Jimmy Buffet is a musician, right? Well, he wrote this book and I just read it. Fred lent it to me. I knew Buffet was rich and talented, but there is something about this book that does not quite tally. Other than that, it is pure fiction, with not one thing ever going wrong for anybody in over 200 pages. But there is something familiar about the writing style that I just cannot put my finger on.
I’m not kidding to say there is not a single “yob” for me in South Florida. I spent half the day examining the offerings. It is not that there are no jobs, but that everything one could consider is swamped by entry level desperadoes from either the local colleges or the immigration office. There is no “pick up” work left, yet that is what I need right now. The worse the job, the more they want a commitment out.My bizcard database is ready to go, except for the fact I have no cash to promote it at this point. The best chance is to fill out applications for government grants. I read an article to day how 47 new banks (some with many branches) have opened in Broward this year. They borrow from the Fed at 1% and buy Fannie Maes from the Fed that pay 6%. Figure out how much they make if they get $100 million to start and put 10% down on the Fannies.
The problem is, to be a bank, you have to be on the right side of the fence. Whiter than English white, nary so much as a parking ticket and already related to a banker. I don’t mind, as it all contributes to the massive downfall of the middle class that is about to take place. Those who thought they were “building” equity in their houses by “borrowing up” for the last 25 years, you know the crowd I mean. They will suffer, but it is offset by the fact they lived their whole lives on borrowed money. I cannot imagine living that way.
For the record, I have family like this. They borrowed to the hilt when young, always bragging, “Look at me”. As far as I know, the only things they ever paid for cash were incidentals like $4 coffees and such, never suspecting their borrowing for everything else was causing the $4 coffee to exist. It was myself who, in 1991, made the calculation of whether in thirty years (2021) it would be wiser to have worked all one’s life paying off bills, or to live an interesting life and have just as much as everyone else in the end.
When the hammer falls, it is going to be fairly difficult for a certain class of people to complain and be heard. How does one feel sorry for braggarts who drove a new car every three years and bought a hot tub on their credit card? The supply of pity around here is getting rather limited, let me tell you. Can you just imagine some government worker asking me for a handout because he just lost his $750,000 house? You know, the type of person who probably knows his own credit score.
Buffet’s book is “Margaritaville” and Jimmy Buffet is a talented writer. It is a fictional tale of a cowboy who (so far) has made it from Montana to Yucatan in 1989. Still, fiction it is, since he takes his horse, Mr. Twain, along and has the most incredible luck in always finding free stables and free women along the way. The hero, Tully, seems to hit every highlight (Graceland, The French Quarter), always meeting only the nicest of people, including a captain who lets him take the horse on his shrimp boat. Even.
In fact, the book is so well-written, I have doubts Buffet could possibly have written in unassisted. One thing is certain is the author has an unaccustomed eye for detail, and a separate talent for presenting it. For example, only someone who saw the ruins at Cancun by moonlight would know how it is a totally different experience than by day. Yet, Buffet describes it to a tee in a single sentence that could only be appreciated by someone who had been there in person, before it became a tourist trap.
[Author’s note: I was last in the Yucatan in roughly 1985. By then, the Mexican government was already chain-linking off the site and shunting in the Club Med crowds. In 1982 I had stayed at the (then unknown) Hotel Chichen Itza like an old movie set, and saw the changes. If Buffet, or any other white guy, had been within 100 miles, I would have known about it. I met locals who took me on an iguana hunt (tastes like chicken), and showed me caves and ruins they discovered as children. Those were difficult jungle miles far outside a trackless perimeter; I may still be the only gringo who has ever seen them. But the ruins at night, the Mayan pyramid, are unimaginable. Jimmy Buffet, or somebody he knows, had certainly been in that vicinity near that time.]
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