The "A Fan Reflects On Jimmy" Story

It was an ordinary day.  I, once again, was reading a story in my morning newspaper about...you might have guessed it... Jimmy Buffett.  It was written by AP National Writer Ted Anthony giving the news of Jimmy's death over the Labor Day weekend.  Ted wrote that "for so many of us, the 76-year-old Buffett embodied something we wish we could hold onto ever so tightly as the world grows more complex: the promise of an eternal summer of sand, sun, blue salt water and gentle tropical winds."  Oh...for a lifetime at the beach.  My wife and I had the good fortune to travel for many years to the Caribbean Islands on vacation.  We spent every hour we could sitting on the beach, catching the sun's rays and relaxing in the warm waters of the ocean...all the things that Jimmy sang about in his songs.  We loved the gentle tropical winds that were the background music to Jimmy's songs.  It was as if he were there on the beach with us.  His devil-may-care attitude became our lifestyle for those many weeks that we spent in paradise.  I'm not sure how many cheeseburgers or tropical drinks we consumed  during those summer vacations, but we did our share of having a good time while in Paradise.  The lifestyle we adopted during our vacation time was one that Jimmy sang about in his many tunes.  We enjoyed the "unplugging" that Jimmy sang about, but I must admit that we weren't the type to be wasting away in Margaritaville.  A tropical drink here and there were enough for our old tropical souls.  His care free way of living is hard to resist, I must admit, but "Come Monday", life is more than a Margaritta when we had to head back to the States and check into the workforce once again.  I must admit that relaxing on the beach day after day after day is like wasting away again in Margarittaville, or at least as my wife and I see it.  We really could have lived in Jimmy's endless summers.  Anything would have been better than Jimmy's "four lonely days in that brown LA haze."  For Carol and I, the sand-covered edge of the land that Jimmy so adored, was the edge of civilization that Jimmy sang about.  As Ted Anthony wrote in his article, the beach has stood in for informality and relaxation in American popular culture for more than a century, propelled by the early Miss America pageants on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.  Jimmy jumped aboard and became the conductor and chief engineer of it's gently rebellious counterculture.  He was hardly a critical darling, but he was, as he sang, "a pirate, 200 years ago too late" who believed that latitude directly impacted attitude.  That accounted for a lot of the mass appeal of Jimmy Buffett.  I, for one, will miss Jimmy and his songs which are so easy to sing along with and so easy to memorize.  Someone wrote, "Who will be the next Jimmy Buffet?"  The answer is a resounding "NO ONE."  Jimmy was one of a kind and I will forever miss him and his music.  RIP Jimmy!!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.