Via Chicagotribune.com:
Jimmy Mac recalled his age with a squint and a wince. Forty-six, he said after a pained calculation, the kind of hesitation that suggests lately he has to remember each time he is asked and would rather not remind himself. His hair is sort of brownish, with a bit of Irish red and, he pointed out, “a touch of gray.” Jimmy Mac has been feeling old lately, though he doesn’t seem old: He is a Chicago bro, a guy’s guy, a longtime producer for radio personality Jonathon Brandmeier who speaks in the caffeinated, steamroller cadences of drive-time radio. Still, on a few things, Jimmy Mac (whose real name is James McInerney) can sound tender, his voice softening with unconditional love. He sounds like this talking about his two sons, he sounds like this talking about his wife, WGN radio host Wendy Snyder. And he sounds like this discussing his first love: a love that dates to 1977, a love that once seemed ephemeral, destined to fade with childhood.
And yet, in the past decade alone, Jimmy Mac’s love for “Star Wars” has only intensified.
Standing in the front room on the second floor of his Victorian in the Southwest suburbs, he pulled a “Star Wars” trading card off a shelf: His first “Star Wars” collectible ever, he said, fished from a bag of Wonder Bread when he was 8. He grabbed a frayed paperback of “Return of the Jedi.” Very same copy he bought in 1983 at Waldenbooks in the Golf Mill Shopping Center, he said, then returned it to its perch and reached for his first “Star Wars” action figure, an R2-D2, its trash-can torso wrapped in a yellowing decal. He continued like this for a bit, the room so stuffed with “Star Wars” that it was surprising when a lovely summer twilight registered in the windows.
Night came.
Jimmy Mac put on his reading glasses.
He picked up a small package, read the return address and sliced it open. Inside were a pair of action figures, droids that he had mentioned recently on “RebelForce Radio,” his weekly, 9-year-old “Star Wars” podcast. He didn’t have them yet, so a fan of the show sent him a gift, bundling each figure in plastic bags.
Understand: None of this is all that remarkable. Not the love, not the collection, not the generosity. The elaborate devotion of “Star Wars” fans is as well-known as the going-on-40-year-old franchise itself.
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