Parrotheads

While we aren’t big time Parrotheads, we were always Jimmy Buffet fans. When he died September 1st, it seemed a part of me has slipped away. Not part of my distant youth, but something from my adult life.

The first time we saw him play was at his last outdoor concert in Key West, at the local baseball fields. I remember it was free. We just walked in and sat down. For the life of me, I can’t figure out when it was. Likely the early 1980’s before Mary was born. And I can’t remember why we were in Key West. Probably camping at Long Key, heard about the concert, and drove down for the day. Grant forgets the details too. Proust, with his cup of tea, we are not.

The second concert we went to was at the Knight’s Center in Miami. A few days before, we were at the Peaches Record Store (now a Hustler Hollywood Store) on Sunrise Boulevard. Grant was buying whatever we’d come in for, and I was perusing the bulletin board. Wow, do my children or grandchildren know what records or bulletin boards are? In any case, a notice on the board said something like, “Going to the Jimmy Buffet concert? Don’t drive. Take the Buffet Bus,” and had those tear-off tags with a phone number. Buffet concert? Buffet bus? It was around my birthday, so I said I wanted to go to the concert and take the Buffet Bus.  An instant present. I tore off a tag.

How did we buy our tickets? Peaches had them for sale. We got the only ones left, in the last row. Then, at home, I used our landline, 305-525-9971, to call the Buffet Bus to reserve 2 seats. It was a bunch of buddies who’d decided to hire a van and driver, so they could drink their little hearts out, and their livers. As they invited more and more friends, they needed a bigger and bigger vehicle. They ended up with a huge bus and enough extra seats to advertise at Peaches for more paying riders. We reserved ours.

The ride to Miami was an alcoholic blur. At the center, there were no such seats with the numbers our tickets showed. Eventually, the security guards, who wouldn’t let us just sit in the aisle, found us a spot. Whose, I didn’t ask. The concert was as much fun as expected. Afterwards, our Buffet Bus picked us up right at the front door. No pesky walking to any parking garage.

But, on the way home, disaster struck: we’d run out of booze, somehow managing to drink all that was aboard the bus. Not to worry, we made a quick stop at a ghetto 7-11 in Overtown. ¡Ay, yi,yi! Overtown was a really rough area in those days. May still be. But one cheerful buddy jumped off with cash in hand, ran in the store, and emerged with a case of beer. Without getting robbed, shot, or killed. We were impressed. A toast to the Buffet Bus and its creators. We survived the hangover.

Our third concert was years later. I’d heard Jimmy was playing at the then-named Bank Atlantic Center. Ah ha, tickets as a surprise for Grant’s birthday. I noted the opening day and time of ticket sales and was on my computer ready to buy the second they were available. 10:00 AM, the day of the sale, I hit “buy tickets, best available” on the TicketMaster website. The best I could do was about the 5th row, upper deck, facing the stage. All the floor was gone, sold to people whose computers got ahead of me in line. At least we had tickets.

When we got to out seats, I realized everyone looked like us: old hippies. Not a person under 50, all grey to white haired, mostly in aloha shirts. Our peeps. People who been young adults in the 60’s. Soon, someone lit up a joint. And what did I hear? “Hey, you can’t smoke here.” What? These old farts were now afraid of a secondhand high? I shook my head in wonder.

Good bye to a man who became a billionaire bringing pleasure to his customers. Would that a few other titans of industry were of his caliber.