Barnacle Bill

For the first few minutes you feel a little uneasy. It's all so familiar. Admiral being given an award for service. Sits down to tell his story. Bystanders kind of talk in unison, mumble questioningly on cue. Corny serious--you can see the script in big letters in your mind. "My family has been in nautical circles ever since we can remember," says Alec Guinness thoughtfully. And the scene dissolves into an Alec Guinness caveman paddling his primitive canoe-thing around in little circles.

And pretty soon you realize that this straight-faced world is slightly magic around the edges. Evil is a man in a striped suit and derby hat who tries to destroy dreams. He is a dictatorial mayor and selfish capitalist and doesn't believe that Sandcastle Pier is a boat. Of course it is. We registered it under the laws of the new country of Liberama. And it makes so many people happy that way.

Alec Guinness is king of this world, moving about (into the middle of traffic or otherwise) with a perfect, beautiful composure. He would have loved to have been a sailor, but he gets seasick all the time, so he has to make do without actual water. But everything else is the same. In his home on the pier, a boardwalk fun house tilted 45 degrees, he sleeps in a hammock, serves coffee to plump lady guests, catches them tactfully by the knees when they slide off their tilted chairs, and paces the floor (with some difficulty on the uphill and a kind of run downhill).

But this world has a fragile dignity. Every once in a while the admiral smiles a strange wry little smile. The sailor's dance in the background is sometimes played on soft bells.

It may be that reading period or your native sophistication has made you just a little too grown up for this. It disintegrates with the first unkind breath, and the actors become paper dolls, the story silly.

But the chances are good that when the passengers aboard Sandcastle Pier set sail, when they celebrate their hero's return by jumping up and down, that you will be grinning as delightedly as they are. Perhaps you understand why the admiral, alone and adrift on a portion of boardwalk, with cotton in his ears to prevent seasickness, quietly refuses offers of help.