NATCHEZ — Children are not the only people waiting with bated breath for the coming of December and the presents it brings.

The month has another gift in store this year that will not be under the Christmas tree and the amount of people waiting numbers more than many religions, the seventh coming of Star Wars.

Natchezian Wes Gore is one of those people. The feelings evoked by the first film, “Star Wars: A New Hope,” still run deep.

“It was 1977 and I was 17,” he said. “Right when I saw the Star Destroyer chasing the Corellian Corvette, I was hooked.”

And Gore has been hooked ever since.

“For a while, I felt kind of goofy about it then I started seeing that a ton of other people are just like me,” he said.

Gore found a community within Star Wars by stumbling across the Star Wars Weekends at Disneyland. At these get-togethers, he was able to accrue a slew of autographs and paraphernalia.

A wall in his office, as an accountant at Silas Simmons, is a shrine to the film that he has had a 40-year love affair with.

“I fell in love with the first movie and have enjoyed everything since,” Gore said. “And that kind of plays into R2D2.”

His newest acquisition of memorabilia is a three-feet-tall remote control blow up toy of R2D2, a robot in the film that spoke exclusively in groans and beeps.

“I was given it by a client and I was taking it home, so I put it in my passenger seat,” Gore said. “And I realized how funny it was having him sit as my copilot.”

So, just as R2D2 escorted the film’s protagonist Luke Skywalker into countless adventures and space battles, the inflatable replica tags along with Gore to work day in and day out through the dregs of tax season.