I awoke this morning to the news that Jimmy Buffett passed away.

What! No, not Jimmy!

But it’s true. Just like Elvis, Hendrix and Janis another great one has crossed over.

What’s your favorite Jimmy Buffet song? I’m betting it’s Waisting Away In Margaritaville. That’s a great one.

I wonder if he found his lost shaker of salt. Was he wearing flip flops when he passed away?

For me, Love In The Library was his greatest song because it is about a guy who stumbles into a library only to be blown away by the sight of a beautiful girl browsing through the aisles.

That guy would have been me in the fall of 1973. Instead of being located on Bay Avenue near the gulf coast it was located on Spring Street near the cemetery in Louisville, Mississippi.

I was twenty and she a mere fifteen. But I was mesmerized. She wore a white turtleneck sweater and bell bottom jeans.

I wore a head full of hair and a mustache.

There was no way I was ever going to ask her out because I was much older than she was. But I was smitten. I was hooked.

Less than a year later she asked me out and we went to a cookout with some of her friends.

The rest is history. Just like the lyrics in Buffett’s song we have been writing our on ending for nearly forty nine years.

Love in the library? It’s been sublime and surreal. She no longer wears turtlenecks and hip hugger bell bottoms. I no longer wear hair and my mustache is white.

Is Jimmy gone? Is he really gone?

I don’t think so. Not as long as people continue to look for salt shakers, wear flip flops and there’s sand on beaches.

As long as young folks still meet in libraries and once upon a time still exist Jimmy will continue to be with us.

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Rick Algood
September 2, 2023