“Mom, mom ocean, I’ve heard you name
Needed to sail upon your waters
Since I used to be three ft tall
You’ve seen all of it …. You’ve seen all of it.”
“A Pirate Appears to be like at Forty”
— Jimmy Buffett
I fell in love with the tune months earlier than assembly the person, and I nonetheless don’t know whether or not to bless or blame Jimmy Buffett for subsequent occasions. That’s as a result of the tune was Buffett’s “A Pirate Appears to be like at Forty,” a mesmerizing portrait of a charismatic, flawed rogue who didn’t match within the fashionable world however would have flourished as an 18th-century buccaneer.
It was 1978 and I used to be 22 years outdated, an aspiring hippie determined to disguise my naivete, when the pirate walked into my office — a Native American jewellery retailer owned by a New Jersey refugee who referred to as himself Geronimo. It was an incongruous enterprise for Key West, but it surely sometimes drew prospects.
That day they included the pirate, who instructed me his title was Phil Clark. He was a tall, dark-bearded man, twice my age, with a unprecedented vitality that made everyone else within the retailer look pale by comparability. He was the image of devil-may-care confidence, sporting a small Spanish coin on a hoop in his ear and a curved turtle claw hanging from a twine round his neck.
Total, he was fairly overwhelming to an unsophisticated 22-year-old. After work I met Phil on the rowdy Inexperienced Parrot Bar, the place he targeted all his allure on me, and somebody instructed me he was the topic of the Buffett tune I cherished.
It felt like destiny. By the point I came upon he made his residing smuggling pot, it was already too late; I couldn’t think about my life with out him.
For the subsequent 5 years, I used to be identified round Key West as “Phil’s woman.” Due to his larger-than-life repute, that meant I used to be protected and sorted by his ragtag cohorts, who handled me like somewhat sister.
In some ways, Phil’s repute was well-deserved. He was one of many daring Keys renegades whose exploits made him virtually a residing legend. He had tried virtually each hazardous occupation identified to man — from mercenary soldier to gentleman smuggler to New York Metropolis promoting govt. (The final, he instructed me, gave him the largest twinges of conscience.)
He had lived in Key West because the Nineteen Sixties and cherished it unconditionally. He was wickedly clever, a person of nice private integrity and a voracious reader who held limitless discussions with the island’s vagabond literati.
Phil and I shared golden days stuffed with laughter and raucous nights ingesting on the Full Moon Saloon — as soon as, unforgettably, with “gonzo journalist” Hunter Thompson. He introduced me teddy bears, Shel Silverstein books, and $40,000 in a shoebox after a very profitable rating. He requested me to marry him and I mentioned sure.
After all, our life wasn’t all good. There have been vicious arguments and days when, dealing with the realities of Phil’s outlaw occupation, I felt an uncontrollable worry slithering down my backbone. Worst of all have been the instances he departed on unspecified “enterprise journeys” as a result of in his enterprise, there was no assure he would come safely dwelling.
Finally he bought busted, as a result of luck runs out even for legends. He was caught on a ship carrying 10 tons of “cargo” and locked up in an Orlando jail.
When he bonded out and got here again to Key West, his vitality appeared quenched; he had made personal plans to say his farewells and disappear. The final time I noticed him it flashed by my thoughts that, in two years, somebody would come to inform me he was lifeless.
I used to be flawed. It was solely 18 months.
As Buffett foreshadowed within the eerily correct remaining verse of “A Pirate Appears to be like at Forty,” Phil drowned. He had been residing on one other coast, beneath an alias. It took weeks to correctly determine him and produce his ashes dwelling.
But his loss of life was only one type of ending. Even now, survivors of the “outdated days” nonetheless smile on the point out of Phil Clark’s title — survivors who have been captivated by the tales he instructed, shared his adventures for a time and inherited his love of Key West.
We’re nonetheless right here. And when the strains of “A Pirate Appears to be like at Forty” drift out from a speaker someplace, we nonetheless hear.