Starr Trek (1980)

Photo from this trip (Nancy Andrews collection)

 

Starr Trek

By Susin Shipiro

Sunday News Magazine

September 7, 1980

    Ringo Starr has finished a movie in Mexico called Caveman. He has been there before in Blindman, a spaghetti western. "In every scene, I went from hello to madness. I raped a girl, stabbed her father, shot people left and right," he says of Blindman. In Caveman, he grunts a lot. His cave lady turns out to be Barbara Bach, whom he is marrying.

     I can't say I'm overly thrilled about the match, since my introduction to him was via his former fiancée, an Alabamian named Nancy Andrews, alias my oldest friend. 

    Four months after I met Ringo, I rendezvoused with him and Nancy in Mexico, where he neither grunted nor killed anybody, but he did save my life---kind of. We were puttering around Cozumel when news of a solar eclipse came over the radio. Ringo decided to see the Mayan ruins that lay on the other side of the Yucatan, and four of us climbed into a rented Jeep with maracas and wonky drums with balls attached to strings that bonk against the hollow skins when you shake your wrists. Ringo was playing the things while driving. He is a better drummer than driver. He had already been banned in Monte Carlo for his "daring do" behind the wheel. 

    The paved road gave out 30 miles from the hotel. The Solar Eclipse was warming up. The sky was fuchsia as we chugged along the bumps. "A long way from Liverpool", said Ringo, with his usual firm grasp on the obvious. We passed two men setting up a tripod on the roadside to shoot the Eclipse. "Pardon me", said Ringo, "Are you the Mayan ruins?" The men stare into the Jeep, see this guy wearing racing shades and a lady's tank top on his head, secured with a button that reads, "Watch out for the booga rooga." some caveman.

     A few minutes later, we pass a cow and a bull by a sharp curve. "Are you the Mayan ruins?" Ringo asks which way to Itza. Then the Jeep stalls. After a little coddling, it starts up, then it rolls over and dies. 

    We inspect the beach and the solar descent. Ringo finds a cracked doll's head, a tin can, shells, and seaweed. The night is filled with strange noises far away, grunts. We start to walk back to the main road. The path is strewn with branches and unidentified objects. Bat circle, we hear the steady pound of cows' hoofs in the brush. "Let's sing," Ringo suggests, "or else, cry, whatever."

     After about four hours, we spy a flicker of light. It is the two men with their tripod! They have set up a candlelit plank across two tree stumps, swiping a fresh coconut off a nearby palm, hacked it open with a mini machete, and placed a bottle of tequila at our disposal. They joined us on the star trek, but it was Ringo on automatic pilot who got us through the underbrush and prickly overheads. Eventually, we find the main road. Ringo, doing a knock-me-down tango with inexhaustible energy, fetches a cab, which takes us back to the hotel gratis. 

    A famous face is a famous face. "I knew we'd make it," Ringo says the following afternoon. "I'm going to live till I'm 87." I heard a flash at that moment, a flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder, Mexico's first rain in three months. We pile into a new Jeep, pockets packed with pesos to celebrate our emergence from the jungle intact. There are survivors and survivors, but there is only one Ringo Starr and once upon a time in Mexico, he saved my life --kind of.