One of the biggest problems I've had in my life and I assume it has been a big problem for a great deal of people, is not that I can't find something to do with my life but rather I have far too many occupations and pastimes I want to pursue. So far I've had two careers in my thirty years and am constantly wondering just how to squeeze the other ten into the next fifty. Besides for working the Oil Rigs in the North Sea, CIA case officer, Presidente of a small South American country and writing the great American novel I have always wanted to be a cowboy.
I assume we all wanted to be one at some time in our lives however I actually had the opportunity and didn't seize it, probably one of the biggest regrets in my life to date. A friend whom I played hockey with in college, a friend who owned a horse ranch in the western plains of Saskatchewan asked me one summer to head our with him and work the range. He'd teach me how to rope, ride; I'd have my own set of spurs, white Stetson, Charlie Dunn boots and a constant lip of Copenhagen. I probably would have developed that Duke Wayne swagger and a constant pensive look on my face as tan and tough as saddle leather. At the time I just couldn't picture spending more than a few months away from the ocean which was always my first love and I turned the offer down.
Who knows if I ever would have come back, and maybe right now I'd be walking back to my home in the snow where a pretty little petite Canadian woman was keeping the fire warm and my boys were skating on the pond waiting for their old man to return to show them the ropes with a little two on one action in my old Bauers before they hit the rack while Bernadette and I laid under bear skin pelts making more Gordie Howes.
Instead I am laying in my bed with Mondrain and Lichtenstein paintings on the walls, Tom Ford's best in the closet and Le Courbusier chairs in the living room a block off of Central Park after two hours of Vinyasa Yoga. Bernadette's pale skin and makeup-less homemaker face is supplanted by an intense professional woman's scent lingering on my sheets next to a nightstand with a cell phone and two Blackberrys. In no way am I complaining but there is and will always be a part of me that knows I would be much happier out there in the elements, instead my Porsche there'd be real horsepower under my legs and my white Stetson wouldn't just be collecting dust in a cramped NY closet.
Whenever that part of me arises I throw this old favorite tune on and think about what could have been. Jimmy Bufffett is a punchline anymore. A man who at one time chased a single woman around for over a decade and dedicated every album to her (he would eventually land her), a man who lived a life of real pirates, drinkers, writers and cowboys has now been changed into a brand name; a fantasy for a bunch of beyond middle aged stiffs he would have never looked at twice thirty years ago. However, the sad whore-like person he has become should not belittle his first few albums, the only true music that the man has ever made. The albums: A White Sport Coat and Pink Crustacean, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, and A1A represent the foundation for county/folk/beach escapism music that would eventually get bastardized into the junk Kenny Chesney floods the market with. I return to those three albums every once in a while and remind myself of the beauty old Jimbo used to put out before he sold his soul for another billion dollars.
Combine both my longing to be a cowboy and his early uncanny sound and you can see why "Livingston's Gone to Texas" is one of my favorite Buffett songs. The lyrics are heartfelt and supposedly about a friend who ran off to do just what I am always thinking about. The strings mush up the arrangement a little but the slippery pedal and simple acoustic guitar and piano bring it all back in. When the percussion changes at the line They said he learned to be a cowboy, they said he learned to rope and ride... it hits me straight and right there I always resign to stop whatever I am doing and hop on a Greyhound straight for Van Horn.
And if you have no desire to buy that ticket and head out west with me in the near future check out the three albums mentioned, they are what made the brand what it is well before sold out shows at Fenway Park and chain restaurants at Disney World. These albums (just like the cover of one) are a man in cut off jeans sitting under a palm tree drinking a Michelob in his own little paradise fantasy world and throwing them on is your own vacation to the Old Anchor Inn at 208 Duval, sadly it is long gone.
