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I’m writing from a Buffett-less world.
I’m perched on the bow of my pontoon boat, “Spooner,” staring out over Lake Dardanelle. It’s not the Yucatan, or even the Emerald Coast, but it’s as close as this ol’ Arkansas boy’s gonna get.
I got the news Jimmy Buffett had passed while in San Diego. I was there for a writers’ convention. My debut novel was up for an award. I wore my 1991 Jimmy Buffett “Outpost” tour tee to the reception. If I won, I wanted to go on stage and sing the opening lines of “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”
I didn’t win.
I felt bad, mainly because I wanted to say something nice about Jimmy. I wanted to try and express how much his art had meant to me.
When I was nine, I found a stack of blue-trimmed MCA cassette tapes in my dad’s closet. One of the album covers featured a mustachioed blond dude leaned way back in a beach chair, his crystal blue eyes aimed on the horizon. That man was Jimmy Buffett, and the album was “A1A.”
In the years to come, I listened to those cassettes every night as I drifted off to sleep. My brain was soon stuffed with nautical wheelers, coconut telegraphs, and beach houses on the moon.
When it came time for me to go to college, I had a handful of football scholarships from Arkansas schools, but I chose Florida Atlantic University because of those old Buffett tapes.
“Mother, Mother Ocean. I have heard your call…”
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My dad heard the same call right after he graduated college. He’d been listening to those same cassettes and broke up with Mom before setting off for Key Largo. Dad only made it as far as Boca Raton, the same city where I went to college. Dad spent that summer working at a Pizza Hut and sleeping on my uncle’s couch.
The Cranor boys aren’t the only people out there with similar stories. All across the globe, folks have been buying into Jimmy’s ocean dream for longer than I’ve been alive. Just Google “Margaritaville” and you’ll find a bevy of restaurants, resorts, stuffed parrots, and other off-the-wall merchandise.
Dad lost his taste for Buffett as the years wore on. He claimed Jimmy had sold out, which mainly had to do with my father’s disdain for “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” While I’ll admit that that song doesn’t hit the same chords as tracks like “Tin Cup Chalice” or “He Went to Paris,” I still disagree with Dad.
Jimmy Buffett never sold out.
He never went full country. Never changed his style or ventured too far from the beach. Jimmy stayed true to his roots all the way to the end. Did he capitalize off it? Sure. He spread the message of the endless summer to the farthest reaches of the world, and I for one, am thankful.
Without Jimmy Buffett, I literally wouldn’t be where I am today, sitting on my boat in the middle of a muddy lake, a “frozen concoction” to my right, a blue-eyed dog to my left, doing my best to live life in three-quarters time.
Rest in peace, Bubba.
Don't Know Tough
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In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. |
Ozark Dogs
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In this Southern thriller, two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend—or in some cases, destroy it. |
| Previous columns: |
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• Writing from my back deck
• Writing from the morning of my thirty-fifth year
• Writing on the day of the college football National Championship
• Writing from the space between breaths
• Writing from 2022
• Writing from the glow of a plastic Christmas tree
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• Writing from the crowd before the start of a Shovels & Rope show
• Writing from the depths of a post-book-festival hangover
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• Writing to you on Halloween Eve
• Writing from my bed on a Saturday morning
• Writing from my office with two darts clenched in my left hand
• Writing from the shade of my favorite tree
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• Writing from the airport
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• Writing from my wife's Honda Pilot
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