I can’t begin to tell you how much trouble Sinbad has caused me. Not the comedian, the sailor. You know, the guy who fought the sword-wielding skeletons, the Cyclops, the Minotaur, etc. I watched those Ray Harryhausen movies so many times when I was a kid, I knew all the dialogue.
Those were the days of total immersion of the imagination, before I understood the complexities of “stop-motion animation” and before I judged the quality of the acting or how realistic the sets and costumes looked. When I watched those movies, I was locked in. A herd of elephants could have stamped through the living room behind me and I wouldn’t have noticed. As a result, for the first twenty years of my life, Sinbad was my role model. I had no desire to join the world as it was. In fact, my entire plan in high school was not to go to college, get a good job, get married, and settle down. It wasn't that I had any particular disdain for marriage and parenthood. I knew that they must be great adventures as well, perhaps the greatest, or so many people wouldn't be doing it. After all, one need not travel outward to find adventure. The hearts, souls and minds of our loved ones, and our own, are worlds unto themselves that one could explore endlessly. However, the common denominator between all my favorite screen heroes, such as Sinbad, Indiana Jones, James Bond, etc., was that they were all unmarried and childless. It's just not right for a man to traipse around the earth and pull death-defying stunts when he's got a wife and kids at home depending on him.
With so much world to see, and because of Sinbad's thoroughly unrealistic influence on me, I refused to even consider marriage and family until my wanderlust was thoroughly exhausted. My plan was to make just enough money to buy a boat, find a deserted island, build a hut, plant a vegetable garden, throw a net into the ocean once in a while, explore the island jungle, bathe under waterfalls, search for buried treasure (of course), surf and dive every day, write the greatest novel ever written about how life should be lived according to Mark Rickerby, then send it back to the civilized, working world as a sort of message in a bottle. Of course, I wouldn’t need the proceeds from said novel because I would continue to live off the land on my secret island.
I had already made one attempt to escape and find my island when I was ten years old. My friend Dana Eckman and I had just finished watching The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad for what must have been the twentieth time. We agreed that Grant Elementary School was no place for the likes of us - two swashbuckling vagabonds who should be slaying seven-headed hydras and sliding down galleon sails with daggers in our mouths. It didn’t take us long to hatch a plot that would take us to the open seas and the islands that our hero Sinbad had explored. We even imagined that we would run into him out there somewhere, become part of his crew, and continue his adventures with him. To add fuel to the fire, we were both given an assignment in our fifth grade teacher to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Escape was imminent.
Dana’s parents had the ultimate garage, full of all manner of bric-a-brac. We had once used the various, dangerous chemicals there to mix a poisonous concoction designed to ward off evil spirits. We called it our “anti-witch potion”. It could probably have been classified as toxic waste by the time we were done. I smelled it and almost passed out. In fact, now that I think of it, that may have caused some damage to my undeveloped brain. Well, too late now, I suppose. No use crying over spilt milk, as they say.
We pulled every spare piece of wood and every nail we could find out of the garage, found two hammers, and went to work building the raft. We even abandoned our given names and started calling each other Tom and Huck. (I was Tom.) I still believe that Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were the quintessential little boys, and I feel sorry for any kid who doesn’t have a Mississippi River and a forest to explore, or at least the desire for adventure. Children need swimming holes and quiet corners in lush forests. Inner cities do nothing for the spirit. Anyone’s spirit, but particularly a child's.
We worked hard on the raft but, because none of the planks we used matched in size or age, the finished product was far from an engineering masterpiece. The only thing that defined it as a raft was that it was roughly square and made of wood. Still, it seemed sturdy enough so we hoisted it up and headed for the Pacific Ocean. We lived on 26th Street in Santa Monica, California, the streets numbering upward away from the ocean, which meant we had to carry the raft twenty-six blocks down Pico Boulevard to the beach. But nothing could stop us. Freedom was imminent! We packed a few sandwiches, scooter pies and Coke cans in our backpacks for the long ocean voyage. We also threw in some fishing line, tools, a pocketknife, two wide boards to use as paddles, and pictures of our parents for when we got homesick.
We carried the raft over our heads as we had seen American Indians do with their canoes. We couldn’t understand why all the adults walking and driving past us were so amused. Hadn’t they ever seen a raft before? A few laughed but it didn’t bother us. Tom and Huck were misunderstood by adults, too. We were on a quest.
The raft seemed to gain weight as we walked. Over an hour later, with the sweat lashing off us, we finally arrived at the beach, labored the last few yards past the sunbathers, dropped the raft into the water, climbed on and started paddling. Reaching the open sea proved to be much more difficult than we expected. We struggled to get past the breakers for twenty minutes. When we did and thought our journey had finally begun, a huge wave appeared out of nowhere and crushed our momentary elation along with our raft. Pieces of it were floating everywhere. Scratched and battered from head to toe, we limped back to the beach to the laughter of everyone who had witnessed the sad spectacle.
The crowning indignity was being forced by the lifeguard to collect the floating remnants of our raft. Somehow, this hero had failed to notice two small children setting out to sea on the most non-seaworthy craft ever built, but he was right on the job when it came to cleaning it up. We threw the entire raft into a big dumpster in the parking lot, along with our dignity and our dreams of adventure. Two sadder boys had never walked back up Pico Boulevard. We vowed to rebuild it, but we never did. It’s a good thing we didn't because a raft with two small, sun-bleached skeletons on it would undoubtedly have washed up on some foreign beach months later.
In the years since my first twenty, I have managed to assimilate into the real world, but only reluctantly. Despite my lack of skill in raft building, the boy still lives within, and part of me still believes that none of us are obligated to contribute to the gross national product and pay taxes every day for the rest of our lives. Part of me still believes that the ancient Hawaiians had it right before Europeans showed up and polluted their pristine world with their funky European diseases, which wiped out 90% of the native Hawaiians within ten years. Part of me still longs for a life of high adventure on the open seas, and rebels against the demands of modern life. Darn that Sinbad.
This refusal to join the real world has caused a few problems. For instance, at twenty-seven, when most men are either married or starting to think about career and family, I sold everything I owned, bought a backpack, and walked around Europe, Greece and Great Britain for six months. I did many of the things the boy had dreamed of doing. I para-glided over the Swiss Alps and white-water rafted through them. I played blackjack at a casino in Monte Carlo. I rode a camel. I sat before the monoliths of Stonehenge and pondered its mysteries.
I saw Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower. I watched artists light up canvases by the steps of the Basilique du Sacré Coeur. I wandered the halls of the Louvre. I danced all night in a funky, underground Paris bar. I kissed a beautiful Parisian girl. And Sinbad smiled.
I rode in a gondola in Venice. I marveled at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. I prayed reverently before the painting of the Last Supper in Milan. I rode in a convertible on a warm summer night in Florence, the car bursting with warm-hearted Italian friends determined to show me a good time. I kissed a beautiful Italian girl. And Indiana Jones nodded approvingly.
I slept in a cave at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens. I recited a Shakespearean monologue center stage at the Theatre of Dionysus where Thespis, the world’s first actor, once performed. I explored Greek islands by motorcycle. I watched the sun set into the Aegean Sea from a cliffside café in Thira village on the island of Santorini, largely considered to be the most beautiful spot on earth to watch the sunset from. I kissed a beautiful Greek girl. And James Bond toasted me with his martini. (Shaken, not stirred.)
I explored a windmill and watched the skilled hands of a craftsman making wooden shoes in Denmark. I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam and felt a lump form in my throat as I read one of the last entries in her diary, which she wrote just before the Nazi’s kicked the door down and took her and her family to the death camps - “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good at heart”. I sang karaoke in a Copenhagen nightclub, changing the lyrics of the Beach Boys song California Girls to “I wish they all could be Copenhagen Girls”. (The kindly Danes appreciated it and loaded up my table with beers.) Oh, and I kissed a beautiful Danish girl. (Hey, romance was a big part of those Sinbad movies, too!)
I didn’t slay a Gorgon, Minotaur or Cyclopes when I was in Greece, but I did fight with three muggers in an alley in Amsterdam. Fortunately, Amsterdam being Europe’s outpost for illicit drugs, they were too high to properly mug anyone, and I was able to give them all a good pasting. All in all, it was a grand adventure, my turn on the ancient road, following the footsteps of the legendary travelers, though the world had changed drastically from the days depicted in all those silly movies I had studied, and in the books written during the Golden Age of Travel by Richard Halliburton, my favorite travel writer. A few hundred years had transformed the major cities of the world into a tangled snare of cars and buses, smog and sticky tar, and the exotic corners of the world had been infected with western influences.
I enjoy the modern conveniences as much as anyone else, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop being mildly disappointed when I visit foreign lands and they don’t conform to the stereotypical images of them I have built in my mind throughout the years. For instance, when I go to Australia, I’d like to see someone throwing a boomerang. When I go to Ireland, I want to see people wearing green and talking about “wee people” in the woods. If I entered a witch doctor's hut in deepest, darkest Africa, I'd be disappointed if he was wearing a Polo shirt and drinking a Coke. I want to see animal skins, a bone through the nose, the whole bit. Call me traditional. But I digress . . .
I arrived back in Los Angeles thirty pounds under my usual weight, with bleached hair, overly tanned skin, tattered clothing, and 37 cents in my pocket. (Literally. I counted it.) It took me years to pay off the credit card debt. Still, to this day, when anyone asks me if they should do something responsible or travel, I always advise them to travel. We’re only young once, and there are certain things every human being should do. (Even if they’re old before they get around to it.) Everyone should have a fling in Paris. Everyone should see Rome. Everyone should explore the Pyramids at Giza. Everyone should retrace the steps of Jesus Christ. Everyone should put their feet in the Nile. This is the only life we get, and we’ll be dead for a very long time. And heaven or no heaven, this is the only world we get, too. This is where all our history has taken place, all the beauty humanity has created, and all the horror it has visited upon itself. This is where all of our blood, sweat and tears have fallen, so like our individual hometowns, the earth will always be our home, the only one we'll ever know. We should see as much of it as possible.
So in the end, I don't regret what I have lost by wanting to be Sinbad. As Helen Keller wrote, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Many years have passed since that raft was built, and the boy has become a man, burdened with all the usual demands of adult life. But the open sea still calls to me as it did then, as it did to Sinbad, and my desire to explore the world only increases with age. I may regret many things when I come to the end of my days, but not being adventurous enough will not be one of them.
Thanks, Sinbad.
Adding your comment:
Sinbad??? Huck Finn??? Ray Harryhausen??? Indiana Jones??? {swoons dangerously} LOL 
Marky, I knew we had a lot in common, but sheesh!!! 
When my younger brother & I were very small, we took the styrofoam rectangles that minibikes were packed in & went rafting on 'em in the creek...we traversed every particle of our hometown on foot, on bicycle, on motorcycle...I adore the Sinbad movies...any movie on a ship, including any pirate movies or any swashbucklers, such as King Arthur or Robin Hood...Sigh... My only regret is not having traveled more...Thank you for writing this one, my Friend...thoroughly enjoyable...If ya ever get to missin' 'em too much, & AMC isn't being obliging, just 'member...I have them all...& all the Indiana Jones tapes, too...LOL 
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Hmmmmmm...did Ray Harryhausen hatch some sort of scheme to turn young boys away from lives of responsibility, and trun them into wandering swashbuckers 
11 old applause
