When I was but a wee shaver, I never shared with my contemporaries the urge to be a cowboy, an Indian, a fireman or other more conventional dreams. I wanted to be a pirate…
With a sword in each hand, and a pistol in the other, I would meet head-on the worst of tempests, do some swashing – and the occasional buckling – and drink grog, which I assumed to be a powder to which one added water, not unlike Tang or Kool-Aid.
I filled out several applications and distractedly went about my chores, impatient for my answers to arrive. Imagine how upset I was when I was turned down. There had never been, one letter stated, any record in the proud heritage of buccaneering, any mention of a twelve-year-old pirate.
I wondered if – being so young – maybe I couldn’t meet their height requirements, or that maybe I was too young to join the pirate’s union, ANTHAF, the Association of Nautical Hooligans, Thugs and Felons. But ‘No’ meant ‘No,’ and that was that; no cannon fire for me, no smoke-filled boardings, no slogging across decks awash with human gore. Oh sure! Pull the rug out from under a kid in his formative years! That was surely a dark moment in my young life.
The following Sunday, I went to church, and was approached by the kindly old preacher. So advanced in years was he that he once whispered to me that, at his age, God no longer expected him to kneel while he prayed; he was allowed to say his prayers standing up. I thought that was very nice of God. Now, as a man of gathering years, I can assure you that getting to my knees is not all that difficult – gravity helps me. The challenge comes with standing back up, fickle gravity now having turned against me.
While he had my ear, the parson asked if I would like to work for the church: mow lawns, rake, dust pews, and arrange hymnals and the like. I asked how much it paid. He told me confidently he would pay me well.
“Well! He said he would pay me well!” me whispered excitedly to me. I figured thirty, maybe forty grand a year. Not shabby! Why, I’d be one rich rapper! Flashy threads, rings on each finger, a fancy car I could drive when I became old enough, comely fifth-grade chics on each arm; that would be me! I’d even have enough left over to loan my Dad some money if he were to need it [at reduced interest rates, him being family and all.] So, wanting to be sure the parson and I were on the fame financial wave-length, I asked him what did he mean? – let’s talk actual numbers here – when he said, “I will pay you well.”
One dollar an hour; six hours a week.
It was as if the ceiling came crashing down about my head. The rings, cars, girlfriends, glad-rags, and loans which had crowded the air about me mere moments ago, vanished in a twinkling, along with my tax bracket. But having been denied a life on the seven seas, and having no other vocational options open at the moment, I became an employee of the church; my first paying job.
In due course, I joined the choir. I really dug the choral robes, and was most enthusiastic about the processional and recessional parts where I could pass along the aisle – my piety on display for all to see and marvel over – looking far more holy and devout than I truly was. It wasn’t long before the minister asked me to sing a solo to the congregation. There was an imbedded risk in this request: Inviting a young man with a pre-adolescent voice to sing. Pre-teens are the only years in the life of a male when his voice is able to vocalize in two separate octaves, each of which supersede the other at unpredictable and embarrassing intervals.
I was to sing, “I Come to the Garden Alone.” By the time I had finished, there was not a soul in the congregation who didn’t know why I was in the Garden alone.
So I finished that summer dusting hymnals amidst stubborn daydreams of sailing the seas with the worst singing voice in the history of piracy. But I did some reading and discovered there were very few pirates these days. Most of them had sold their ships and – using their same skill-sets – found more lucrative employ in Washington, DC.
But still, ANTHAF might have a senior citizens’ branch where retired pirates could sit on lounge chairs and reminisce about the good old days that never were.
Lucky Garvin
