Wastin’ away one last time

Salt and more in his margarita

When I reached for my phone this morning, I had notes from many people—some of whom I rarely correspond with—eulogizing Jimmy Buffett. After the third one, I figured out he had passed away over night.

I remember the summer of 1977, hating every single moment as a coop student at the General Accounting Office because auditors were the enemy. I shared an apartment absurdly far from my office because one of the only three women in the GAO regional office had a sister seeking a roommate at the same time I was. At that age, what is another hour of driving every morning and another in the evening? It was a typical suburban apartment complex with a sliding glass door onto the balcony but we never opened it because of the summer heat. We had virtually no furniture as neither had money for something that optional.

I think it was mid-June when Buffett’s delightful calypso-seque, twangy sound began echoing in our apartment frequently. I had never heard of the guy before this Margarittavile tune. I never drank margaritas—still have never had a single one—but it was a funny image of some guy cutting his foot on a pop top and cruising back home.

You know the rest of the song. It suited both our generation and the times of the late 1970s when we were all trying to think past Vietnam which had ended just over two years earlier. We were figuring out what was ahead in our lives. We were seeking answers but didn’t want to ask the right questions out loud. Buffett’s mischievous, sexy ‘70s mustache and music was a welcoming diversion and, seemingly, guidepost.

Today’s obituary, however, led to a different image of Buffett I had missed when the 2018 New York Times highlighted a completely different man by that name. The superb title was ‘Jimmy Buffett Does Not Live the Jimmy Buffett Lifestyle’. Wait. Seriously? Before reading it, I assumed the article would tell me he was barely able to function drunk or pretty lucky to be a recovering alcoholic or something.

Instead, Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s piece unmasked a savvy businessman worth an estimated $550 million, more in line with his ‘cousin’ Warren Buffett. That is most definitely not the image I had for this guy’s future in 1977. Not by a long shot. I didn’t wish him to be broke on the beach on the Redneck Riviera but I thought he was just an entertainer making it from gig to gig. Silly me, as usual.

I suspect that my 1970s image is also what so many folks had who went into memory mode after hearing the news of his passing.The 1970s were a tough period for this country plagued with stagflation, gas lines, the twin national self-examinations of Nixon’s crimes and the Vietnam conflict, and fears of too many things we could no longer explain or seemingly control. Buffett’s suggestion of Margaritaville as a possible haven induced by fru-fru drinks with salt on the glasses, flip flops all year long, and sailing away from things we did not want to address sounded pretty bloody good at times. That he sang many whimsical lyrics with his Coral Reefer Band was just additional benefit.

Most of us did not focus on the shift in this lifestyle to include branding his image on hotels (sound familiar?), restaurants and even booze as he he authored a string of books and even a Broadway play. That transformation was a man on a mission. The two obituaries I saw actually both referred to his net worth being many, many times bigger than one might have expected, perhaps situating Jimmy in the billionaire league.

Yet that is not what attracted us. People preferred the image of a xylophone-induced smile his music and antics in his songs evoked. That was what we wanted to recall and hope we could somehow recreate from our earlier selves. There is nothing wrong with that but it is a chimera, of course, for the aging among us.

Rest in Peace, Jimmy. You provided us a great escape while you amassed smiles, dollars and successes of which we didn’t really need to know.

Thank you for reading Actions Create Consequences. Please feel free to circulate this to anyone who might enjoy their minds drifting back to Jimmy Buffett’s music or to those who did not have the luck of hearing his ditties, or you can restack via the button below.

Have a restful weekend, hopefully with family and friends. The snow is coming before too long, isn’t it? Be well. FIN

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, ‘Jimmy Buffett Does Not Live the Jimmy Buffett Lifestyle’, NYTimes.com, 8 February 2018, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/arts/jimmy-buffett-does-not-live-the-jimmy-buffett-lifestyle.html