Offshore Explorer

From Russia with Love appeared on screens in 1963. Sean Connery starred as the unflappable James Bond. I was eleven. I secretly read Ian Flemming's sexy book under my covers with a flashlight. I was a voracious reader and avid film goer. How I worked those circumstances out should be explained. Looking back on my life that summer probably shaped my thinking in a profound and lasting way. I have wandered the seas around the world with a certain panache. Here is how it started, I think.

I was living in Levittown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Everything was new. Shopping malls seemed to rise from barren fields overnight. My parents were adjusting to suburban life. They were from the city and this new found freedom was passed along to me. I roamed far and wide on my black three speed English racer. The streets were new. The houses were new. Playgrounds were new. Community pools were new. Everything was orderly and shinny. Everything except for this very old country bookstore in the tiny town of Fallsington. Fallsington was a Quaker farming village that was being swallowed up whole by developers. There was a small bookstore in a cluster of old stone and wood buildings. They sold magazines, and the dirty ones too. Ice cream, candy, straw hats, jars, wine glasses, and many "five and dime" items. It was in this bookstore that I discovered Ian Flemming in paperback. The red cover caught my eye. I didn't know the book. The cover had guns, woman and a man smoking a cigarette. I bought it on an impulse. (Impulse buying is not my thing, but impulse action to the extreme is certainly a hallmark of my behavior.) I don't think the clerk knew what the book was about or that it contained erotic scenes described in the cleanest and clearest language so that this 13 year olds early pubescent hormones raged at the very touch of those rough milled paperback pages!

Having devoured the book several times, I was determined to see the movie. The only problem was you had to be 15 years old and be with a parent. This restriction spurred my desire even more.

One of the benefits of roaming like a wild child animal is you meet plenty of other wild child animals. After relating the gritty details of the book, I was surrounded several eager and equally raging hormonal 13 year olds aching to see James Bond. I mean aching! As luck would have it one of my new friend's brothers worked in the theater as a ticket collector. He was 15 and management wouldn't let him watch the movie unless his parents accompanied. None of us knew an adult who would front as a parent for us.

I hatched a plan. (This is also one of my lifelong skills.) The manager would leave the theater to get lunch at 11:30 and return at 12:30. The film ran from 11:30 to 1:30. My friend's brother had to take tickets for two other movies that started at 11:45 and 12:15 plus he had to remain in the ticket booth while the manager was eating lunch. We needed a time when there weren't many customers and we needed to delay the manager by an hour.

We knew where the manager was going to eat lunch. We designated the youngest, and the least bright, with task of letting out the air of the manager's tires while he ate. I assured him that he would be able to take my book home as compensation for not seeing the movie. I underlined the sexist passages for him. He insisted on taking the book. I gave it to him. I had already moved on to other novels and a skin magazine I was guarding closely by hiding it in the woods near where I found it.

There were very few customers, but we put a closed for emergency repairs sign in the ticket window. Everything was perfect. The manager got into his car. We put up the emergency sign. We ran into the theater and watched the opening credits confident we wouldn't be disturbed.

At 12:30 when Jame Bond was tossing his hat onto the hat tree and Miss. Moneypenny swooned over all the missed chances of love with Bond, a screaming manager yelled for my friends brother. I slid deeper into the chair. My friends brother was fired on the spot. The manager left the theater. My friends in a panic all attempted to escape out the front door where they were captured by the incensed manager.

I watched the rest of the movie convinced that my life should be filled with travel, action, adventure and women. I didn't know what gin tasted like at the time. But first I had to learn a lot. James Bond was smart. School was to be my focus. I wanted to know places and people. I wanted to be suave and rich (neither achieved). But first I needed to escape the theater. I snuck out the emergency exit and emerged into the bright afternoon light with the style of my life etched in stone at the ripe age of 13.

The manager's car never experienced a flat. My younger and less bright friend began reading the passages I underlined and never made it to the diner. My friends ratted me out. My mother received a call from the manager calling me the ring leader and insisting I should be punished severally for watching a racy movie. My mother hung up the phone and asked how I liked the film. I gave her an enthusiastic review and was then promptly grounded. My summer would not be roaming around the freshly minted Levittown on my English racer, but locked in my room reading. This took me to far more exiotic corners of the earth.

That James Bond spirit stayed with me until today. I have sailed around the world several times. I have lived in many countries. I have experience a great many things, including war. Today I write and host an international television about seeing the world through the sailor's eyes. I have written several films and television shows. More to come.