The Force Be With You Buttons,” which proves that even the studio didn’t know what it had on its hands. It felt the need to hand out free promotional items to get folks to show up to the movie. (I still have that button.)

I don’t think I will ever forget the feeling of exhilaration hearing the first notes of the John Williams-penned theme song, the opening crawl setting up the story, then the battlecruiser emerging and rolling across the screen in the opening scene. It was the most memorable moment of my movie-going life. My friends and I had a competition that summer for bragging rights on how many times we could see it. I watched it 10 times, at least once on the Indian Hills Theater Cinerama screen.

I’m not sure why I couldn’t convince any of my friends to join me on my escapade three summers later, but there I was alone when a sedan pulled up in the parking spot next to where I was standing. Out popped two white dudes, probably in their late 20s, or early 30s, who were much better prepared for the long wait.

They had folding lawn chairs and a cooler full of Miller High Lifes in the trunk.

It didn’t take them long to get set up, placing their folding chairs behind me in line and in front of their trunk. They filled their plastic cups full of beer and started to drink.

They were quite friendly and introduced themselves. I have long since forgotten their names — let’s call them Joe and Don. Joe was the taller, beefier one with curly blond hair and matching mustache. Don was about a head shorter with back hair.

They offered me a beer. I declined, being a teetotaler, and even if I wasn’t, I’m not sure I would have drank in broad daylight in a movie theater parking lot at age 16.

It wasn’t long after getting set up when Joe said: “This is perfect timing. I saw the first one right before I went into the joint. And now the second one is out the day after I get out.”

What?

For those who didn’t grow up with a steady diet of 1970s police shows, “the joint” was slang for prison. I was impressed with myself for knowing this “hip” slang, having watched a lot of Baretta growing up.

As the conversation proceeded, I gathered that Don had met Joe in prison.

They were actually gregarious and otherwise normal appearing guys. I never felt scared even as they became drunker as the afternoon wore on. Joe was the leader of the two and the most outgoing. Don was a little quieter.

I spent the next couple of hours talking with the pair, about what, I don’t remember very well. But I do recall being very interested in why they went to prison. I listened carefully to what they said for clues, but I didn’t get any. At one point when he mentioned jail in passing, I blurted out “What were you in for?”

Photo courtesy of Charles Martens and the Forgotten Omaha Facebook page

He completely ignored the question, pretending as if he hadn’t heard it. At that point, I knew it was a question neither of the pair was ever going to answer. I never had the impression that they were violent. Since they were in for about three years, I was guessing theft or robbery. But that was just a theory.

As they day wore on, they knocked back more and more Millers. The line behind us also grew longer. And in front as well. The Red Squadron let some of their pals cut in line, and there was now more than 25 moviegoers in front of me, not the original eight. This was decades before you could buy a ticket in advance. I was assured of getting in, but now I wanted a good seat.

My two new buddies had been talking like we were all going to be sitting together, but with Mrs. Bernstein and her daughter coming, I was already plotting how to give these guys the slip.

Suddenly, there was stirring beyond the plate glass window in the box office. The Red Squadron went on high alert. By this time Joe and Don were completely stumbling, slurring and sloppy drunk.

The line behind us by this time—comprising mostly Dads and their kids—stretched all the way down the parking lot, then hooked west behind the building. There had to be more than 200 hundred people that I could see.

Joe and Don realized that they had to decamp. After putting their folding chairs away, they both unzipped their flies, pulled out their private parts and began pissing on the bumper of their own car without making even the slightest effort to shield themselves from the hundred plus people in line.

Good God, I thought. Looking away. I was glad Mrs. Bernstein hadn’t shown up yet to witness that. (I’m not sure how many noticed it, but exposing yourself to a hundred kids nowadays would certainly get them three years in the “joint.”)

Don, realizing that he had an unopened bottle of Miller to deal with, lifted the trunk back up and began repeatedly shoving the bottle into the ice.

The glass broke, resulting in a long gash on the outside of his hand.

At that point, I judiciously let the pair go ahead of me in line. A red rivulet of blood dripped off of Don’s hand. He had no means to staunch the flow, but he was so inebriated he didn’t seem to care.

Mrs. Bernstein and her daughter showed up at the nick of time, only a minute before the door flung open. Everyone began to surge toward the doors. I pretended not to know Joe and Don, who were angling for a good position to squeeze in the door.

I suppose it is necessary to mention at this point that Joe was wearing a white T-shirt. My last image of the two jailbirds is Don repeatedly wiping his bloody hand on the back on Joe’s white shirt. It was a horror show.

Mrs. Bernstein, her daughter and I snagged pretty good seats, front and center about four rows back. I kept slouching hoping my two buddies wouldn’t spot me.

I never saw them again—fortunately.

 Stew Magnuson is the author of three editions of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder,  winner of the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year award, was recently named one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Contact him at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

 

Sayonara to Mac and Mac Bar, Hiroshima, Japan

Mac, 1995 at a wedding.

By STEW MAGNUSON

You always think that you will return to your favorite watering holes in the world, maybe one last time, and all the people you knew, would be sitting right there where you left them, and it would be as if you never departed.

I always thought that I would get back to Mac Bar in Hiroshima, Japan — someday. As the years went on, and I moved back the States, got married and began raising children, that became less realistic, but I never shook the desire or the notion that I would return there someday. Even though the bar I went to in 1992-1993 changed locations, it would still be pretty much the same, I reckoned, with Mac spinning discs, his partner Yuri, smiling, maybe vaguely remembering me as the gaijin who only drank Coke, taking my drink order, or perhaps Boku-chan, Mac’s right-hand man.

A few months ago, word reached me that Mac’s final location in Hiroshima had closed down. Then I woke up Sunday morning to discover that Mac had passed away, one day shy of his 67^th birthday.

And so Mac’s — the 1990s location — now will only live in my memory.

How to describe Mac’s?

First and foremost, it was a “gaijin bar.” "Gaijin," meaning foreigners. Located in a prime spot at the convergence of two main shopping streets on the edge of town’s entertainment district, this is where the Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canadians one notable Frenchman, and such congregated late at night.

It was also a dive — the lone remaining business in a building that should have been condemned. You climbed up a set of narrow stairs with broken-out windows until you reached a heavy, steel door, then entered a tiny room that cold fit may fifteen people comfortably, but crammed in multitudes more. If it were late on a weekend night, the floor would be a toxic mix of cigarette ash, spilled beer and shards of broken glass. The second-hand smoke was stifling.

There to greet you was Mac, who between taking drink orders, was mostly preoccupied with digging out a CD or vinyl album from his vast collection to satisfy a customer’s request.

Yuri, the co-owner and Mac's life partner was the simply sweetest woman in Japan. She always greeted you with a warm smile, spoke excellent English and never seemed to get cross about anything — taking the antics of drunk foreigners in stride, and giving advice to newcomers such as myself. Like about 1,000 other gaijin men who arrived in Hiroshima, I had a crush on her the moment we met. It could be called the “Hiroshima Yuri Syndrome” as a foreign man walked into the bar, met her and was immediately smitten wondering if he had any chance. They didn’t. Soon, enough they were told, or figured out, that she was with Mac, and they moved on to some other probably very nice  — but never as nice as Yuri — local woman.

Yuri and I at some party somewhere (1994?)

Mac’s was all about music. Mac was in the process of transitioning from vinyl to CDs when I arrived in 1992. He prided himself on being able to fill any request, although he reportedly wasn’t a big fan of Queen. He had a vast collection considering the small amount of space behind the bar. If you stumped him, he would scratch his head with his index finger, and either come up with the song after an extensive search, or apologize. He would take a mental note, though, and the next time you came, he had it. He had dug the record out of his collection at home, or bought the CD.

I’m sure I annoyed him with my habitual request for “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request’ by Steve Goodman, but he never failed to play it.

I liked showing up right at 10 p.m. best, when there were few customers and Mac and I could talk music. And yes, he opened around 10 and stayed open until whenever. I did leave there on occasion when it was light outside.

I guess I was the oddball, the teetotaler who hung out at the bar all night.

I can’t say I knew Mac or Yuri as well as some of the long-timers in Hiroshima. My time there was short. I spent one year in Hiroshima, and one year in nearby Fukuoka. Yet in that brief time I met whom I consider some of my dearest friends in the world at Mac’s, even though I never get to see them anymore.

Neil Van Wouw, a Canadian computer programmer, and singer-guitar player in the town’s best band, AKA Toe Jam, became one of my best friends, and I still consider him as such even though I haven’t seen him in 15 years.

The same for Margaret Stalker, another Canadian, who upon meeting, when I asked her where she was from, said: “The capital of Canada. Do you know what that is?”

When I answered correctly, she decided we could become friends. 
Richard Parker and Carol Rinnert, Jeff Beineke, Amanda Hyde, Alain Paquet, I met there, many of whom I am back in contact with thanks to the miracle of Facebook. If I recall correctly, the first time I saw Peter Berg at Mac's, he was dancing with a chair.

There are too many personal anecdotes to record here that began or ended at Mac’s. A few of them I am not proud of and it probably should remain that way.

The Mac Bar Baseball team, which actually played a game at Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, is a story that warrants its own blog.

There was the time I met a young American woman at Mac’s from Arizona, who asked me where I was from.

“Omaha.”

“Oh really, my Dad’s first cousin is from there.”

“What his name? Maybe I know him,” I said.

“Warren Buffet.”

(Look of surprise)

“Oh, but we’re not rich like him. He does give my dad free financial advice, though.”

I got into my second to last fistfight at Mac’s.

Some lanky Peruvian a head taller than me standing next to two Japanese women started swearing and cursing at me. I had never spoke or had any interaction with him before, so I could only guess he was trying to act tough in front of the two ladies. I stood there doing nothing until he said something about my glasses and attempted to either poke them or take them, at which point I landed two quick left jabs followed with a right hook, which put him down and shut him up.

The only regret I have was that I returned to Mac’s three hours later, and the Peruvian was still there. He came at me with a beer bottle declaring that he was going to kill me, but some others grabbed him from behind before he could get to me.

Later, Mac admonished me, but only for coming back the second time. A few weeks later, the Peruvian and I found ourselves back at Mac’s, but much earlier in the evening when he was sober.

“You two aren’t going to fight, are you?” Mac said chuckling, and we both sheepishly shrugged our shoulders.

I never found another place in Japan quite like Mac’s even though I ended up living there off and on another five years.

I send my deepest sympathizes to Yuri-chan and Boku-chan. And rest in peace Mac. Know that you created a place that will live on the hearts of so many like myself, who remember it and the three of you as being one of the best things about Japan.  

Link here to the Mar Bar Facebook page.

Stew Magnuson (stewmag (a) yahoo.com) is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, and  The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns was the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year and was recently named as one of the state's 150 most important literary works. He also penned a novel, The Song of Sarin, based on his experiences living in Tokyo during the Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack.

 

The Secret of the Western Hillls Elementary School Roof Revealed!

The Western Hills roof as seen from space!

By STEW MAGNUSON

Omaha Public School’s Western Hills Elementary after 63 years has met the wrecking ball.

Now that a new building is taking its place, it’s time for the secret of “The Roof” to be revealed.

This is the story about three young teenage boys with too much time on their hands, who pulled off a visually spectacular prank one night involving 16 garbage cans and the north side of the school’s façade.

It is a prank almost no one witnessed and is probably remembered by only these three individuals, now all middle-aged men.

Although the statute of limitations for teenage pranks and petty vandalism has long since passed, the other two culprits in this affair are still residents of the greater Omaha area and do not wish to be named. I, however, live in Virginia and my crack team of lawyers will fight any attempt at extradition. My two partners in crime will be known as “Chester” and “Ratso.”

Ratso and I attended Western Hills from kindergarten through 6^th grade. Chester started there in 5^th grade.

To begin this story, the secret of the roof must be explained.

Many who attended the elementary school may have known that it was ridiculously easy to climb up onto the roof from two sets of ledges located at the front door. This spot was also secluded — not visible from the relatively busy Western Avenue. The only risk that someone would spot you was the occasional dog walker.

The architect created an easy two-step “ladder” to the roof, which could be accessed by first stepping on the ledge of a window pane, pivoting, then grasping on to the edge of the door’s overhang. From there, you could either get a boost from a friend or take a running jump and grab the edge and pull yourself up to the roof.

For many years, there was a tall pine tree growing to the right of the door that made it especially easy to make it on the ledge. It was eventually cut down, but the structure remained.

The roof could be easily accessed from the ledge by the front door.

I didn’t discover this myself, but I had seen older kids make it up there when I was too little or too afraid to do it myself.

One day, the summer after we had graduated from Western Hills, Chester and I were hanging out at the school grounds, when we spotted some kids on the roof. They were climbing up there in broad daylight to retrieve a Frisbee. Chester had no idea that you could climb up there. I told them how they did it and we went to the front door and for the first time, climbed on top. As I said, it was the middle of the day, so we only stayed a few minutes before scrambling down.

But this began a relationship with “The Roof” that would last more than a decade, and into “adulthood.”

The roof on summer or weekend nights soon became the center of our lives outside of our homes. The names of those who joined us in our escapades up there changed — we brought many of our friends up there — but Chester, Ratso and I were the core.

The early years were marked by petty vandalism and mischief, I must admit. When we were about 12 to 14 years old, we would break the floodlights with the gravel that covered the roof, knock over vents and throw fist fulls of pebbles at cars driving by. The most fun was when one of these drivers got mad enough to jump out of the car and run up to a row of bushes, assuming that we were hiding there. They never guessed that we were above them containing our laughter.

I wasn’t there, but a cop did spot Chester and Ratso on the roof one night. However, there was an escape route at the back doors. You could hang off the ledge, drop down about six feet, scurry up the hill and disappear into the neighborhood.

The “mischief” years soon gave away as we grew up and the roof became more of a place of quiet contemplation and solitude. We would talk for hours, telling jokes and stories and occasionally confessing to each other our secrets. The skylights along the hallways below us gave off an eerie glow. A barn swift, we simply called “the bird,” would dive at us from time to time. The highest point and the best view of life below was above the gym/lunch room. It was a hundred foot high imposing brick wall that would have withstood a siege in the medieval days.

The stars shined through as best they could with the city lights, and we could watch thunderstorms flashing like paparazzi cameras as they rolled in from the west.

The big prank was just before Chester was about to move to Ralston when we were about 14 years old. I’m not sure how I got the idea, but one night I decided that we would take the school’s garbage cans and put them on the roof. I was so enamored with the prank, that I stayed awake half the night cooking up the caper.

It was a Saturday night when we executed the plan. Ratso and I told our parents that we were doing a sleepover at Chester’s house because it was last weekend there, but it was really because he was the closest to the school and it was easy to sneak out of his back door and walk a short block to the school.

We began the operation after midnight.

Western Hills still placed its refuse in aluminum garbage cans. There were 16 of them, all mostly empty. The wall next to the janitor’s entrance where the garbage cans were kept was almost as easy to climb as the front, with three tiers to the top. However, it was not nearly as secluded. Passersby could see the whole area. Step one was knocking out the flood lights to lessen our exposure.

With Ratso, being the tallest, standing on some plastic milk crates, Chester and I took the garbage cans as he handed them up. We had to listen for cars, and wait them out but part one went off almost without a hitch. “Almost” because at one point, a garbage can we thought was empty in fact had a significant amount of filthy, putrefied garbage water at the bottom, which spilled all over Chester’s pants. Despite the gag-inducing funk, Chester soldiered on. That step took the cans up to the roof over the janitor’s room, but not onto the roof over the school.

We then retreated back to Chester’s house — where he changed clothes — and waited an hour to make sure no one had spotted us.

When we returned, we had a second ledge to haul the cans up to. This was still not out of the line of sight of the street, so we had to be careful.

About in the middle of this part of the operation, Ratso was handing me a can, and I lost my balance. I had an instant decision to make: try to let the can down easily but probably fall directly onto the cans below, or jump clear of the cans and let the can go. I chose the latter and escaped serious injury by landing on my feet but had to fling the can away from me.

It crashed on the roof making the kind of racket only remembered by those who recall what those noisy old cans sounded like when the garbage man arrived at 5 a.m. In the still of the night, you could hear a beer can tossed out of car roll down a hill three blocks away. The impact should have woken up the whole neighborhood. We dashed south out the escape route, with Ratso and I arguing the whole way about who was at fault. (It was him, of course.)

An hour later, we returned, but nothing had changed.

So we proceeded with step three, the most physically taxing part, moving them up to the roof above the gym. This part was completely shielded from the street. There was a metal ladder built in to the side of the wall to make climbing up there easy for maintenance workers. We handed them up, walked them across the roof and placed them a few feet out of sight.

We returned a third time just before dawn to place them on the ledge. To put a cherry on top of the prank, each can had its lid.

Our mission complete, we returned to Chester’s house to get some sleep.

After about three hours, around 8 a.m., we woke up and walked up the hill to see the fruits of our labor.

It was quite a picture: 16 garbage cans, perched on the ledge of the wall towering over Western Avenue, the soft light of the morning sun reflecting off the silvery aluminum. It was both a stunning and absurd sight. A few motorists slowed down to take a look.

The genius part of the prank, I believed, was that since we had done this after midnight, the cans would remain there all day Sunday. Who would be around to take them down? We went back to Chester’s house and fell into the kind of deep sleep only teenagers can enjoy on weekend mornings, pulling ourselves out of our stupors sometime after the noon hour. Once again we went up to revel in our work.

But they were gone.

The 16 cans were placed above the school name.

GONE!

We couldn’t believe it. Put back in their proper place. Already?

All our planning and hard work seemed to amount to nothing.

Some 39 years later, it is a prank remembered by only three middle aged men, perhaps a few early birds who passed by, and the poor fellow or fellows who were tasked with removing the garbage cans on a Sunday morning.

We continued going up on the roof into our college days and a few years beyond. Ratso got a serious job, which he would have lost if he had ever been caught up there, so he was the first to stop going. I left Nebraska after I graduated from college, but Chester and I would climb up on occasions. Eventually he lost the will as well. I for one, would have required a step ladder to get up, having put on a few pounds.

I will remember fondly the seven years I spent as a child at Western Hills Elementary. But knowing that The Roof is gone, saddens me the most. 

Stew Magnuson will give a presentation about Highway 83 at the Great Plains Black History Museum, Crossroads Mall, Omaha, Nebraska. Thursday, September, 29 at 6:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, and  The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns was the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year and was recently named as one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Both are available online or at The Bookworm at 90th and Center Streets in Omaha.