Walk Home Together

Dispatch from Key West 9/2/2023

Well I haven’t looked to see if the flags are at half mast around here but they should be. We are the actual Margaritaville. 

I wouldn’t call myself a Parrothead but I know art when I see it (or hear it) and Jimmy Buffet’s songwriting was exactly that. 

Nothing evokes a time and place better than a well-written song. Margaritaville was released when I was three years old and it never fails to bring back some very clear memories. 

In 1977 my dad was working full time for the state, going to law school at night, and helping his uncle build a house on the weekends. His legal mentor and close friend was Judge Richard Holmes. Judge Holmes owned an unbelievable luxury: a first floor condo in Perdido at the Mariner. We stayed there several times during that era, when I was young enough for my dad to throw me up in the air and catch me, with the smell of shrimp that were beginning to boil coming through the sliding glass door. It’s very possibly my first memory. Wearing a Pink Pony Pub t-shirt that came past my knees and hearing *that song* constantly, whether it was coming from the stereo inside the condo or from the speakers of our navy blue Oldsmobile Cutlass. The Saint Augustine grass was soft and squeaky underfoot when I was shooed outside with a dripping popsicle so as not to stain Mrs. Jackie’s upholstery. 

I don’t think my parents actually drank margaritas though? It was probably Miller High Life ponies for dad and Blue Nun wine for mom. 

In high school I went with a bunch of friends to hear him play at Oak Mountain Amphitheater in Birmingham. But the main thing I recall about that evening is that I successfully slipped unnoticed out of the house wearing my new white Daisy Dukes with the one-inch inseam. If either of my parents saw me they would have sent me right back upstairs to change. But they didn’t.

I’ve got mixed feelings about the business empire that Margaritaville and Jimmy have become. Hotels and resorts and restaurants that are no where near the sandy and charmingly sketchy original iterations. But it all seems to make people happy and since I will happily buy anything with Dolly Parton’s name on it, I don’t have any business being hypocritical. 

Early this morning we walked past the original Margaritaville and the Shrimp Boat Sounds studio. People were already leaving salt shakers at the doors.