The Start of My Real Life Goonies Adventure
Coincidentally, it Begins in Astoria, Oregon
The Goonies was and is a magical movie. A group of kids on a crazy adventure to find One Eyed-Willy’s pirate treasure. As an eight-year old, I couldn’t get enough of it. As an only child, letting your head run around with day dreams wasn’t an idle pass time, but practically a business.
These days, I’ve returned to the film. Not just because I’m stuck inside around the clock and seem to be breaking a record for running through Netflix content, but because The Goonies have taken on a new and different shape in my life within the last year.
There aren’t many things I’m willing to get out of bed before 10 AM, let alone 5AM, for. But, when you get a call from your best friend imploring you to fly across the country because they have a pirate map and a legacy to uphold, you drag your ass out of bed, chug a few cups of coffee and suck it up.
And so about a year ago, it was in the wee hours of the morning that I stumbled out of my bed, Amanda rolled off my futon, and Chris… Well, who knows what Chris was doing on his part of the voyage to Oregon. We’re based up in Boston, while he’s in DC and as this whole little jaunt was at his behest, I can only assume he was positively prancing to the airport.
About eight hours, a few more cups of coffee and a crick in my neck later, I (sort of) woke up to find myself once again in the Pacific Northwest. It was flannel and Warby Parkers as far as the eye could see. Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein were right, the dream of the nineties was still alive in Portland. One car ride later, we found our way to the misty gray fog of Astoria, Oregon. Not only was this the aforementioned setting for The Goonies, but also the town Chris grew up in.
The Astoria you see in the movie isn’t unlike the Astoria that I’ve come to know. It’s quiet and sleepy with little houses decorating a hilly terrain that overlooks the sea. You can find the same waves crashing against huge rocks in a way that’s both beautiful and foreboding. In the evenings, when the sun deigns to sink below the clouds as it sets, a warm glowing light shoots through the coastline. The perfect place to start an adventure.
While Chris, Amanda, and my adventure hasn’t taken us through any caves (yet), it did start with a map and so this is how we found ourselves sitting in Chris’ dad’s living room, an earth-toned, wallpapered space, with a backtrack of yapping dachshunds. With cameras and sound equipment turned on, ready to devour a tale for the ages.
The drunk history version goes something like this…
Once upon a time… Kidding, but not… There was a man named Captain Henry Morgan. Yep, the guy from the rum bottle. Prior to being deemed the patron saint of wasted college freshman, he was actually a Welsh buccaneer. As I’ve come to learn, a buccaneer is apparently just a pirate who has been granted a license to, you know, pirate around.
So, our buddy, Henry, is sailing along, happy as a clam, and gets word from his main man, Colonel Sir Thomas Modyford, to go forth and pillage and plunder, as Spain had ordered attacks on the English in the Caribbean. Henry, being quite an enterprising young gentleman, manages to take several islands and finally occupies Fort San Lorenzo. This is all on his way to his most famous attack on Old Panama City. After downgrading 1400 of his men from ships to canoes and schlepping their way down a river for about a month, they met around 1600 opposing troops. Sounds like quite the pickle, but Henry had the creme de la crop when it came to his 1400 versus the inexperienced rag tag team of 1600 Spanish troops.
Fresh off a pillage, the main mission was a plunder. The downside for Morgan and his men was that Panama’s governor would sooner burn the city to the ground rather than see Morgan make away with his loot, hence all those barrels of gunpowder he lined the city with and then set ablaze. The upside for Morgan and his men was that, while indeed most of the treasure was lost in the fire, there was still solid chunk of change to grab, which they did.
You’ll probably find this completely shocking, but Henry Morgan was quite the stingy old bastard. The crew were left largely discontent as he kept the largest share for himself. Never the less, time marches forward and the next move for Henry and his un-merry men was to head on back to Jamaica. There was one massive problem when they arrived back there though.
While Morgan was dawdling about, planting his flag on people’s lawns all over Panama, the Treaty of Madrid was signed, sealed and… well, not really delivered. That’s the problem with conducting war in 1671. No Twitter. His return to Jamaica was generally met with positive reviews except for one major one from the British crown. I imagine the conversation would gone something like this:
Charles II: Henry, my man! What is up? It’s been forever.
Henry: You’re telling me, wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through lately. The ransacking, the thievery. It’s exhausting-
Charles II: Yes, well Henry, that sounds trying bu-
Henry: -oh Lord, and do you even know what it’s like traveling via canoe? Three hundred grumpy men down the Chagres for a month. The absolute whinging-
Charles II: Yeah. Tragic. Hey listen, one quick thing.
Henry: Uhhh, sure? What’s up?
Charles II: Well, see, there’s just this small matter of a treaty.
Henry: Treaty?
Charles II: Yeah… We ahh, kinda signed a treaty with the Spanish while you were away.
Henry: Well now, how was I to know that? Twitter isn’t even going to be invented for at least another two hundred and thirty odd years!
Charles II: No bro! It’s totally not a huge deal. I mean, the Queen Regent of Spain is a bit grumpy and all, but, how about this. You come back to England, we just need to iron out a few details, fill out some paperwork, and put a show on for the Spanish. I know, the red tape, amirite?
And so that was it. Henry returned to England, was incarcerated and tried for his heinous crimes. He rotted to death in prison.
PSYCH!
Let’s not be silly. Henry Morgan was a privateer and plantation owner. He had status and fat stacks. There was no way he was going to suffer through an appropriate punishment. After returning to England and getting a few slaps on the wrist to quell the anger of the Spanish, he returned to Jamaica and lived out his days as a lieutenant governor.
Which brings me to the missing piece of the story…
After we hit the record button on our equipment, Chris’ dad shared this tale up through the sacking of Panama. The detail the history books leave out about the lump of treasure is that before returning to Jamaica and later England, Henry’s patrol stole away whilst being sent out to sack the surrounding towns and hid the loot. Worried about Spanish reinforcements, he opted to head back rather that spend time and effort to grab the relatively small cache of loot. Only one crew member drew a map to it, which Henry then took.
Prior to his death, Henry Morgan adopted his nephew and bequeathed everything in his estate to him, including that map. Eight generations later, the map has stayed in the family, and on that cloudy muggy day a year ago, in a room adorned in pictures of the very dachshunds that wouldn’t shut up, it sat before me, Amanda, Chris and his dad as the story was rattled out to us.
I frequently sat around like Mikey did in The Goonies, bemoaning that, “Nothing exciting ever happens around here anyway,” but now, the three of us have our very own version of One-Eyed Willy’s pirate treasure. The Goonies was an amazing fantasy-scape and in real-life, we get to go on that escape together. No matter whether we find anything or not, we all get an adventure.
