AUTHOR’S NOTE: With this offering, I’m stepping back from my usual rule of posting a story around the middle of every other month. The yarn has been living in my head for quite some time. It came to me several years ago while my wife and I were on a road trip. We were listening to and talking about Jimmy Buffett’s music as we motored across the country. At one point, she jokingly challenged me to write a song that he might sing. As I drove, I composed the verses shown below. Recent events have caused me to post this short tale now.
I’ve always been a Jimmy Buffett fan. Well, that’s only true because I measured my existence from the moment I met my wife. Whatever my life had been before was a blur and surely not worth the pain of remembering. Another story for some other time, perhaps.
Anyway, shortly after we started dating, she suggested going to a Buffett concert. Because I really liked the couple of his songs that came to mind–“Come Monday” and “Margaritaville”–and she, the owner of every one of his albums, obviously loved his music, I readily agreed.
Now, for those of you who’ve never been to his shows, let me explain something. The event is less a concert in the strictest sense of the word and more of a gigantic party. Sure, there’s the man and his band playing fantastic tunes, but it’s also the largest possible gathering of friendly strangers dressed in crazy beach / island attire having fun. Fake parrots resting on shoulders, tattered straw hats, Hawaiian shirts, cutoff jeans, and flip-flops abound. Though not to everyone’s taste, I came to love the experience.
The first of many such performances we attended together was at Bobby Dodd Stadium on the campus of Georgia Tech. It was a double treat for me because Fats Domino opened for him. I’d always loved his music, too. While she knew the words to Jimmy’s songs by heart, I happily sang along with Fats. The entire experience was great fun.
After that, we made a point of seeing Buffett whenever he came through Atlanta. Meanwhile, his “Gulf-Western” tunes, as he described his genre, was constantly drifting through our home. His tunes grew on me as we purchased every new album he put out. I loved the witty, wistful way he played with words in his songs. There was a ready sense of escapist humor to his smartly snarky turns of phrase. He wove together an unforgettable musical mix of country, folk, rock, pop, and calypso into something uniquely his own, while celebrating a distinctively American cast of characters and seaside folkways.
* * *
In the meantime, we bounced along in our married life without a care in the world. At least I thought so. My wife was busy with her career, and I worked hard to build a successful law practice. Maybe I devoted too much to it. Without my realizing it, we drifted apart. One day, she was gone. No explanation, no effort to save things. Just gone.
I felt as though the guts had been kicked out of me. After a while, I chucked my legal career and left Atlanta. I ended up in a small, as-yet-undiscovered-by-the-hoards-of-tourists beach village on the Florida Panhandle. The cash I’d been able to salvage paid for a modest little bungalow there. With the money I earned doing odd handyman jobs, I managed to eat and drink.
Over the years, Buffett’s music stayed with me, comforted and, at the same time, saddened me. It reminded me of my failed marriage. Memories of our times together, carried along on melodies from the Coral Reefer Band, haunted me. Then, for whatever reason, I took it into my head to write the lyrics for a song and submit them to Jimmy for his consideration. The thing was going to be a story of unrequited longing with, hopefully, a touch of his brand of humor.
The man had shown his understanding of lost love in such songs as “Coast of Marseilles” and “He Went to Paris.” As time passed, I’d write some lyrics and then set them aside while I earned margarita and mango daiquiri money.
* * *
Just this morning, I came across my composing efforts as I was getting ready to go get breakfast. My amateurish effort made me smile as I read. But then I thought, What the heck? I tucked the piece of paper I’d been dabbling on into my jeans pocket, hoping inspiration might come to me during the day and help me finish it.
I meandered along the dusty road the short distance to the Wheelhouse Café, a timeworn bar that doubled as the only “restaurant” in town. After ordering my usual repast for that time of day, I pulled my “opus” from its resting place, laid it in front of me, and sipped my coffee.
At that moment, a man departed from the table next to me. He was one of the few out-of-towners who’d discovered our little gem of a hamlet and held out until the last minute to give up on a vacation in paradise before returning to wherever. He left a newspaper behind. Never a person to let things or opportunities go to waste, I reached over and picked it up.
As I perused it, a very sad item caught my attention. The paper reported that Jimmy Buffett had passed away peacefully in his sleep two nights earlier, surrounded, it said, “by his friends, music, family, and dogs.” When I finished reading, I paused and realized that it had happened on Friday night, September 1. I found it incredibly poetic that he died on Labor Day weekend. After all, at a live performance in 1974, Buffett mentioned he had written “Come Monday” the previous year while on tour, as he was “heading up to San Francisco for the Labor Day Weekend show.” He wrote it for his future wife, Jane Slagsvol. It turned out to be his first Hot 100 top 40 hit.
The writeup of his death reminded me of another of his songs, One Particular Harbor. It was a favorite of mine. In it, he sang of a “…Most mysterious calling harbor, So far and yet so near. I can see the day when my hair’s full gray, And I finally disappear….”
Returning to my songwriting efforts, I pushed the coffee aside and called to the owner-operator of the Wheelhouse. “Hey, Jake! Please bring me a margarita!” He gave me an odd look, but smiled and nodded. As I waited, I scanned the words I’d written. They seemed insignificant compared to Jimmy’s body of work.
“…I go to a place
To try to erase
The memories of her
In the songs from the jukebox.
When that old record plays
I go back to the days
When I can recall
The love in spite of it all …
The caress of her fingertips
Curly hair on her forehead dips
The softness of her lips
The curve of her hips
The way her resistance slips.
But when the song gets to the part
Where she swears never to break my heart
The record skips.
When my drink arrived, I hoisted the glass in a silent tribute to Jimmy Buffett, a true “American character,” in the good sense of the term. I’m sure there will be those who disagree with my take on this. But I think we lost a legend, and God gained an angel.
Thanks for all the wonderful memories, Jimmy. And Godspeed. ©
