J. TODD FOSTER: Bargers Take Attempted Pirate Attack With Humor

I’ve often wondered who the principal was behind the acclaimed regional hamburger chain Pal’s Sudden Service. I figured anyone who would decorate the outside of his stores with giant art-deco burgers and wieners had to be the life of the party.

Pal Barger proved me right.

I still haven’t met Mr. Barger but spoke with him by phone Thursday. He and his wife, Sharon, were in Dubai, midway through a 32-day cruise that originated in Rome and ends in Singapore on Dec. 20. They are traveling with fellow Kingsport couple Dr. Howard and Val Donna Mize on Oceania Cruises’ Nautica.

The local quartet is enduring a harrowing, even tragic, version of the “Vacation” movies with Chevy Chase, who headed the Griswold family on a series of humorous misadventures. But instead of getting to Wally World and finding the theme park closed, what the Bargers and Mizes are enduring is no laughing matter. (To top it off, Howard Mize was hospitalized Thursday in Dubai with a kidney stone.)
The bad luck for the Nautica began when a side trip to the Taj Mahal was derailed by mass-murdering terrorists who took nearly 200 innocent lives in Mumbai, India, and wounded nearly 300 others. While the Bargers and Mizes surely were disappointed to miss out on the Taj Mahal, they were safely tucked within the solace of a 593-foot-long luxury liner where passengers outnumber crew members by only a 3-2 margin.

On Nov. 30, however, the cruise just got plain weird. Pal Barger, 78, was standing on the balcony outside his Deck 7 stateroom when he saw two skiffs giving chase. He remembers how strange it was to see six fishermen so far out in the Gulf of Aden in such small boats.

As Barger was pointing out the boats to his wife, the Nautica’s captain announced over the intercom system that these were not fishermen but pirates and that passengers should confine themselves to their rooms or lie down if in an outdoor area. The Somali pirates fired eight rifle shots at the ship but apparently were out of range. The closest that one skiff got to the ship was 300 yards.

The Nautica was able to outrun the pirates and potential disaster was averted in the span of 10 minutes.

Oceania cruises are not cheap, but rather than lament their string of bad luck, the Bargers have resorted to their well-known senses of humor. To them, modern-day pirates don’t represent close calls but great stories to tell the grandkids.

“I always joke,” Pal Barger said. “You always gotta have fun.”

For example, when asked about the moment he realized the fishermen chasing his ship were pirates, Pal responded: “When I looked out and saw an eye patch, a wooden leg and a parrot.”

While I pride myself on my sense of humor, I can only aspire to one day possess the patience and roll-with-the-punches attitude of the Bargers.

Vacation tends to bring out my temper and impatience. Like the time my wife and I visited Greece and Turkey in 2001, just a couple of months before 9-11.

Standing at the gate of The Acropolis of Athens, we learned that the giant tourist attraction, which includes the Parthenon, was closed.

Striking workers had shut down the facility over the equivalent of a dime-an-hour raise. We had traveled nearly 5,000 miles to, in part, visit one of world history’s most culturally important sites and it was shuttered at the last minute over a strike for a pittance. An 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper was tacked to the iron gate at the entrance to The Acropolis. It was the only notification that the site was closed.

Fellow tourists gathered at the gate in disbelief while a Greek worker unapologetically informed us we were not getting inside. Unlike the moose Chevy Chase got to punch in “Vacation,” all I could muster was this: “I hope you guys screw up the 2004 Summer Olympics.”

The Bargers, on the other hand, would have just laughed it off.

“You have to have a sense of humor to have giant food on your buildings,” Pal Barger said.

Added Sharon Barger: “We just let whatever’s going to happen go ahead and happen.”

There’s a moral there for all of us.

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at or (276) 645-2513.