By: Chuck Miller
Writing

Edward Everett Hale might have some thoughts on this.

How would you like to escape the United States for up to four years?

There’s actually an option. It will only cost you $200,000.

According to this news article, a cruise line is offering travelers a year-long – or four-year-long, if you know what I mean – trip away from the United States. You would sail on a luxury cruise ship and visit hundreds of ports of call around the world.

And you would be as far away from what’s about to happen to the United States for as many years as you deem necessary.

Gee, a way to escape the country for an extended period of time? How come nobody ever thought of that?

Well … yeah … someone did.

Novelist Edward Everett Hale wrote a short story along those lines. The story, The Man Without a Country, told of a soldier who, upon trial for treason in the early 1800’s, tells the judge he never wishes to set foot in the United States ever again. The judge grants the soldier’s wish, allowing the soldier to live the rest of his life on various naval boats, with no mention of America or anything going on with it.

The story has been adapted several times for movies, for radio and for television. Here’s Bing Crosby in a radio dramatization from 1947.

There’s actually a musical version of this story, as provided by this 1953 radio broadcast that stars Gordon MacRae.

And if you have about 90 minutes to spare, here’s a 1973 film dramatization of The Man Without a Country, as portrayed by Cliff Robertson and Beau Bridges.

But even if you do consider this year-long (or four-year-long) cruise, I just want you to remember that four years ago, there was a cruise that made world headlines.

That was the cruise ship where some of the passengers contracted COVID-19 – and weren’t allowed to return to the United States, because the president at that time felt that if that ship returned to port in the USA, then the amount of COVID-19 deaths attributed to his administration would rise, and he just didn’t want that.

Remember?

So I would say … if you’re going to take a vacation … instead of a four-year cruise around the world …

Maybe consider a three-hour tour from Hawaii. Small boat, maybe yourself, a millionaire and his wife, a movie star, a couple of other people…

I mean, what could possibly go wrong there?