#129-Mailbox Money
#129-Mailbox Money
-by Stacy Garwood-
The end of June can mean many things to many people, but to me, the final day of June has become representative of an important date in my mom’s life. Her retirement date. When I realized that the final day of June this year happened to be the final Tuesday of the month, I immediately knew what song I was going to pick. A song that represented the mail, by making money though receiving mail, or making money while delivering the mail. Mailbox Money does both, the perfect song for June’s offering of Topsail Tuesday music.
“Mailbox money, been so good to me, when my ship comes sailin’ in, I feel like royalty, that old song just keeps playin’ from sea to shinin’ sea, that mailbox money’s sure been good to me…”
Mailbox Money was released on Jimmy’s album, Life On The Flip Side, which came out in May of 2020, from Jimmy’s own label, Mailboat Records. I have always enjoyed the play of Mailboat and Mailbox, and I am sure Jimmy enjoyed the word play, also. I will always think of this album and each and every song on it, as Jimmy’s gift to us during the pandemic. As a person who was working painfully long and frequent shifts as a Registered Nurse, isolated from my family and friends due to rules, regulations, and dictates, I relished the relaxation and escape that this album gave me.
Life On The Flip Side was an album that was actually created after a seven-year absence of Jimmy from the studio. Of course, in Jimmy style, he was certainly busy during that time, including writing the musical Escape To Margaritaville, and touring every year. Jimmy loved his summers and was looking forward to a new summer of touring with his bandmates and enlivening the lives of Parrotheads across the nation. But he was ready to have some new material to cover from the stage, and probably itching to get back into the studio, creating music with his friends. Life On The Flip Side would be Jimmy’s 30th studio album and considering how oddly life was turned upside down during the pandemic, very aptly named.
The album was recorded the previous fall at Shrimpboat Sound Studio in Key West, with the usual accomplices and was produced by Mac McAnally and Michael Utley. Of course, they both contributed to the recording of the album, musically as well as at the mixing table.
Everything was in place for a summer tour for Jimmy and the Coral Reefer Band, but in mid-March, lockdowns stymied the general public (and the world), including Jimmy Buffett, who would spend the majority of the lockdown period in Malibu, California (not a bad place to be stuck, actually) and he said he was actually blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with his adult children. One of Jimmy’s great gifts was finding something positive to focus on and appreciate, even when times are trying, which has always seemed to play out in his music.
Even though he couldn’t tour, the album was released and reached #2 on the US Billboard 200 chart (second only to Lady Gaga) and #1 on the Billboard US Top Country Albums chart. It arrived to me in the mail on CD, although I had immediate access to the digital copy, I remember such excitement when the physical representation arrived in the mail and I was able to enjoy the music in a slightly different way than I had before. I also have it on vinyl, but that came later.
So, while it wasn’t “mailbox money” for me, it did arrive in the mail, and it was just as appreciated as any money I have ever received by delivery service.
“I love that mailbox money from sea to shinin’ sea, nothing else comes close to stackin’ up, ‘cept the Full Moon Jubilee, giggin’ big fat flounders with Jimbo at slack tide, mailbox money sure seems Bonafide, that old song just keeps playin’ from sea to shinin’ sea, mailbox money, sure been good to me…”
So, what is “mailbox money” exactly? From Jimmy’s perspective, it was money that arrived to him as royalties of songs he had written over the years. In general terms, “mailbox money” can mean royalties that come from music, books, or movies, and it represents passive money that is made over time from these efforts. The money comes from both physical and streaming sales, it also covers monetary gains from when songs are played on the radio, television, or movies, or when they are played live. Outside of music and entertainment, mailbox money can also indicate investments, pensions, or real estate.
A few songs come immediately to mind when I think of live or recorded music that artists cover from a different creator, such as Willie Nelson repeatedly covering Johnny Bush’s Whiskey River or Jimmy Buffett covering Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl. Both are great songs and covering them indicated great honor to the writer, but these examples played out quite differently.
Johnny Bush was known to joke that Willie Nelson could just keep playing his song (Willie recorded it multiple times, as well as using it as his live opener for decades upon decades). Did I mention that Willie Nelson and Johnny Bush were great friends? I think Willie Nelson has made Johnny Bush a lot of money over the years.
And Jimmy Buffett used to joke on stage that that Brown Eyed Girl was “Van Morrison’s favorite Jimmy Buffett song.” It’s doubtful that Van Morrison ever complained about the frequent use of his song by Jimmy, but what is interesting, and quite unfortunate, is that Van Morrison has never received a dime in royalties from Brown Eyed Girl.
How does such a thing happen? Beware of the contracts you sign, no matter what industry that you are in. Van Morrison signed a contract that basically stated that he was not entitled to any royalties of songs he wrote or recorded until he had paid back the producer for the studio time. Unfortunately, the producer of Brown Eyed Girl, Bert Berns, died about five months after the song was recorded, leaving Morrison no way to pay back the money owed. The rights to the song went into Bert Berns estate and any money made from Brown Eyed Girl flowed to that estate fund and never to the song writer. Van Morrison has never publicly said anything about Jimmy’s frequent use of his song, but he has pointed out that it’s not his favorite song and that he has written two hundred songs that he thinks are better. I can’t blame him for being somewhat bitter, considering the legacy Brown Eyed Girl has had on the music industry and pop culture in general. And probably made quite a bit of “mailbox money” that Van Morrison never saw.
I still love the song, and I still love Jimmy’s version of it, although I do empathize with how frustrating this all must be from Van Morrison’s perspective. There is obviously a dark side to the music industry, and it doesn’t seem to respect the art and talent behind the sound. Thankfully, that dark side didn’t seem to affect Willie Nelson or Johnny Bush’s friendship or livelihood.
On a lighter side, I want to acknowledge that Jimmy kept the feeling of Mailbox Money light and playful, and it doesn’t dive into the darker aspects of money, rights, and royalties. It’s a fun song, and it’s humorous, and that’s exactly how a listener should take the idea of “mailbox money.”
“The postman starts his outboard, ’cause we get our mail by boat, that song I penned in ’81 still keeps our world afloat, if it wasn’t for the radio and those Parrot-headed fans, I’d have to get a day gig, which would surely spoil my plans…)
Jimmy cowrote the song with Will Kimbrough, and the two men had fun with the lyrics. There is a nod to a song from ’81 that has kept things afloat. And what song that could mean has been debated by fans over the years. Jimmy released the album Coconut Telegraph in 1981, and while it has several great tunes, not one of them has probably saved Jimmy Buffett’s career, either in fame or in cash flow. Will Kimbrough later confirmed there was nothing in particular about that year or any song, just that it worked with the lyrics. Of course, if there was ever a song that could be credited as bringing in “mailbox money” that altered Jimmy’s career, it would be Margaritaville, which was released in 1977 and written and recorded the previous year.
Still, the lyrics keep things general, and then swing off a bit into the absurd, with the idea of mail being delivered in a pirogue with a Johnson motor, after the previous mail carrier, who also delivered with an outboard motor, retired. And it was delivered both to and by the singer himself.
“I’ve got a sun-browned local lady, she hails from Bon Secour, she makes the best fried shrimp and collard greens, Cold Rosé is her pour, by now, you must be wonderin’ how I earn my pay, I write words and music, fact I write them every day…”
This song has a personal connection for me, because my mother drove a rural mail route for forty years. She retired in 2013, on the last day of June, when her final US Postal Service Rural Mail Carrier contract expired. They wanted her to sign another one, even for less years than previous contracts, but she said no. She celebrated, and her and my best friend’s father, who many people called Uncle John, also a rural mail carrier, retired from his route on that same day. That year, a barbeque was celebrated in honor of their retirement. On July 3rd, not the 4th.
Of course, July the 4th is a holiday for mail carriers, and at that time, between my family and my best friend’s family, a total of three total of three mail contracts had been active. But if you want to have a fun time over the Independence day holiday, should do it before the 4th, because come July the 5th, you are up with the dawn, and it doesn’t matter how you feel about the celebration the night before. The mail waits for no hangover if you catch my drift. Hence, the tradition of the 3rd of July BBQ was born, so everyone could relax the day after, and still enjoy the holiday in whatever way they wanted and manage to deliver the mail after the holiday without a headache or bad belly.
My whole life, the mail was part of it. My mom took over daily driving duties of a rural mail route south of Nashua, Montana in 1973, when I was an infant. It was presented as a good part-time job and would give her time to be a mother. My father and his mother were the previous contract holders, sharing duties for a brief time before my mom assumed the route. Of course, more children came, but the route stayed consistent, Monday through Saturday, roughly four hours a day, and you drove the mail no matter what the weather was like. Sun, wind, rain, snow, wind, hail, thunder and lightning, wind (did I mention wind, because it’s windy in eastern Montana) the mail must go out.
The last two winters of my mom’s carrying days were particularly challenging. Including a winter of record snow fall that turned into record flooding in the spring and summer, and a daily thirty-five-mile detour on rough gravel roads for months and months. Six days a week, extending the day by at least an hour. The next and final winter was only slightly less awful.
Honestly, I think it was those two winters that encouraged my mom to make her decision to retire. She enjoyed the time she spent driving, and she especially enjoyed the people on her mail route, but weather is one thing you can’t escape, and the weather has a huge influence on rural mail carriers.
“Now the postman, he retired two or three years back, now he fishes every day, and I take up the slack, I load that 15-foot Pirogue US mailboat down, jump start my Johnson and spread the love around…”
I wish my mom had kept a log of flat tires over the years (one time, she actually had a tire come off the car and roll right past her up the road), the badly chipped windshields, the miles, and the gallons of gas in forty years. She started out driving Subaru’s; they are good cars for a mail route, being smallish, with good gas mileage and four-wheel drive (because sometimes that’s the only way to get the mail delivered). After there was no Subaru dealership locally anymore, she had one Colt Vista, then started driving Ford’s for the rest of her driving career. She had a Ford Escape that had almost three hundred thousand miles on it (which included a new engine, a new transmission, and multiple sets of new tires) over the course of its service. Her final mail car was a 2006 Ford Explorer, and it was still her daily driver up until two years ago. It’s still in the garage, and it now starts only when it wants to, but who can blame it, it has a LOT of miles on it too.
As a child, I remember how excited I was when she would get home, usually a bit after noon, and she would tell us if anything exciting happened or came in the mail. As I got a little older, in the summers, my brothers and I would sometimes ride around on the route with her. She put us to work licking stamps and organizing change. In those days, people would leave coins in the mailbox and pay for their postage as they needed it. I still think the person who invented self-stick stamps is a genius. And eventually, when I was eighteen, I could be included as a substitute driver on her route and help her out when I could. I tried to cover a week or two for her each summer, to give her some vacation time. I didn’t like the sorting much, but, like my mom, I enjoyed the driving time. I still remember how appalled I was to realize it was legal to ship boxes of baby chickens in the mail. It still is, and I still am.
Like my mom, I enjoyed spending time on country roads, enjoying the sunshine and the beautiful countryside the route wove through, listening to the radio, always catching Paul Harvey and The Rest of the Story, and visiting with the other carriers in the morning as everyone sorted mail.
Sometimes, just for old times sake, we still get in the car and drive around the route, talking about who lived where, who has come and went, and who has a new mailbox. My Mom had a stroke two years ago, so while she can no longer drive, she is always happy and content to ride along in the passenger seat (which is where the mail bundles always rode) as we observe the same seventy miles that she drove almost every day for forty years. We laugh, and grumble a bit, about how many times she got stuck in a snowbank, who stopped to pull her out, or perhaps who would change a flat tire for her, or how many times she had a car covered in mud from heavy rains. (My mom likes her car clean, so this was particularly annoying to her). As a matter of fact, we are probably due for another trip around the country roads, but now we can choose a day when the roads are dry and the sun is shining. It makes her smile each time we follow those familiar country roads.
So, in honor of my mom, and Uncle John, who shared her retirement by hosting a kick ass 3rd of July BBQ, and to Donna, who had the third route in our combined families, which she drove for another dozen or so years, and kept that mail service tradition alive for us all, I honor you as well. And in honor of millions of other people in the world that have driven or continue to drive rural contract mail roads, I salute you. Somewhere in the world, they may really deliver the mail by boat, and if you do, I doubly salute you. For us, when there was water on the road, which was about the only time the postal service would let you turn around.
“Mailboat money, been so good to me, when my ship comes sailin’ in, I feel like royalty, they still hum that melody from France to Newfoundland, mailbox money made me what I am…)
I see Jimmy’s song not only in the light of money that comes to us in the mail (honestly, no one probably gets many checks in the mail anymore, it’s just a direct deposit into your account, but this song is also about every person who has a hand in delivering the mail. Our lives have revolved around rural contract routes because we are firmly in the country, but I also want to acknowledge mail carriers in towns and cities, whether it’s a contract or direct employment by the United Postal Service. Thank you for what you do! I salute you!
“Put it in the mailbox, put it in the mailbox…”
Stacy
Please enjoy Mailbox Money. I have included the link below. Enjoy!
The link is from Jimmy’s official YouTube channel, which I have no personal affiliation with.
More links that may be of interest:
In remembrance of Jimmy Buffett, on his birthday
Mailbox Money. There’s this term I heard on one of the… | by Mike Vardy | About Time | Medium
Review: Jimmy Buffett’s ‘Life on the Flip Side’
Van Morrison on Brown Eyed Girl: He’d Rather You Didn’t Ask – The Strange Brew
