What's in a Name?

Our family has been visiting Cape San Blas for more than a decade, and when our kids were younger, we would make the drive from our home in Georgia down to the cape every summer. During the drive every year, we liked to play Jimmy Buffett music, including the song “Margaritaville.” If you haven’t heard the song before, you can listen to it here, or watch the video below.

Toward the middle, the song lyrics say:

I blew out my flip-flop

Stepped on a pop-top

Cut my heel had to cruise on back home

But there’s booze in the blender

And soon it will render

That Frozen concoction that helps me hang on

In his song Margaritaville, Jimmy Buffett is talking about a pop-top, like the ones you used to pull completely off of soda or beer cans, leaving a sharp piece of metal that people often threw on the ground. This was before modern day soda cans were invented in the late 1970s. Jimmy Buffett stepped on one of these after blowing out his flip-flop, and had to go home to take care of the cut on his heel. He decided to have a margarita to help ward off the pain from his minor injury.

If you listen to the song, it can be hard to make out exactly what he’s saying. So for years, every summer when we drove down to Cape San Blas with our kids and Margaritaville came on the radio, they would sing “Stepped on a Pop-Tart” instead of “pop-top”. They wondered how Jimmy Buffett could hurt his foot stepping on a Pop-Tart, but when I tried to explain that he was saying “pop-top”, they didn’t understand. Having never heard of a pop-top, they just decided to stick with their own version of the song!

Since vacationing at Cape San Blas is so important to our family, when we purchased our vacation townhome, we named it “Stepped on a Pop-Tart” and started leaving all of our guests a box of Pop-Tarts to enjoy when they arrive. After a long drive to get to the beach, the last thing you want to do is get back in the car to drive for breakfast the next morning!

We hope you enjoy your stay at our townhouse, and you can thank our kids for the free Pop-Tarts! If you love your stay at Stepped on a Pop-Tart, please remember us for your next trip, and visit us at SteppedOnAPopTart.com!