Our Concert Log - Tim & Tina's Parrothead Page

GeoCities.us » TheTropics » Cabana

Our Concert Log
fourteen summers, 1986 to 1999
<< back to the bar

TINA: Jimmy has come through Cincinnati just about every summer we can remember, and we've been there every time since 1986. I keep the ticket stubs in a cigar box with a parrot on the lid. Tim keeps the memories, or he says he does.

TIM: One memory per year. That was the rule. It was the hardest thing I've ever written. Tina's are the ones in coral, mine are in green.

YEAR	WEATHER	ONE MEMORY
1986	Hot and sticky. Classic Ohio.	My boss had two tickets he couldn't use. I'd never heard a Buffett song all the way through. By the encore I'd bought a T-shirt and Tina was dancing with a man in a shark costume.
1987	Perfect. Seventy-eight and a breeze.	First year we dressed up. I wore a lei from the party store and Tim wore his Hawaiian shirt from our honeymoon, which didn't button anymore.
1988	Scorcher. The summer of the drought.	The grass skirt. Tina bet me I wouldn't. Tina lost. I have worn it to every show since, and it has been re-strung twice.
1989	Rain. All of it. All night.	We were on the lawn in garbage bags with holes cut for our heads. Twenty thousand people singing in the pouring rain. Best show we ever saw, and I had a cold for a week.
1990	Muggy, then a thunderstorm on the drive home.	Jason's first show. He was twelve and acted embarrassed by us for the whole first half. By the second half he had a lei on.
1991	Clear and hot.	Met James and Christie Spector in the parking lot. They had a kiddie pool full of sand and a plastic flamingo, and they invited us in. We've tailgated together every year since.
1992	Cool. Sweatshirts by the end, in July!	I lost the car keys somewhere on the lawn during "Fins." Christie found them at midnight with a flashlight. Never again. Keys go on a string around Tina's neck now.
1993	Humid. Hair, ruined.	My parrot hat. I built it out of foam, felt and a coat hanger at the kitchen table, and three different people asked where I bought it. I didn't buy it. I MADE it.
1994	Nice evening. A real sunset.	Monica's first show, at twelve, same as her brother. She was not embarrassed by us for one second. She wore my old honeymoon shirt down to her knees.
1995	Brutal. That terrible heat wave summer.	Tim had back surgery in June and the doctor said no concert. He went in a reclining lawn chair, with a cushion, in the grass skirt. The doctor was right, and Tim doesn't care.
1996	Warm, a little cloudy.	Our tailgate crew hit twenty-five people. Somebody brought a blender that ran off a car battery. I will not say who. It was me.
1997	Just right.	Jason came home from college for it and brought his roommate, who had never heard of Jimmy Buffett. The roommate came back the next year on his own.
1998	Hot, then a lovely cool night.	Our twentieth anniversary year. When he played "Come Monday" I turned around and Tina was crying, and she says she wasn't, and she was.
1999	Sunny and hot. Sunburn, both of us.	Fourteen in a row. The whole family came, Jason and his girlfriend and Monica and two of her friends. Tim made everybody stand in a line in the parking lot for a picture, in the grass skirt. When we get it back from the drugstore, it is going on the wall.

TIM: Running totals: fourteen shows, one grass skirt (re-strung twice), three parrot hats, four sunburns, one set of lost keys, zero shows missed.

TINA: And one coconut bra. Write it down, Tim.

TIM: See you next summer.

<< back to the bar ~ [email protected]
Last updated August 22, 1999