The Busted Flush

"Travis Mcgee's still in Cedar Key, that's what ol' John McDonald says ..."

It's a line from a Jimmy Buffett song but it's more than that.

Travis Mcgee, Salvage consultant, was in Cedar Key hiding and healing after successfully retrieving someone's lost treasure.

It's what he did as a "Salvage Consultant" ... if someone lost something or had it taken from you ... Travis would get it back ... for a price ... half the value of whatever it was.

He lived on a boat, "The Busted Flush" that he won in a poker game ... perpetually moored at the Bahia Mar in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida ... near his friend Meyer who lived on a boat the "John Maynard Keynes."

There are 21 Travis Mcgee novels and I devoured every single one ... some multiple times.

Apparently Jimmy Buffett did too.

John McDonald is the author who created Travis and his world.

Whenever things went wrong and Travis was hurt, physically or emotionally, he went "incommunicado" in Cedar Key ... cutting off all communication so he could focus on himself with a couple of friends who loved him.

If you're lucky enough to visit Cedar Key you know it's a pretty good place for such things.

I was incommunicado when I read the Travis Mcgee books, the first of which I'd purchased in Louisville, Kentucky at the old Hawley Cook Booksellers ... then had a head on collision with a truck leaving me hurt and broken ... ending up on Tybee Island ... sitting on the beach with broken bones ... healing while I read.

Every morning Terry Jackson took his walk down the beach and see me sitting there so he stopped to say "Hello" and ask what I was reading.

"That's 17 in a row," he laughs one morning and it was.

To this day I love Travis Mcgee ... the allure of living on a House Boat ... perpetually tan ... helping people salvage things they've lost.

So it was with utter joy on an otherwise shitty day when Monty Parks raised Travis Mcgee from the dead on Facebook and then Michael Neal says there may be a movie filmed on Tybee Island.

It's a funny turn of events ... Travis Mcgee strolls back into my life on a day when healing is needed ... just like he did all those years ago.

I think there's a Divinity to such things.

And Travis is letting me know that the time of incommunicado is coming to an end.