We got a tough one from the Chinese Thread with which we attempt to keep up. Tom Wade is a regular contributor, and it was his headline from last night that set things up. His note went like this:

“Shipmates, Tonight, legions of Jimmy Buffett fans, in America and around the world, will be having a hamburger and margarita to celebrate his life. – Tom.”

We thought that would be the Big Deal and Story of the Day. Accordingly, we are throughly confused this afternoon. Actually, we are more technically characterized as “disoriented.” That is not an unusual circumstance on The Patio at Big Pink, but there are a couple unusual aspects to this one, and a couple events to report that shook us down to the ground. The first is the one that had us around last night’s time of retreat: Jimmy Buffett left us. He lasted to just about average middle age, which is about what we all can strive for.in these confused days. Marlow, our departed master motorcycle rider, had been in Buffett Heaven in Key West. After getting some bad health news, he moved on to the Coastal Empire for better access to medical specialists in Charleston.

We rented that apartment for the better part of a year, hoping retirement and the Southernmost Point in the United States would somehow coincide.

Regrettably, they did not. But we were never far from the sound of Mr. Buffet, whose tunes and trail-ways colored that part of our tropical life better than any other. Did we know him? Not in the conventional manner. But we can certainly still carry a tune, and our hearts are saddened with news of Jimmy’s passing.

The Patio crowd literally burst into song. You know many of them: “Cheeseburger in Paradise” is a compilation of thirty old Keys classics including “Son of a Sailor,” which played for a hundred days in one of those Gulf Wars we fought. Sad to see his passing, he gave joy to millions.

Jimmy was a singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Fins” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76.

His death was announced in a statement on his website. The statement did not say where he died or specify a cause. We can’t prove it as a vaxx, so we won’t even mention the possibility although Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have some thoughts on that.

Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as “Gulf and western” — a play on the name of the conglomerate Gulf & Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, as well as nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics.

His songs tended to be of two main types: wistful ballads like “Come Monday” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and clever up-tempo numbers like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Some were both, like “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a 1978 homage to Mr. Buffett’s seafaring grandfather, written
with the producer Norbert Putnam.

“I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/Son of a son of a sailor,” he sang. “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”

So, you can see that this man summed up a lot of our lives and a lot of our personal histories.

The reason this is late on the uptake is that more than one person died yesterday, and regardless of how important Mr. Buffett’s life was in relation to another individual who passed away only hours later. That is Former Secretary of Energy and Member of Congress Bill Richardson. You can see this was way too complicateed way too soon. We showed Bill a good part of our world. Some of us had Congressional accounts while workig for the Navy’s office of Legislative Affairs. Bill was our favorite Congressman, and he features nicely in our next book, currently titled “A Little Traveling Music.”

Where did we travel to? That too gets a little confusing, since it includes several nations in the Caribbean, in the Balkan Wars a little after 9/11 and all over Asia. Those places included Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam China and North and South Korea. Bill was not only a congressional guy but his service in unscrambling the MIA/POW issues with the Viets was sufficient to get him elevated to Secretary of Energy. We stopped by to see him one time after we were done with the 103rd and 104th Congresses. Once we were retired from Government Service, we saw him when he was U.N. Ambassador.

Like Jimmy Buffett (and us!), he was mid-seventies in age when he departed, and his loss saddens us greatly. His service as Governor of the State of New Mexico, his home turf, at a big conference in his home state. He saw us, and took a few minutes to describe what we had done to the crowd. Together.

There as more, of course. We got a Nobel Peace Prize laureate released from jail in Burma. We may have been the key element in normalizing relations with Vietnam. We lost 53,000 Americans in that conflict, and ending it may be the best thing we did in that shopworn decade. But two things are certain on this sunny afternoon: we have lost two of the giants in music and diplomacy whose like we are not going to see for a while. God bless them both! Look for more on Ambassador Richardson coming tomorrow, and on publication of the next Socotra House book!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com