My Pirate Story, Rated Arrrrrr…

By Steve Sabatka

For the TODAY

I saw a pirate the other day. Of course, buccaneers and skull-and-crossbone flags are not uncommon sights here on the Oregon Coast, proud home to Pirate’s Plunder, The Lucky Pirate Chophouse, Pirate Coffee Company, etc., etc.

But this particular privateer looked nothing like Johnny Depp, and I was grateful for that because when it comes to pirates, I’m old school, matey: triangular hat, long coat with wide lapels and brass buttons, and the kind of frilly shirt that Jerry Seinfeld hated. On the other hand, the swabbie in question was sitting in the car next to mine, waiting to get his oil changed, and listening to what sounded like K-Pop, of all things. Still, that modern-day swashbuckler brought me back in time, made me remember.

When I was four or five, I wanted to be a pirate. It’s the second thing I remember wanting to be when I grew up — after Tyrannosaurus Rex, that is. Batman came later, and then Hollywood stuntman. How I ever became a school teacher, I’ll never know.

My pirate obsession began when my dad brought home a set of what they used to call long-playing record albums, each devoted to some classic story or another, complete with music and sound effects, including Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” which began with the growling voice of Long John Silver, echoing over the waves:

Fifteen men on the dead man's chest. Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest. Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

I listened to that story, spinning along at 33 rpm, dozens of times, and it wasn’t long before I set my heart on being Long John, or at least kinda like him. He was tough, after all, didn’t take any grief, and didn’t have to make his bed or eat all of his lima beans. Long John carried a flintlock pistol in his belt, a battle-nicked cutlass, a brightly colored parrot on his shoulder that squawked things like “Pieces of eight!” and “Where’s the map?” and the old boy got around pretty well on just one leg.

Luckily, I had parents who tolerated my fixation, patiently wrote it off as a harmless, passing stage, and were confident that I would grow out of it sooner ot later. I’m sure my dad was disappointed that I didn’t l share his love of football, but he tried to support me — in his way. Dad took me to a pawn shop one time, since he was always scrounging for cheap camera equipment and stereo gear, and showed me a small, very old coin, stapled into one of those cardboard-and-mylar protectors. It didn’t look like a Mercury dime or a Buffalo nickel or any currency I’d ever seen.

“It’s a Spanish doubloon,” he said.

The pawn shop owner, an Ernest Borgnine type, as I recall, agreed: “Pirate money.” I studied that gold doubloon, wondering if maybe it had been left under young Long

John’s pillow when he lost a tooth. “Can I have it?”

Dad and the pawn shop guy had a good laugh. There was no way a high school teacher, let alone a weird kid with a dime-a-week allowance, could afford a gold doubloon.

On another occasion, Dad bought a fake bird of some kind at a five-and-dime store. It was small, bright yellow, and probably supposed to be a canary. But Dad insisted that it was a parrot and duct-taped that cheesy bird to my shoulder. Looking back, I must’ve looked pretty ridiculous, and today I’m not sure if Dad was supporting my newfound identity or just having a good laugh.

My mom contributed to my pirate-ness by making a cloth eyepatch with an elastic strap, which was very cool and much appreciated. But there was a catch, a condition that had never been presented to any real high seas drifter:

“You have to promise not to wear it going up or down stairs or when you ride your trike.” “Aye, aye, Mom.”

Of course, anybody can wear an eyepatch and tape a fake parrot to his collarbone. Serious pirate characteristics are more complex and require true commitment and no small degree of courage. One night at dinner, I announced my desire to have a peg leg, lathed of either ivory or whale bone, which, I admit, is more “Moby Dick” than “Treasure Island,” but still in the same badass, high seas universe.

Ma looked across the table to Dad. Her expression was a combination of disappointment and pity, and I could read her thoughts: Where did we go wrong? At least she didn’t feed me some shuck about underprivileged kids in China and India.

Dad looked up from his fish sticks, so it must’ve been a Friday. “How you gonna ride a bike with a peg leg?”

“Pirates don’t ride bikes, Dad.”

The discussion ended. I still wanted that prosthetic leg, but I decided to heave-to until I found a way to make the landlubbers understand. There were no social media platforms or internet chat groups at the time, so I was pretty much on my own in the real world. In hindsight, that was probably a good thing.

Somehow, my Uncle Harry got involved in the fake leg fandango. Harry was Ma’s younger brother and slightly older than his fraternal twin, Jerry. The two couldn’t have been more different, like Jacob and Esau in the Old Testament. Uncle Jerry was as nice as could be, and I have many memories of him laughing and playing with my brothers and me.

Uncle Harry, on the other hand, was a much darker character who had a temper and got into so many fights growing up that a judge finally gave him a choice: prison, or Vietnam. Uncle Harry chose the latter, but it seems boot camp didn’t change him, and it didn’t take long for the other soldiers to refer to him as “Scary Harry.”

One Christmas, it must’ve been in 1967, when I was seven, Uncle Harry came home on leave, wearing his Class A uniform — and a fresh, jagged scar on his throat. At some point, it was just Uncle Harry and me, in the kitchen, as I remember, and he caught me staring at his wound.

“Straight razor,” he said, in a deep, gravely voice, and ran his thumb across his throat from left to right.

“Way cool,” I said. “But it musta hurt.”

“I didn’t even know I was cut until I saw the blood.” Sounded good to me. I started thinking about scars, now.

“But the stitches hurt like a son of a… gun.” Then he changed the subject, because Ma set the whole thing up. “No pirate worth his sea salt ever lost a limb to elective surgery. You have to earn that kind of thing after some epic ship-to-ship sea battle, or sword fight.”

Interesting, but not quite what I wanted to hear. And there was more.

“And then you have to get patched up by some rum-stinking surgeon-slash-blacksmith with only a leather strap to bite on for an anesthetic.”

Sounded rougher than I thought.

“Ya ever been on a boat, Stevie, not a row boat, I mean a big one?” “I was on the ferry to British Columbia one time. I got sorta sick.”

“There ya go.” My uncle leaned closer, and I remember that his breath smelled like some kind of medicine. “Besides, whether it’s a scar, a fake leg, or even a tattoo of the USS Missouri, the stories are what really count. What if I told you I got this scar on my throat because my hand slipped when I was carving a Thanksgiving turkey? Would you be disappointed?”

I was. “Is that what happened?”

“No. I accused an Aussie first sergeant of cheating at cards. I didn’t know he had four inches of Sheffield steel in the flap of his bush hat. The point is, the story is what’s important.”

By this time, I had all but abandoned my pirate phase.

And then, my uncle, “Scary Harry,” the most-Long John Silver person I’ve ever known, with the stories to prove it, told me a pirate joke. I can imitate his voice, but not on paper. I’ll do my best to tell it as he did:

A pirate runs into an old friend, see. The friend notices that his pirate buddy has a new peg leg, a hook instead of a hand, and an eye patch. “What happened to you?” the friend asks.

“I lost me leg to a British cannonball,” the pirate says, “and proud of it.” “Aye, Sir, aye, and what about your hook? It does gleam like mirrored glass.”

“Thankee,” the pirate says. “I lost me hand during a sword fight with a bilge rat from Hindustan.”

“And how do you explain your eye patch?”

“A seagull, flying high above me, pooped right in me eye.” The friend is puzzled. “Is seagull poop poisonous?”

“It wasn’t the poop.” The pirate blushes. “But when I rubbed me eye I forgot about the hook.”

Many years later, long after my pirate phase had blown over and well into my teaching career, I ended up in the ER with painfully inflamed toes. Hypochondriac that I am, I was certain some awful flesh-eating bacteria had infected me, and, irony of ironies, hoped, prayed, I wouldn’t lose my leg.

Turns out I had gout. I was relieved.

The End

For my Uncle Harry, who was a flight engineer and helicopter door gunner during the Vietnam War. Harry survived the war but found peacetime difficult, and struggled with PTSD and alcoholism. He died at the age of 49 as a result of exposure to Agent Orange.

Resquiat In Pacem