Remembering on second anniversary of Buffett’s death
More than a little sad, what a deadly form of skin cancer can do to not only a musical artist, but to his many fans as well.
Such is my current broken state of musicality when it comes to one of my favorite singer-songwriters of many years gone by — the late, great Jimmy Buffett.
When I first caught on to his salt-water music, he had just hit it big with “Margaritaville.”
It is a song that actually came to him while hanging out with a friend one late afternoon at an Austin bar, drinking a margarita, while waiting to catch a flight back to Florida.
At the time, January of 1977, I was living in the frozen winter tundra of Southern Wisconsin, trying to finish college and start my career as a commercial pilot/flight instructor.
Scraping ice off the wings before taking to the air was no fun.
When I got home, half frozen because my 1966 Mustang convertible car heater didn’t work, and I didn’t have the money to buy a new heater core, I’d put on Buffett’s LP, Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, and pretend I was where Jimmy was hanging out — the warm sunny climate of Key West.
One day, I thought to myself, I will get out of these cold climes, which is why I came to South Texas in ’79, which wasn’t Key West, but it sure was a lot warmer than the Midwest.
The first year I spent as a flight instructor in Chicago during the winter of 1978/1979 at the old Palwaukee Airport, since renamed Chicago Executive, was one of the coldest the city had seen in decades. Even listening to Jimmy Buffett didn’t help keep me warm, nor did the cramped Cessna 150 cockpit, with both the student and me bundled up in heavy coats.
Then in April of ’79, a great uncle told me about a job at Hunt Pan Am at the Brownsville Airport. They needed a flight instructor, charter pilot, so I flew down for the interview, quit my Chicago job, and let the good times roll.
That first winter was the best. I remember a trip in January of 1980. I dropped off some passengers in Houston and was flying back to Brownsville at night, alone, with the full moon shining bright.
I tuned into a Chicago AM radio station, the old WLS, which I could pick up on the ADF (area direction finder) navigation radio, which worked of the same band as AM radio, and listened to the Chicago weather report: a high of 2 degrees for the following day.
Hah. The weather forecast for South Texas was 78 degrees.
Life couldn’t get any better as I followed the gulf shoreline south, watching the waves below lap onto the beach.
Jimmy Buffett was my hero. Because without his songs about warm weather and a gentle surf egging me on, I may have stayed in Chicago. The career path from lowly flight instructor to flying a Lear as a co-pilot and then a captain was maybe only three years in the making, four, since Priester Aviation was one of the biggest charter outfits around; and the way most of their pilots started out was as a flight instructor. The company promoted from within.
It's just that I could no longer tolerate the cold weather.
Skin Cancer Sucks
Over the last four decades, I always had Jimmy Buffett music within reach. If had the blues, any one of his old songs could cheer me up. Close my eyes while the music was playing and I would instantly be mentally transported to some tropical beach, feeling a gentle breeze blowing against my skin, while the palm trees swayed, the temperature always perfect — 80 degrees maybe.
Or I’d be on a sailboat, sailing into some tropical port.
A Pirate Looks at 40, Son of a Son of a Sailor, Tin Cup Chalice, or all the songs from his album, A1A, the feel-good music never stopped when you had a Buffett album nearby. Or an 8-track from back in the day.
Worship the sun, get as tan as you can, hit the beach every chance you get, and the good times will never end.
But they do and did for Jimmy.
Next Monday will be the second anniversary of his death at the age of 76.
The cause, a form of skin cancer more malignant than melanoma – Merkel cell carcinoma, which is usually caused by long-term sun exposure.
Thankfully, it’s rare, with less than 3,000 people in the U.S. diagnosed with it each year. (Source: hartfordhospital.org).
With the climate changing, though, the cases are increasing, which should come as no surprise. Like the appearance of so many Great White sharks now spotted off the coast of Maine, the old days aren’t the new days when it comes to weather, nature, skin cancer.
From the Hartford Hospital entry: “Merkel cells are found in the top layer of skin and are closely related to nerve endings.
“Merkel cell carcinoma often happens when something – and we believe that to be exposure to UV rays from the sun – causes the cells to grow out of control,” says Dr. Naka. “It’s generally found on sun-exposed areas such as the head and neck, or on the arms and legs.
“It presents as a rapidly enlarging, pink or skin-color growth in areas most exposed to UV rays. The growth is painless but firm,” she explains.
Not to mention extremely deadly.
Several years before Jimmy Buffett died, not yet knowing death was so near, his daughter, Savannah Buffett, started recording him singing some of his old favorites, playing his six-string acoustic, taking the time to tell the stories behind the songs, many of them autobiographical to varying degrees.
In one of them, he mentions his age, early 70s, saying he hopes to make it to 90.
If only. Sadly, the fact that it was skin cancer that killed him has taken some of the shine off the sunny beaches and their allure.
RIP, son of a son of a sailor. Now, I’m going to have to take some time out and go listen to one of Buffett’s songs. I think “Cowboy in the Jungle” will do the trick.
“Steel band in the distance, and their music floats across the bay…”