Chapter 62 - Meet the Browns of Ka-Lae-Hau

[grinder]

Wide eyed, can't sleep.

And this lead may be totally useless. You know how some stuff is on the Net ...... but its an interesting lead maybe that might go somewhere, or not. If true the fellow brings up an interesting question. I found this by just going after ROSBAUD.

http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/pred ... resk29.txt

The information that spy Rosbaud, who was Jewish, provided is mentioned in
a U.S. Department of Justice memorandum dated April 26, 1955, which reads:
"[Rosbaud] returned to Germany determined to assist England and its allies
at all costs. This he accomplished. The records in this matter contain
official corroboration that Dr. Rosbaud remained in Berlin during World War
II for the purpose of obtaining certain technical intelligence for the
United States and the United Kingdom. This information was extremely useful
and invaluable for the allied cause and involved great risk on the part of
Dr. Rosbaud. His activities on behalf of the allied cause were successful
and of such importance that even today they cannot be disclosed and are
still highly classified."


HOLD ON HERE FOLKS. STILL CLASSIFIED? CANNOT BE DISCLOSED?
REMAINED BEHIND FOR THE PURPOSE OF OBTAINING CERTAIN TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE FOR THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED KINGDOM?

Is that like the same stuff that Mr. Twigsnapper still can not talk about, even now? grinder

[twigsnapper]

Yes, probably the same stuff.

Go to bed son, you are going to wear yourself out. Its a long trail.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes families have what they call " family codes" which are usually sets of words which only the family would understand. For me it was ( when having important guests for dinner , and there not being very much food to go around, we kids were given the code from our Mother , " Now do be sure that your room is set fair" which we all knew meant " there isn't a whole lot to eat, one serving and a small one at that, for each of the family." We actually rather enjoyed the intrigue, least I did. Hungry or not.

The Griffin family code from us was the occasional " The house is on the hill " which radioed in his direction meant for him to listen , that the next incoming message was for him. It is a sad thing that even after the book that was written about his contribution some twenty years ago that he is still very much obscured. He was too fine to be lost to history.

He was extremely clever about getting messages out of Germany, usually hidden in revised printed books. He would alter the type, being in a position to be able to do that and then once away Lord Beaverbrooks agents would take the things apart, word for word until the message revealed itself. Difficult to explain, wonderful system.

I believe that Linda Brown will confirm this but as I recall Dr. Browns family "listen up " phrase was " You know, I've been thinking ....."

twigsnapper

"

[Paul S.]

This is all very intriguing... great angles, gotta be careful they don't become tangents or long dead ends in the rabbit hole. At the moment, this is the one thorn that's catching me:

What the heck are they doing building an isotope separator in the Philly Naval Dock yard?

How do we even know for sure that the "event" being described was, indeed a "diffusion isotope separator" ?

I don't have a whole lot of background on either the peripheral operations of the Manhattan Project or the specific (and obviously classified) goings-on at Philadelphia Navy Yard in the 1940s. But my understanding is that such experiments and operations were being conducted at places like Oak Ridge in Tennessee or Hanaford in Washington (check me on that last one, I might have the name confused/wrong).

So right now I'm in Langley's camp, wondering why they'd be separating isotopes at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

--PS

[Paul S.]

Amazing what you can find on this Internet thing if you use the right keywords, in this case "philadelphia isotope diffusion"

http://www.mphpa.org/classic/HISTORY/H-04b4.htm

Like other enrichment methods, liquid thermal diffusion was at an early stage in 1940. Abelson eventually relocated his experimentation to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. whereupon money was obtained to construct a pilot plant at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

The process was subsequently improved and led to the design and construction of the large S-50 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

So, yeah, first PNY, then ORT.

(added 10:32 AM CDT) Actually, it is now that the cobwebs begin to reverberate, I'm reminded it is not all that surprising that a prototype diffusion separator would be built on Navy turf. The ONR had a prior interest in nuclear energy -- they were thinking about its possible application as a means of naval propulsion long before Rickover made it a cause celebre. And if memory serves me, there was some acrimony when the Navy had its interest superseded by Gen Groves Manhattan Project, an ostensibly ARMY operation.

Suddenly wondering, too, if that explains the Navy's interest in whatever Townsend Brown had up his sleeve... reclaiming the technological high ground, so to speak...??

--PS

[grinder]

Assuming there was such a device in operation, or being built ...... what would be the purpose of such a thing?

And I agree with you Paul. How do we know that a " isotope separator" was REALLY what they were building since so much of it is still classified.EVEN NOW>

And I know that it might look like a long trip down a twisting rabbit hole but I am captivated by Mr. Twigsnappers comments about this Rosbaud character. And the fact that STILL people can't even get information on all the things that he did during the war. I just read that Rosbauds family ( as of last year, don't know the results) were suing the government to release previously classified material regarding him so that he can get the credit that many (obviously Mr. Twigsnapper too) believes he deserves.

And whats the deal about "Lord Beaverbrooks agents" What did he mean by that?

You stay with Langley, if you want Paul. I don't understand that stuff at all but I am going to make some notes on the Beaverbrook connection. grinder

[Paul S.]

You stay with Langley, if you want Paul. I don't understand that stuff at all but I am going to make some notes on the Beaverbrook connection. grinder

Sound like a plan... let me know when you find the "Caroline" connections. Keyword: Nassau.

Also, a little more digging on the diffusion operation at PNY:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... oject#1944

1944 -September 2 — Peter N. Bragg, Jr. and Douglas P. Meigs, chemists on the projects, are killed, and Arnold Kramish almost killed, while attempting to clean a clog out of a uranium enrichment device as part of the pilot thermal diffusion plant at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Two soldiers, George LeFevre and John Tompkins, also receive extensive injuries. An explosion of liquid uranium hexafluoride, which burst nearby steam pipes, which combined with the uranium hexafluoride to shower the men with the highly corrosive hydrofluoric acid. [3]

So apparently it's no big secret...

--PS

[grinder]

Maybe NOW its no big secret but THEN would they have even talked about what had actually happened to those men? Wasn't that all supposed to be highly classified? How do you explain injuries like that when you can explain injuries like that?

Makes me almost sick to my stomach. But I'll just bet that no one knew (until much much later) what was the actual cause of those awful injuries. Remember the old phrase " loose lips sink ships?" You think this would be any different?

Perhaps .... a good cover would have been a fanciful story of a ship disappearing, men incased in the hull. So ridiculous no one, not even the spies would believe it. Possible? I am constantly reminding myself here that we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the times

So I am back to wondering. What was Dr. Brown doing again in September of 1944? And maybe Mr. Shank? and oh yeah, the math expert genius A.L. Kitselman. I wonder what those three were doing when that unfortunate accident occurred. Not saying that they were in any way actually connected with that particular incident but perhaps there is that onion skin thing going on we talked about. Maybe there were two accidents? Maybe just the one? Who the heck knows at this point. But either way, until much much later I would pretty well guess that ANY accident would have been carefully covered up as to the real cause. grinder

[grinder]

Paul,

That was too damned easy. You asked about a connection between Lord Beaverbrook and Nassau so I just googled those words and JUST LOOKY what came up.

http://www.graycliff.com/index.php?opti ... Itemid=225

Greycliff Hotel, meeting place, according to your sources of the " Caroline Group". Where they smoked "fine cigars" and played that game someone called " Russian Bank".

Now Paul , where next? grinder

[Elizabeth Helen Drake]

Regaining technological " high ground?" Thats an excellent observation Paul. So MAYBE thats the reason also that it was a meeting of NAVY bigwigs at Pearl Harbor ..... instead of a closed demonstration, say .... in Arlington? for the ARMY .... or even the new kid on the block ..... The Air Force.

I have a hard time remembering too that at the time of the Pearl Harbor Demonstration Townsend Brown had not been OFFICIALLY in the Navy since he " resigned" in the fall of 1942. Eight years is a long time to be away and then suddenly come back into the heart of things. Which begs the question of course, how far away from his contacts in the Navy had Townsend Brown actually gone?

Anyway, good point Paul! Elizabeth

[Paul S.]

Now Paul , where next?

When yer done polishing yer gold star, see if you can find anything about crashing a sea plane. See where / who that leads you too ... <g>

"...Spending those renegade pesos on a bottle of rum and a lime..."

--PS

[grinder]

Same wavelength here buddy. Told you have had a sleepless night, with alot of thoughts.
http://home.att.net/~e.zeiser/lyrics/ba ... ublics.htm

Down to the Banana Republics, down to the tropical sun
Go the expatriated Americans, hopin' to find some fun
Some of them go for the sailing, caught by the lure of the sea
Tryin' to find what is ailing, livin' in the land of the free

Some of them are running from lovers, leaving no forwarding address
Some of them are running tons of ganja
Some are running from the I.R.S.

Chorus:
Late at night you will find them
In the cheap hotels and bars
Hustling the senioritas while they dance beneath the stars
Spending those renegade pesos on a bottle of rum and a lime..............

it goes on of course and I think you must know here that it has a special meaning to me. The only phrase that REALLY comes to mind is " We were not the ganja plane" which anyone who has visited anywhere near Key West or almost anywhere a Hemisphere Dancer can go, will recognize.

There was a man by the name of Dean Franklin who happened to teach my Dad to fly a seaplane. I suppose if I look harder in that direction and back to the Greycliff I will find all kinds of interesting information? grinder

[Paul S.]

There was a man by the name of Dean Franklin who happened to teach my Dad to fly a seaplane. I suppose if I look harder in that direction and back to the Greycliff I will find all kinds of interesting information? grinder

You know about Dean Franklin? Cool. His name has come up a time or two. Taught Banana Republic Man how to fly those Geese.

This is why Banana Republic has been on the brain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7HlcTnXEp4

Too bad the sound comes out better than the pictures.

--PS

[Victoria Steele]

http://www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/980 ... index.html

My favorite music and the cause of a few sleepless nights grinder. I know. I've been there. Doesn't work closing your eyes either, does it?

specially these parts I though interesting: OH HELL YOU GOT TO READ THE WHOLE THING. ITS WORTH IT, HONEST. READ THIS FIRST BEFORE LOOKING AT THE LINK. SEE IF YOU CAN QUESS, AND WHILE YOU ARE GUESSING LOOK AT SOME SIMILARITIES? COSMIC LAUGHS? Victoria
************************************************************

I signed a record deal, got married, moved to Nashville, had my guitars stolen, bought a Mercedes, worked at Billboard magazine, put out my first album, 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, bought a boat, and sailed away to the Caribbean.

I started another band, worked the road, had my second and last hit, bought a house in Aspen, started spending 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, went to Brazil for Carnival, learned to fly, went into 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, took off in an F-14 from an aircraft carrier, bought a summer home on Long Island, had another baby girl. I found the perfect seaplane and moved back to Florida. Cameron Marley joined me in the house of women. I built a home on Long Island, crashed the perfect seaplane in Nantucket, lived through it thanks to Navy training, tried to slow down a little, woke up one morning and I was looking at fifty, trying to figure out what comes next.

That might be all some of you want to hear, but for those who want to read a little more, continue on, for though I got most of it all into four hundred words, there is a lot more meat on the bone.

Time on the Water

We sailed from the port of indecision
Young and wild with oh so much to learn
The days turned into years
As we tried to fool our fears
But to the port of indecision I returned
--"Under the Lone Palm"


I wasn't born in a trunk, I was born in a suitcase. But a trunk is where I've kept the scraps of my life for the past fifty years. My many attempts to begin a journal have all fizzled out after a few pages of notes. I have a considerable collection of notebooks, cocktail napkins, memo pads, legal tablets, sparsely filled binders, and mildew-spotted pages that sit in a cedar-lined steamer trunk in my basement on Long Island.

Almost five years ago, when I had the harebrained idea of doing a musical version of my friend Herman Wouk's "Don't Stop the Carnival", Herman would send me pages of thoughts on the matter from his journal. He had kept a daily journal since 1946. To say the least, I was quite impressed. I envy those who have the discipline to keep a chronological record of events. I do not.

My plan has always been to keep adding to that mess in the trunk and, if I make it to my eighties and am still functioning in the brain-cell department, to retire to a tropical island, buy an old beach house, hire several lovely native girls as assistants, ship in a good supply of rum and red burgundy, and then spend my golden years making a complete picture out of the puzzle pieces in the old steamer trunk. That to me is the way any good romantic would look at his life: Live it first, then write it down before you go.

Any attempts at autobiography before the age of eighty seem pretty self-involved to me. There are a lot of smart middle-aged people but not many wise ones. That comes with "time on the water," as the fisherman says. So the following pages are another stab at completing a journal inspired by the trip that my wife planned for me to celebrate my fiftieth birthday, on December 25, 1996. I am glad to report that my first fifty years were, overall, a lot of goddamn fun. I just followed my instincts and kept my sense of humor. This journal narrates the trip itself as well as stories that the trip dredged up out of my past. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Questions and Answers

Now he lives in the islands
Fishes the pilin's
And drinks his Green Label each day
Writing his memoirs, losing his hearing
But he don't care what most people say
Cause through eighty-six years of perpetual motion
If he likes you, he'll smile and he'll say
Jimmy, some of it's magic, some of it's tragic
But I had a good life all the way
--"He Went to Paris"

Fifty. A mind-boggling thought for a war baby like me. Fifty is not "just another birthday." It is a reluctant milepost on the way to wherever it is we are meant to wind up. It can be approached in only two ways. First, it can be a ball of snakes that conjures up immediate thoughts of mortality and accountability. ("What have I done with my life?") Or, it can be a great excuse to reward yourself for just getting there. ("He who dies with the most toys wins.") I instinctively choose door number two.

I am not the kind of person to spend my fiftieth birthday in the self-help section of Borders bookstore looking for answers to questions that "have bothered me so," as somebody wrote once -- those questions that somehow got taken off the multiple-choice quiz of life. It seems that here in America, in our presumably evolved "what about me" capitalistic culture, too many of us choose the wrong goals for the wrong reasons. Today spirituality and the search for deeper meaning are as confusing as the DNA evidence in the O.J. Simpson case. There is a labyrinth of choices, none of which seem to suit me. Granted, I have been too warped by Catholicism not to be cynical, but there are still too many men behind too many curtains for my taste. The creation, marketing, and selling of spirituality is as organized as a bingo game. By the time most of us war babies reached high school, we were pretty much derailed from the natural order of things. We were supposed to grow up, and that's where my problems started. Parents, teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors bombarded me with the same question: "What are you going to do with your life?" I didn't even want to think about that when I was fourteen. My teachers called me a daydreamer. They would write comments on my report card like, "He seems to live in a fantasy world and prefers that to paying serious attention to serious subject matters that will prepare him for life."

The life they were so hell-bent on preparing me for bored the living shit out of me. It seemed way too serious. I saw more meaning in the mysteries of the ocean and the planets than in theology or religion. I was too busy figuring out ways to skip school, go diving, and get laid. My heroes were not presidents; they were pirates. Emerging from adolescence with a healthy "lack of respect for the proper authorities," and a head full of romanticism and hero worship, I was able to come up with an answer.

Q. What are you going to do with your life?
A. Live a pretty interesting one.


I have been called a lot of things in these fifty years on the good old planet Earth, but the thing I believe I am the most is lucky. I have always looked at life as a voyage, mostly wonderful, sometimes frightening. In my family and friends I have discovered treasure more valuable than gold. I have seen and done things that I read about as a kid. I have dodged many storms and bounced across the bottom on occasion, but so far Lady Luck and the stars by which I steer have kept me off the rocks. I have paid attention when I had to and have made more right tacks than wrong ones to end up at this moment -- with a thousand ports of call behind me and, I hope, a thousand more to see. My voyage was never a well-conceived plan, nor will it ever be. I have made it up as I went along.

The Fifty-Year Reality Check

A List of Things to Do by Fifty

Learn to play the guitar or the piano
Learn to cook
Play tennis
Learn another language
Surf
Read
Take flying lessons

Travel
Swim with dolphins
Start therapy
Go to New Orleans and Paris
Learn celestial navigation (or at least how to find the planets in your solar system)
Go to the library
Floss


Just Getting It on Paper

My writing style is a rather unrefined stream of consciousness; I don't know when to stop telling the story. I have always begun a writing project with a loose idea of a story but without actually knowing where I'm going or how I'm getting there.

I started out wanting to be a Serious Southern Writer. My mother had made me a reader and stressed the legacy of my family's Mississippi roots. William Faulkner, Walker Percy, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor were household names -- Mississippians who had made people take notice. I have a feeling my mother hoped way back then that she might have had her own serious writer in the making.

Then, just as I was about to get serious about journalism, along came that "devil music," and my whole life and direction changed course. Music replaced literature, and nightclubs were more fun than libraries. Yes, that rock 'n' roll had a definite effect on what kind of writer I became. By the time I had spent a few decades on the stages of the world, I knew I might still write one day but that I would never be a Serious Writer. There was this strange stigma I associated with Serious Writers, seeing them as tortured, lonely individuals whose somber fatalistic existences were accentuated by drunkenness, isolation, and depression. Well, I knew I wasn't one of those people. I was too warped by the court-jester -- like behavior that's essential to being a good stage performer. I knew that whatever I wrote, it would have a heavy layer of humor. By the time I expanded my horizons from three verses and a couple of choruses to short stories, and then prose, my sense of humor naturally came along for the ride.

Besides, I don't have the talent to compete with the Great Serious Writers. Anyway, writing is not a competition to me. Writing is fun, and I am simply a storyteller. I also really enjoy the self-discipline writing requires. It's a great challenge, like learning celestial navigation or becoming a seaplane pilot. Anyone bellying up to a bar with a few shots of tequila swimming around the bloodstream can tell a story. The challenge is to wake up the next day and carve through the hangover minefield and a million other excuses and be able to cohesively get it down on paper.

Happy Birthday to Me

During my forty-ninth year, I spent a lot of time thinking about what to give myself for my fiftieth birthday. Reaching this landmark was a shock to a lot of people, including me. What immediately came to mind was a trip around the world. Something on the scale of Mark Twain's epic adventure, which he chronicled in "Following the Equator". I had no intention of producing a six-hundred-page book about my trip like Mr. Twain, but a journey of that proportion would certainly warrant a few words. It is no secret to Twain's fans that "Following the Equator" was not written in celebration of some milestone in his life. He did not sit down and ponder the idea of it as some grand scheme, thought out and planned to the last detail. No, he needed money and was offered a lecture tour.

Through benefit of my middle-class work ethic and thanks to the wonderful loyalty of my Parrothead faithful, I could afford to go on a trip around the world, and as I have stated from the stage on more than one occasion, "Just remember, I am spending your money foolishly."

First of all, I would need a plane. Twain went on a steamship, but I knew that was out of the question. If it were just me, I would pick up an updated copy of Ford's freighter-passage schedules, find myself a selection of tramp steamers, and connect the dots of their rum lines to circle the Earth. No, that would have to wait.

When the Buffetts travel, we resemble some kind of misguided caravan, a cross between the Clampett family moving to Beverly Hills and Sesame Street on tour. Besides the human contingency and BSE (baby-support equipment) and favorite foods and fishing tackle and surfboards and computers and flight bags and guitars -- and the list goes on. My Citation II jet was too small for such an undertaking. No, this trip would require a unique airplane, and I just happened to have one -- a Grumman Albatross that I had bought after my recent crash. One of the reasons I bought her was to travel. I had fantasies of packing up the family in the big old romantic flying boat and heading for parts unknown. However, the fantasies and affections that surrounded this big strange bird were mine and mine alone. Jane, my lovely wife of twenty years, was a veteran of some pretty wild and crazy adventures in our days together, but this airplane was not her style. She had let her lack of adoration for the plane be known after her first 147-mile flight from Palm Beach to Key West. I knew I would never get her to even consider going around the world in my Grumman Albatross at 155 knots. She had other, more logical plans for heading south, like airliners with big comfortable seats.

My next fantasy was to do it in "big iron" and have somebody give me the plane as a birthday present. Fat chance, but remember, when reality looks too ugly, just fantasize. It can't hurt. For those not familiar with the term, "big iron" means a large, fast, and very expensive private plane, like those owned by big corporations, movie companies, and the occasional lucky son of a bitch who happens to invent the pop top or computer chips. My personal favorite fantasy planes in this category are the Gulfstream G-IV and the Dassault Falcon 50. They are as close to the starship Enterprise as we can get without going to the Paramount set, and they cost more than the gross national product of most of the countries I wanted to visit on my circumnavigation. Jane told me that if I even thought about chartering such a thing, she wouldn't go. My wife has the looks of Catherine Deneuve and the mind of Mr. Spock. Those who know her know what I am talking about. She has always been the voice of reason in my Peter Pan existence. "Jimmy, why would you rent a G-IV? You already have a goddamn air force. You could put that money to a lot better use." Ouch -- the truth. Once again she was making way too much sense. My grand scheme was listing to port. What blew it out of the water was more good advice from another source wiser than me.

Older and Wiser Voices

For whatever reason, I have always had a connection to older people. I think that it must come from my relationship with my grandfather. He was a sea captain and possessed all the attributes one would associate with that calling. Growing up, I was much closer to him than I was to my father. Like so many other patriarchs of his era, my father had come home from World War II with a purpose. His generation had saved the world from Hitler and had dropped the atom bomb on Japan -- the ultimate punishment for bad behavior. They had survived the Depression and were bound and determined that their children would never have to endure the hardships they had endured. A noble sentiment indeed, but there was a problem. They wanted to provide their children these opportunities on their terms, but the winds of fate had chosen my generation to be the first one that collectively said, "Wait a minute, don't I have something to say about this?" It was the sixties, and the rest is history.

My father's ambition was for me to go to the naval academy and become a Navy officer. This was a pretty serious plan for a ten-year-old who was still playing pirate, and I wasn't much interested. He and I remained at odds about who and what I was to become through the turbulent years of adolescence and beyond, until it became apparent that I had plotted my own course.

My grandfather, on the other hand, was my Long John Silver, full of tales from the high seas and far-off worlds that ignited my imagination. My history is full of references to him and his influence on me. He was the first in a long line of older and wiser voices that have helped me along the way. The most recent of my wiser voices is a legendary flying-boat captain named Dean Franklin, who befriended me when I first started getting interested in flying boats. He had been the chief pilot for Chalk's Airlines, the flying-boat company in Miami that had gotten me launched as a seaplane pilot, and he had taught Howard Hughes to fly.

My latest visit to Dean's office was not the first time I had gone there to test out a harebrained scheme involving long-distance flying. One day I had come up with what I thought was the ultimate scam. I had bounced into Franklin Aviation and announced to Dean that I wanted to buy a Grumman Goose, completely refurbish it, fly it around the world, and make a documentary called Jimmy Buffett's Ten Best Bars in the World. I would fly to places I have been from Hawaii to Tahiti, through the Orient, across North Africa, back to South America, and up the Antilles. I would play in these bars, spend a few days hanging with the locals, and get it all on film. The financing for the project would have to cover the purchase of the Goose. I had spent a good twenty minutes rattling on about this wild idea with the overexuberance of the Tasmanian Devil, and when I had finished, Dean had just looked at me across his desk and laughed that now familiar laugh. He had sat framed against the collage of flying photos on his wall, then stood up and looked at a wall map. He had stared at it for about ten seconds, then began shaking his head and laughing as he turned around and said, "Jimmy, it's a long goddamn way around the world." The words stopped me in my thought process like a good pair of disc brakes. I never did buy a Goose, and flying around the world remained a dream.

On this particular day, when I walked into Dean's office, he picked up my scent like a wise old bird dog. "I guess now that you got a plane that can actually go around the world, you want to do that damn bar tour." He had read my mind, and I could tell by his tone that he still didn't think much of the idea. "Son," he said, "it's still a long goddamn way around the world. Why don't you just do the Caribbean for starters? Think of the money you'll save on fuel, and there's enough adventure in these latitudes to keep you busy." Older and wiser voices can always help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen.

Down to the Banana Republics

Down to the banana republics
Down to the tropical sun
Go the expatriated Americans
Hoping to find some fun
--Steve Goodman

With my fantasy of an around-the-world ride on the Albatross lying in pieces on the ground, I thought about other options. Europe was out of the question. Winter in Paris -- are you kidding? We had already decided not to go to Aspen, where we had lived for a long time and where my first daughter was born. It had been great, but it was time to do something different and stay warm for Christmas.

Next came the idea of a trip halfway around the world to the Orient. Well, let me tell you that it is a long way halfway around the world, and then you come back. You could look at it from any direction and any angle, but the fundamental problem was that it was a fourteen-hour trip over and a fourteen-hour trip back. I pictured myself in a ticket line in Hong Kong or Singapore being crushed to death by a stampeding sea of standby passengers. And to see everything that we wanted to see, we'd have to be on a tight schedule and have it all planned out in advance. It was beginning to look like a summer tour schedule in disguise, and I didn't even get off the road until October. I was not ready to launch this kind of an expedition on Christmas Day.

Then there is the big problem of how we travel. Combine that with the distances involved and I started having flashbacks to Joe Cocker's infamous Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour back in the seventies. Dean's words came back to me: "Why don't you just do the Caribbean?"

And that is exactly what we decided to do. The Orient wasn't going anywhere, and so what if Hong Kong wasn't British anymore by the time I got there? We settled on Christmas at home, and then we would take off for Central and South America and the Caribbean. I could write about it, and finish a book that I had due and didn't have a clue as to how to wrap up. There would be fishing and surfing in Costa Rica, mystery in Machu Picchu, and beyond the equator the Amazon jungle and the opera house in Manaus. Those of us who liked big, noisy airplanes (boys) could go on the Albatross. Those who didn't (girls) could ride in the Citation.

And so it came to pass that in the advent of his fiftieth birthday, one James William Buffett decided to venture down to the lands of single-digit latitudes and look for a little adventure.

Copyright© 1998 by Jimmy Buffett. All rights reserved
ISBN: 0-679-43527-1



Related sites:
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
Random House online
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

<
SEARCH CNN.com

Enter keyword(s) go help



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[greggvizza]

There was a man by the name of Dean Franklin who happened to teach my Dad to fly a seaplane.

grinder, are you saying that Dean Franklin actually taught your father to fly a sea plane?, or are you quoting something from Jimmy Buffett?

GV

[grinder]

Gregg,

No, my Dad actually learned from the man himself. I used to have some pictures of Dad and Mr. Franklin and Mr. Franklins daughter ( were they dating? I have never known) I remember being told how they used to sometimes take off bound for Nassau ...( or actually Bimini I think it was ) on what Mr. Franklin would call his "midnight runs". I am not sure what was being transported!<g>

Of course this was in the early 1960s, Cuba was a big issue. I have never known until recently why my Dad was spending time down there. And for some reason he never continued with his interest in flying. He said there was just something about the seaplanes that he liked and felt comfortable with. Course he loved speedboats ( Cigarette hulls) so I guess that was just an extension with the plus of getting into the air.

As you may have picked up already I did not know my Dad all that well. But I remember the stories about the "flying boats" and how proud Mr. Franklin was of the near perfect record for safety they had. Sad to see that one fell out of the sky a couple of years ago, but before that they only lost one plane I think because of pilot error.

grinder