The current deadlock in Congress over the debt ceiling and just about everything else it seems, must appear to some people to be shear lunacy. After all, can’t a bunch of grown men get along, finding ways to move forward for the good of everyone rather than their own selfish interests?
Not if you were a Seafair Pirate.
As I’ve been making my way through my memoirs with my editor hat on this week, I came across Chapter 13, which was actually written three or four years ago when I first started the book (it was supposed to be memoirs of my first 25 years, not 30 as it is now).
It was about a typical Seafair Pirate meeting. Not a specific meeting mind you, but all of them. They were never very different in the years I was in the group, which would be roughly 1982-1990.
The group was divided right down the middle back then. Sound familiar? There were the business pirates (the Ale & Quailers) and the performers (the Pirates). The Ale & Quail Society is the business arm of the group. It does all the business dealings as a non-profit. The Seafair Pirates was actually just the performance arm of the group.
The Ale & Quail is run by an elected president. The Seafair Pirates is run by the captain. The captain had no power in meetings, anymore than the president had power during a performance. You can see the similarities here with our own government.
Things had gotten so bad in the group, and there was such animosity and dissension that the two sides of the group actually sat on different sides of the room. The table was always set up in a “U” shape, with the president and officers at the end, the Ale & Quailers on one side and the Pirates on the other.
We should have all been on Dr. Phil. It never occurred to anyone to call in someone to orchestrate a kiss and make up session. And with the bigger than life personalities in the group, things would never get any better.
So, here’s how a meeting would go. Substitute the words in parenthesis for Congress.
A subject (bill) would come up, say, an invitation to go to a parade or other event. There would be endless discussion (debate) about the pros and cons. Then the vote would come up and nearly always be split right down the middle (deadlock), the business pirates (Republicans) voting against it and the performing pirates (Democrats) voting for it. This happened over and over again in the group.
Somewhere along the way, the Ale & Quailers forgot that performing was why the group was a group in the first place. They never came out as pirates in public, except perhaps at Seafair. But they loved the power of being “real” business people. I say this because most of the business pirates were blue collar workers… machinists, metal workers, assembly line stiffs. Meetings of the Ale & Quail Society was their moment to shine, because obviously their own failed careers were that of being mindless drones in some factory.
Our favorite moments came when they would turn down an event that sounded like a lot of fun. Ordinarily, this would be the death knell of going to it. The group had said no. But the rules of the group left a small window of opportunity. If there were 10 pirates who wanted to go, they could, if they had a captain.
If the sitting captain in the club was an Ale & Quailer, it presented was a bit of a problem because he wouldn’t go against his friend’s votes. However, the performing side, the Pirates, had lots of former captains, and one of them would always step in and “take the feathers” as it was called. Voila! We could now go, even though the club had officially said no.
But there were plenty of other Congressional moments in our small group of 40. While we could now go to the event, the business pirates still got to decide if we could take the Duck, our 8-ton parade vehicle that Seattle Post Intelligencer columnist John Marshall once dubbed the “rolling dumpster.”
They would almost always vote us down on having transportation. And, since it wasn’t a sanctioned event, we couldn’t use the club checkbook to buy drinks or food during our appearance either. A bit of a neener-neener from across the aisle.
This wasn’t a big deal to us. The checkbook was always empty anyway because the Duck was always in need of repairs. We never had any money in the account (sound vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?). But you can read more about that in the memoirs.
Suffice it to say that we just did our own thing. At a meeting we would just look up and down our side, knowing there was 10 of us who would go and we already had a captain standing by. This made the Ale & Quailers furious as we were flying in the face of their spite my face edicts.
This division continued to build until 1990 when those damned pirate performers told the Ale & Quailers to shove it, starting a new group and gutting the organization of 12 of its best pirate entertainers. It was the only time in the 60-year history of the organization that a mutiny had ever happened, but they really brought it on themselves.
Unfortunately, the Seafair Pirates aren’t any different than Congress. Somewhere along the way you lose sight of the true purpose and let the persuasive lure of power seduce you. People who haven’t really amounted to anything in their sorry lives are suddenly thrust into positions where they can control others. Power and the quest for more of it becomes their false gods, and everything they do pays homage to the pursuit of more power and nothing else. Geez, sounds like my last marriage.
If it can happen to a group of 40 volunteers who dressed up as pirates for playtime, it can happen to anyone.
Perhaps we can all take a lesson from the Seafair Pirates. Maybe it’s time for our own mutiny, with our votes. We can kick these guys all out of office for their failure to accomplish what we “hired” them to do. A little mutiny never hurt anyone, especially when there’s more of us than there is of them.
Throw the rascals overboard, says I. Make them walk the bloomin’ plank. I think it’s time to get us a new crew in Washington, and none of them Tea Party idiots, please.
Out on the Treasure Coast, spreading mutinous deeds far and wide from my perch on high,
– Robb