A Pirate Looks At 50
Article by Jimmy Buffett from "The Mens Journal" ~ Dec. 1997


Tomorrow I turn 50. A simple sentence but a mind-boggling thought for a war baby like me. After I came into the world in Mobile, Alabama, on Christmas Day in 1946, this is more or less how it went:

I broke out of the grip of Catholicism and made it through adolescence without killing myself in a car.
I flunked out of Auburn University
I learned to play the guitar
Lived on the beach in Panama City
Moved to New Orleans's French Quarter
Finally got laid, and didn't go to Vietnam
I enrolled at the University of Southern Mississippi, started a band, got a job on Bourbon Street, graduated from college
Broke up my band, and went out on the road solo
I signed a record deal with Barnaby Records, got married, moved to Nashville, bought a Mercedes, worked at Billboard
Put out my first album (Down to Earth), went broke
Met Jerry Jeff Walker, wrecked the Mercedes, got divorced, and moved to Key West
I sang and worked on a fishing boat, went totally crazy, did a lot of dope
Met the right girl, made another record, had a hit ("Come Monday")
Bought a boat, and sailed away to the Caribbean
I started another band, worked the road, had my second and last hit ("Margaritaville")
Bought a house in Aspen, started spending my summers in New England
Got married, broke my leg three times in one year
Had a baby girl, made more records, bought a bigger boat, and sailed away to St. Barts
I got separated from the right girl, sold the boat, sold the house in Aspen, moved back to Key West
Worked the road and made more records
I rented an apartment in Paris, learned to fly, went to therapy, quit doing dope
Bought my first seaplane, flew all over the Caribbean, almost got a second divorce
Moved to Malibu for more therapy, and got back with the right girl
I worked the road, moved back to Nashville
Bought a summer home on Long Island, had another baby girl, and bought the perfect seaplane
I moved back to Florida, built a house on Long Island, had a baby boy
Crashed the perfect seaplane in Nantucket, tried to slow down a little
Woke up one morning and I was looking at 50.

Here's the plan:

We'll have Christmas at home in Key West. Then, to celebrate my half-century mark, I will fly my Grumman Albatross seaplane to the Cayman Islands with my son, Cameron Marley
It will be our first father-and-son trip.
My wife, Jane, and our daughter Sarah Delaney will be flown down the next day in my Citation Jet to meet us in San José, Costa Rica.
In preparation for our adventure and for my fiftieth birthday, I went back to the cedar-lined steamer trunk in my basement in Long Island, where I store a considerable collection of notebooks, cocktail napkins, mildewed memo pads, and sparsely filled binders. These are the stories that have made up my songs and my life, and I go back to them from time to time for ideas.
What I know for sure is that there are a lot of smart middle-aged people but not many wise ones. That comes with "time on the water," as fishermen say.
We all could use a few more minutes out there.
I come from a moderately dysfunctional background that was topped off by 12 years of parochial education. Nobody ever taught me about sex or anything relating to it. I learned from locker-room bullshit and Playboy. That is not the kind of gear you want stuffed into your emotional backpack as you venture into the valley of marriage, but it was all I had.
Jane Buffett and I have had a wild and wonderful relationship from the day we met at the Chart Room Bar in Key West in 1973. But her backpack was just as useless as mine, and we found ourselves in trouble.
I went, with her and without her, to several therapists over the years - which for a Southern male is like having root canal and an IRS audit in the same afternoon. But I fooled them, and myself
I acted my way through the ordeal.

One morning after Jane and I broke up for the second time, I was bobbing on a longboard in the Pacific, south of Laguna Beach, when I got my wake-up call. When I'm surfing, the only thing on my mind is the ocean, but that morning, my meditative state was broken by a buoy near the Dana Point Shipyard. In between clangs of the bell, I heard a little voice talking to me. It said, "You haven't given this your best shot."
It was the truth and I knew it. I called Jane and told her I wanted to give our marriage one last, honest chance. I wound up at the Santa Monica office of Paul Tobias. Paul was unlike any therapist I had talked to. He's a pilot and a fly-fisherman, so I trusted him. More importantly, he knew my act and called me on it every time.
One day, I was trying to justify some kind of pretzel logic, still clinging to the notion that I didn't need much help, when Paul interrupted me and said:
"Jimmy, your life is not a performance. Your performance is a part of your life."
I rambled on some more and then it happened - DING, DING, DING. From the well of my soul that voice finally screamed, "Get it, asshole!"
Call it a breakthrough, a revelation, or whatever, but that day changed my life and I am pretty sure saved my marriage.

Jimmy Buffett



KEY WEST ~ JUKEBOX ~ SCUBA ~ WOODRO ~ COOL STUFF ~ RAUBYN ~ CHIP ~ WE MET JIMMY!

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