June 16, 2004

• I’m BAAAAAACCKK!!!!!

  Thanks to everyone who visited me during my long absence. I really appreciated all your thoughts and comments. I will be around to visit today.

  There is really no way to catch up on over two months, so I will just say that I have been very busy and it has been mostly a good kind of busy. I am hoping to be able to be a better Xangan now.

  Rather than rehash the elapsed time, I am going to tell you about a weekend trip we made a couple of weeks ago. As you know if you have been reading my blog for awhile, last summer we made a trip to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. We had so much fun that we decided to do it again. We went with our very dear friends, Walt and MaryLu.

  You may know that the Surf is famous in music history because it is the place where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper gave their last concert. The ballroom is filled with items commemorating that event, which makes it a very interesting place. Last time we were there, we saw the ballroom itself, but we did not go out to the crash site where the plane carrying the three performers went down five miles out of Clear Lake in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959. Dan and Walt are big fans of Buddy Holly, so this time we decided to make the trek out there.

  You have to really want to see the crash site to find it. There are no signs. The Clear Lake visitor’s magazine does give directions, but even those are just a small paragraph which can easily be missed. We were determined, though, and we set out to find the “small memorial” mentioned in the visitor’s guide.

  The plane went down in a corn field. The field is still in use, so we were glad that it was early June so that we did not have to fight our way through the rows of corn stalks. Instead, they were only about ankle high, so we just had to avoid stepping on them and hope the farmer did not mind us walking through his field. We parked on a small gravel road and walked about half a mile into the corn field, hoping we were in the right place. There was nothing you could see from the road. Just as we were discussing whether we might be in the wrong field, we spied this:

  

  As you can see, “small” is the right word for it. It’s a very moving experience to stand at this little memorial, though, and it is obvious that others have felt the same way. Besides the plastic flowers, people have left many other tokens of their visits. There were quite a few coins lying on the ground, along with caps of various types, many hotel room keys, guitar pics, and varous plastic cards with the names of site visitors. That red object near the center of the picture is a plastic car. Apparently many people feel the need to leave signs of their presence. We stood there for quite awhile examining the mementoes and thinking about the event that took place there forty-five years ago.

  When we got back to Clear Lake, we went to the ballroom itself. Here’s Walt in a room filled with the signatures of all the performers who have been there over the years. This is part of the dressing room area, so it is closed when the ballroom is open to the public, but we were lucky enough to be in there when it was not open.

  

  Here’s Dan and Walt at the memorial outside the ballroom:

  

  Later on in the evening, we ran into this British fellow. Here he is with MaryLu and Walt. Unfortunately, the British guy’s head had become detached.

  

  The pictures are courtesy of MaryLu because Nancy forgot to pack a camera. MaryLu apologized for the beam of light that seems to pass diagonally through the center of the last picture, but I think it is just the beam of light that always follows this strange British dude around.

  We had a great time on our Iowa weekend. If you are a music buff, and particularly if you are interested in early Rock ‘N Roll, I would suggest you try to get to the Surf sometime.

  • 7:11 am
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