“Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd. Buy me a new right arm and paint it black, I don’t care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root for Riley, he’s my Tiger and I’ll proclaim. For it’s one, two, three hits he’ll slam, at today’s ball game.”
That little ditty was on my mind when Tom’s alarm went off at six o’clock in the morning on Wednesday August 3, 2022. The weather forecast for Minneapolis was sunny and hot, with no clouds in the sky – it was projected to be a perfect afternoon for baseball. I was excited to see Target Field, but I was even more thrilled to watch Riley Greene play in person. During the previous night’s game, the Tigers’ rookie centerfielder had a single and double in five trips to the plate against the Twins. In a few hours, however, I would be seated inside the Twins ballpark, and I had a feeling in my resin heart that Greene would blast a home run, just for me.
Early in our ride from St. Cloud into Minneapolis, my photographer made the decision to park our Jeep at the Mall of America where we would board the train to Target Field rather than try to find parking somewhere near the stadium. And that idea seemed brilliant, until the moment we purchased our tickets for the train. It turned out there was some ongoing track maintenance near the mall, which meant we were forced to ride a bus to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and board the train there. It seemed confusing to my companions at first, but thanks to a handful of friendly Twins fans, we made it to the stadium roughly 90 minutes before gametime.
The only other MLB stadium I had visited was Angels Stadium in 2018 and that ballpark was beautiful. However, when I first saw Target Field, I was completely underwhelmed. As a matter of fact, I thought the exterior and interior of the stadium were both void of any unique characteristics that would “wow” any avid baseball fan. Oh, I posed alongside a statue of Kirby Puckett that was located near Gate 34, but I’ve heard statues of ballplayers were commonplace at stadiums.
Before the game, I got to see Riley Greene – which was easy because our seats were in the third row along the visitor’s side of the field. But due to the extreme heat, my companions stayed in our unshaded seats for only four innings before we headed for cover. The game was boring; the Tigers managed only four singles in the contest – one of which was a bloop hit by Greene that drove in the team’s lone run. During the last half of the game, the three of us walked around the stadium to see it from different vantage points. But when the final out was recorded and the Twins had defeated Detroit 4-1, we scurried outside to catch the first train out of town.
Thanks to Tom and Vic’s hustle, we managed to get a seat on the jam-packed train that took us back to the airport. We weren’t so lucky on the bus ride to the Mall of America, however; my chunky photographer barely had room to stand inside the door. Once we had arrived at the largest mall in the United States, the three of us headed inside for some shopping – shopping for a place to eat, that is. Tom made a mistake when he told his wife to pick the restaurant. After a lengthy contemplation, she chose Buffalo Wild Wings – a place my photographer has claimed for years was “overrated and overpriced for a bunch of lousy chicken wings.” I had to laugh to myself because as much as Tom complained about their food, I thought he would put chicken on the endangered species list that afternoon – and that was after he had eaten two hot dogs at the ballgame.
When my companions were finished eating chicken and drinking beer, the three of us headed to a historic site within the Nickelodeon Universe section of the gigantic shopping center. The Mall of America was constructed in the early 1990s on the site once occupied by the former Metropolitan Stadium; a stadium where the Twins and Minnesota Vikings had played for twenty years. After an extensive search, Tom found the home plate plaque embedded into the floor near SpongeBob SquarePants Rock Bottom Plunge; the plaque marked the spot where home plate was located at Metropolitan Stadium. As I stood on the plate, I didn’t think about Harmon Killebrew. Instead, I envisioned The Beatles as they performed on a stage located just past the second base area of the stadium on August 21, 1965. There were two facts about the Beatles concert that were hard for me to fathom – the concert at Metropolitan Stadium was not sold out and the show lasted only 35 minutes for the 11-song set.
It had been an exhausting day; the three of us had endured the extreme heat at Target Field and then we tolerated the thick crowd of people at the Mall of America. Tom suggested to his wife that we should spend the night near the mall, and he encouraged Vicki to book a reservation at the nearby Hilton Garden Inn where he had stayed years ago during a safety conference for work.
The Hilton Garden Inn was within a half mile of the northwest corner of the Mall of America. We were registered and in our room by 6:50pm. My photographer placed me alongside the television set where the two of us watched a couple of episodes of the Andy Griffith Show. At roughly ten o’clock, when Tom couldn’t find any shows centered around Sasquatch or extraterrestrial beings, he turned off the lights and went to sleep. While I spent the night alone, I thought about a legendary Rock and Roll star who was associated with a band named after an insect and was killed at a young age. No, not John Lennon of the Beatles. My resin mind was filled with visions of Buddy Holly. And if everything went according to schedule the following day, the three of us would make a late afternoon appearance at the Clear Lake, Iowa cornfield where the airplane carrying Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper had crashed in the early hours of February 3, 1959. Although Tom and I had visited the site in 2015, my photographer had planned to collect soil samples on this trip and bring some of the crash site home with him to put on display with his other Winter Dance Party artifacts.
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Thursday August 4, 2022 began when Tom’s alarm rang at 6am; the day officially got rolling when we left the hotel a little over two hours later. Initially, Tom and Vicki had discussed the possibility of taking an early morning tour of Paisley Park, the home and recording studio of singer-songwriter and musician Prince. But when my photographer discovered the least expensive ticket was nearly $50 per person, combined with the fact that he and his wife were not fans of Prince Rogers Nelson, Paisley Park was scratched off our agenda.
Located about 80 miles southwest of the Mall of America was where we stopped at our first site of the day – and it was a place where music history was made. No, it had nothing to do with The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Instead, the Kato Ballroom was associated with the artists formerly known as Charles Holley, Richard Valenzuela, and Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr.
The Kato Ballroom, which was located in the Germania Park neighborhood of Mankato, Minnesota, was originally built in 1946 and lasted only six years until it burned to the ground in 1952. After the historic ballroom was re-built and re-opened in February 1954, it played host to numerous bands and musicians for the next five years. On January 25, 1959, a tour bus pulled up next to the building and ten performers emerged; each were excited for the 7:30 show to begin. And why wouldn’t the musicians be energized and thrilled to be in Mankato? After all, it was only their third stop on the 24-show Winter Dance Party tour, and everything had gone according to plans up until that point.
When Vicki parked the Jeep along Chestnut Street, the three of us were excited to be at the Kato Ballroom as well. As a matter of fact, I was shaking when I posed for a handful of images near the front entrance. But as soon as Tom attempted to open the front door of the historic ballroom, his excitement waned when he discovered the door was locked. I was disappointed as well; we were so close and yet so far away to standing on the stage where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper had performed just eight days before they were killed. Tom carried me around the entire perimeter of the building where he checked every door, but each one was locked tight. When we turned the corner and we were once again in front of the Kato, Tom was surprised to see his wife was standing near the entrance engaged in a conversation with a man. Was it the owner of the Kato Ballroom? Was Vicki negotiating a way to get inside?
As it turned out, the man was a mail carrier on his delivery route; and to top it off, the friendly postal worker told my companions he knew the ballroom owner Larry Bowers. Just as the mailman finished his story about how Buddy Holly comes to his mind every time he delivers mail to the Kato Ballroom, a car pulled up to the curb directly in front of the building. “That’s him! That’s Larry Bowers!” A minute or so later, after the postman asked Mr. Bowers if he would take the three of us for a tour of the historic place, we were inside the legendary Kato Ballroom.
Larry Bowers, who told my companions he’s been the Kato’s manager since 1981, took us on a very nice tour of the ballroom’s interior. I posed for photos on the historic stage, as well as in the “Green Room”. Then out of nowhere, Bowers mentioned that Ronald Reagan had once delivered a speech from that very stage in 1979. I couldn’t believe it. It was a Presidential site, just like the Duluth Armory where Truman had spoken in 1948. It was another two for the price of one deal!
At first, I was impressed with the decor inside the Kato; even the gawdy Christmas lights that were strung all around the place seemed okay to me. Everything had a 1950s ambience to it. But when Tom set me on the carpeted stage where Buddy Holly had performed on the night of January 25, 1959, I got a greater sense of why the Kato had been struggling to survive in recent years – and it wasn’t only because of a newer and larger Civic Center in town. The Kato Ballroom was filthy, unkempt, and in a cluttered menagerie of disarray. Don’t take my opinion the wrong way – I was totally honored to be there, especially when my photographer played ‘Rave On’ as he stood on the stage. But it was disappointing for me to see a historic place, such as the Kato Ballroom, fall into a state of neglect. In my mind, it doesn’t take a lot of extra funding for someone to use a vacuum cleaner on the carpet or wash the walls with a little soap and water.
A wiggle in his neck, keeps his head in spec; Makes the world go ’round! Ain’t nothing better in the world when our flag’s unfurled. It’s not so funny, when his glue is runny; makes him feel real loose, like Bullwinkle Moose, and that squirrel, Oh baby, that’s a-what I like!”
The three of us were very grateful for our tour with Larry Bowers inside the Kato Ballroom. Timing is everything, and had Vicki not stopped to talk with the mailman, we likely would’ve left town before Bowers had arrived. When Tom carried me out through the front doors and we left the Kato behind, I couldn’t help but think about the guys on the Winter Dance Party tour. When the performers left that same ballroom after their show had ended around 11:30pm, they travelled to the Burton Hotel in downtown Mankato to spend the night. That was the last night of their tour that would be trouble-free.
Back at the Jeep, I could tell something was wrong with my photographer when Tom began to scrutinize the agenda. At the same time, he studied the map on his phone. I became extremely worried when I heard my photographer say to his wife: “I think I need to see the doctor”. Seconds later, he revealed the doctor was Archibald “Moonlight” Graham and Tom wanted to pay a visit to his gravesite in Rochester, Minnesota. That was a huge relief as I didn’t want to spend half the day in a doctor’s office waiting room. Even though the Winter Dance Party sites in and around Clear Lake, Iowa were next on our day’s itinerary, my photographer figured we were over two hours ahead of schedule because we avoided Paisley Park. When Vicki questioned him about the distance and whether or not it was out of our way, Tom nonchalantly said it wasn’t “too bad”. In reality, Rochester was 84 miles due east of Mankato while Clear Lake was nearly 100 miles to the south. In my resin-filled mind, that was a good hike off-the-beaten-path just to see the grave of a ball player who played in just one Major League baseball game.
Surprisingly, Vicki didn’t question Tom’s decision one time during the entire 90-minute drive to Calvary Cemetery in Rochester, Minnesota. As a matter of fact, when we rolled into the burial ground at 12:45pm, my photographer’s wife played a huge role in finding the section where the doctor and his wife Alecia were buried.
But why Rochester? Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham had died on August 25, 1965 at the age of 88 in Chisholm, Minnestoa where he practiced medicine as the school’s doctor for roughly four decades. Two factors likely played in the decision, which ultimately was made by Alecia who was ten years younger than her husband and she outlived ‘Doc’ by 16 years. Rochester was Alecia Graham’s hometown, the place of her birth. Alecia’s parents were buried in Calvary Cemetery as well. But it might have been the second reason that convinced Alecia that Calvary was the right place to bury her husband. Dr. Graham loved Rochester and had visited the Mayo Clinic over 100 times during his 40-year medical career, “Just to see what’s new and how the boys were keeping up on things.”
Once Vicki had parked the Jeep near Section 9, Tom carried me directly to the Graham’s grave. There was no mistaking which grave was theirs because nine baseballs had been strategically placed on the small, rectangular granite slab. Once the balls were temporarily removed by my photographer, I was placed on the marker where I posed for a handful of photos. During my time on “Moonlight” Graham’s grave, the image of Burt Lancaster as he vanished into the cornfield in the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ flooded my mind. During his 88 years of life, Archibald Wright Graham touched the lives of a countless number of people in and around Chisholm. The one-time Minor League ballplayer would’ve remained buried in obscurity had it not been for a Hollywood movie, and that, as the doctor once said, “would’ve been a tragedy”.
As Vicki drove out of Calvary Cemetery, I was still thinking about ‘Doc’ Graham as he ventured into the cornfield near the end of the 1989 movie ‘Field of Dreams’. At that moment, we were headed to another famous cornfield, one that was 100 miles away. Unfortunately, that field didn’t have a very happy ending thirty years prior to the movie’s premiere.
It seemed to take a lot longer than the 90 minutes Siri had predicted for us to make it to the next site. From an opening in the camera case, I noticed the landscape in southern Minnesota was very flat and there were farmer’s fields as far as the eye could see. I laughed to myself when I saw the ‘Welcome to Iowa’ sign at the border – it boasted: ‘Iowa – Fields of Opportunities’. Shortly after Vicki guided our Jeep off I-35 and then zig-zagged on some back roads for several miles, she pulled off onto the shoulder of Gull Avenue just north of Clear Lake, Iowa. My photographer was happy when he saw our Jeep was the only vehicle parked along the gravel road. I noticed a large pair of black Wayfarer-style eyeglasses that were affixed to a couple of graffiti-filled posts just a short distance from where we were parked. We had finally made it – well, almost. The three of us still had a half-mile hike on a beaten-down path between two cornfields before we would see the ‘Holy Grail’ for Winter Dance Party enthusiasts – the infamous ‘Buddy Holly Crash Site’.
For the first time since our hike at Hoover’s Rapidan Camp in Virginia, Tom slid a backpack over his shoulders as we started the long walk to the site. Inside the pack were the tools my photographer needed to collect soil samples from the crash site for his collection. There were two one-gallon zip lock bags, a plastic McDonald’s cup, and a small three-pronged garden cultivator. Several times throughout the hike, Tom turned around to see if others were following us; he had mentioned to his wife that he didn’t want anyone else at the site when he dug up the ground. The corn stalks on both sides of the path were over six feet tall and it was very quiet during our walk. The only sounds I heard were my companion’s footsteps and the occasional chirping of some crickets, which I thought was ironically cool.
During our first trip to the crash site in 2015, a thunderstorm had gone through the area shortly before our arrival and there was a lot of standing water along the path and all around the memorial. That wasn’t the case this time; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the ground seemed hard and dry; almost as though it hadn’t rained for weeks.
Fifteen minutes after we left the Jeep, we arrived at the location where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper and pilot Roger Peterson had all perished. The stainless-steel memorial to the three singers, which was created by Ken Paquette in 1989, was covered with mementos left by past visitors. I thought the flowers and eyeglasses were fitting tributes, but some of the other items looked like trash – including an empty bottle of tequila.
Before I posed for any photos, Tom wanted to collect the soil samples before others arrived at the site. I chuckled to myself when I saw my photographer remove the tools from his backpack and then he asked his wife to do the digging for him. Tom claimed it was because of his inability to get down to ground level due to his bad knees, but I think it was more likely his ability to watch his wife do the work. I saw a brief eyeroll from Vicki as she grabbed the cultivator and started clawing at the hard clay. When it became evident the ground around the memorial was very hard and was difficult for Vicki to scrape up enough dirt to fill the two bags, Tom walked 17 feet to an area just into the first couple rows of corn southwest of the memorial. “If you would, please dig up some dirt from right here; the ground doesn’t seem as packed-down, and you should be able to easily fill the rest of the bags. This was where Buddy Holly’s body was found lying after the plane crash.”
While Vicki toiled away in the cornfield, Tom and I returned to the nearby memorial where I posed for some pictures. At the moment my photographer set me down on the sacred ground, I immediately went into what I could only describe as a “visionary state of out-of-body unconsciousness’. In my mind, the sky turned pitch black, the temperature had dropped from 85 to 18 degrees, and the cornstalks were reduced to stubble in the frozen field. As I felt snowflakes pelt my resin body, I heard what sounded like the engine of an airplane as it approached from the southeast. The sound of the propeller grew louder, then suddenly, the whir transformed into a higher-pitched whining noise as though the plane was banking. I saw the plane’s tail lights just above the horizon; those lights quickly vanished before my eyes. Seconds later, all hell broke loose around me; the ground shook violently as the noise of grinding metal filled the once-silent night air. The noise grew louder for a few seconds, then it suddenly stopped – everything became eerily quiet. The mangled fuselage of the 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft was all around me. I stood in shock near the plane’s wing – painted red with the identification N3794N across its metallic skin. In the darkness, I thought I saw the faint silhouettes of two people lying on the ground a little over five yards away. I yelled out: “Hey Buddy; Hey Ritchie!”, but not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken. Forty feet behind me, lying in the adjacent field, was the body of the larger-than-life Jiles Perry Richardson; The Big Bopper. The three men I admired most, would make the morning headlines, I supposed. They’ll soon touch hearts from coast to coast, The day the music died.
In the past nine years, I’ve visited the sites where four Presidents were assassinated and where a countless number of others had died as well. And while all of those sites were solemn in their own right, nothing compared to being on the ground where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper lost their lives in a plane crash. It’s true, Tom and I have been to the three sites where thousands of people were killed during the 9/11 attacks on our country, but that cornfield outside of Clear Lake, Iowa was different. To the two of us, that was hallowed ground; some of which returned with us to Michigan. While February 3, 1959 has been tagged as “The Day the Music Died”, that site was more than just a song to me and my photographer.
Buddy Holly was only 22 years old when he flew on that ill-fated flight. His wife, Maria Elena, was a few weeks pregnant with their first child when she learned of her husband’s death from a television news report. Within days, Mrs. Holly suffered a miscarriage from the psychological trauma she endured. Maria Elena has never visited Buddy’s gravesite in Lubbock.
Jiles Perry “J.P.” Richardson was 28 and the oldest victim on the plane. The Big Bopper’s hit song ‘Chantilly Lace’ had reached Gold Record status during the Winter Dance Party tour and recording executives had planned on presenting The Bopper with his award while he was still on the tour. Unfortunately, Richardson was killed just days before the presentation could be made. J.P.’s wife, “Teetsie”, was seven months pregnant with their son when her husband was killed. Jay Perry Richardson was born on April 28, 1959; his father never got to see or hold him.
Ritchie Valens was 17 years old and the youngest performer on the Winter Dance Party tour. Ritchie’s professional career was only eight months old when he left his girlfriend Donna Ludwig behind in California and headed to Milwaukee for the first show on the 1959 tour. Even though Valens had a fear of flying, he begged guitarist Tommy Allsup for his seat on the plane that Holly had chartered after their show at the Surf Ballroom. Allsup agreed to let emcee Bob Hale flip a coin, with the winner of the coin toss getting the seat. As the 1955 Franklin half-dollar was tossed into the air by Hale, Ritchie called “Heads”. The coin landed, Ben’s face was up, and Ritchie Valens had won his place in Rock and Roll infamy. “That’s the first time I’ve ever won anything in my life.”
And finally, the pilot of the Beechcraft Bonanza, Roger Peterson – who was hired to fly Holly, Valens, and Richardson from Mason City Airport to Fargo, North Dakota. The youngster was only 21 years old, but he had over four years of flying experience; including over 120 hours piloting a Beechcraft Bonanza. Where things went south for Peterson was the fact he wasn’t qualified to operate an airplane in weather that required flying solely by instruments. When the final ruling regarding the cause of the crash on February 3, 1959 was released, it was determined that the probable cause of the accident was “the pilot’s unwise decision” to attempt a flight that required skills he did not have. Jerry Dwyer, owner of the ill-fated plane, described Peterson as a “young married man who built his life around flying.”
After the photographs were taken and the dirt was collected, Tom stood in silence about five yards directly in front of the memorial with me in his left hand. It was easy, at least for me, to see the mangled pile of red, white, and black metallic fuselage piled against the fence line. Then, as a final tribute to the three stars, my photographer played ‘Three Stars’ by Eddie Cochran from his phone. During that solemn moment, the two of us gazed at the ground where the bodies of the three singers had been ejected from the aircraft. My resin heart was breaking; it was as though Buddy, Ritchie, and J.P. were there beside us. “Well, you’re singing for God now, in his chorus in the sky. Buddy Holly, I’ll always remember you, with tears in my eyes.” Trust me, Eddie Cochran wasn’t the only one with tears in his eyes.
A moment or two after the three of us began the half-mile hike back to the Jeep, we saw a handful of people as they walked along the path towards us. We couldn’t have timed our visit any better – we had the memorial and sacred ground to ourselves for nearly 30 minutes. But our Winter Dance Party tour for that day wasn’t finished – it was only 4:30pm and there was a lot of daylight left. Tom, Vicki, and I had just visited the site where the Beechcraft Bonanza had crashed to Earth, now it was time to see where the plane first left the Earth – the Mason City Municipal Airport that was situated about six miles to the southeast of us.
Once we made it to the town of Clear Lake and Vicki had turned east onto 4th Street, I heard Tom say that we were on the same road used by Carroll Anderson, manager of the Surf Ballroom, when he drove the three singers to the airport after their show. Upon our arrival, my photographer’s wife stayed inside the Jeep while Tom and I walked around the exterior of the terminal where we watched one airplane land and other takeoff. The two of searched for a marker dedicated to the fateful early morning crash in 1959, but the only historic sign we found contained no mention whatsoever of the Winter Dance Party tragedy. Inside the terminal, Tom asked someone if there was a plaque dedicated to ‘The Day the Music Died’, and once again, there was nothing. I was stunned; one of the most significant moments in music history originated from that airport, which had been constructed 14 years prior to the crash, and that tragic event is not recognized anywhere on the property. Then it dawned on me – perhaps the owners of the Mason City Municipal Airport don’t want passengers to be reminded of an airplane crash just as they are boarding an airplane. I suppose that’s understandable.
Before we left the airport, Vicki searched for an online reservation for a nearby hotel. During that time, I had a moment to reflect on the infamous plane crash that killed those three Rock and Roll performers over sixty years ago. The main reason Buddy Holly decided to fly was he wanted to arrive in Moorhead, Minnesota (350 miles to the northwest) early enough so he could rest and have enough time to wash his clothes before the next show. He was also fed up with their tour bus having continuous break downs and not having sufficient heat. It’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but since I’m good at it, I don’t understand why Holly didn’t spend the night in a hotel in Clear Lake. After all, it was late in the night and the snow had started to fall. Holly and his two friends could’ve taken a flight after daylight on February 3rd and they would’ve likely made it to the Fargo, North Dakota airport without incident. The singers would’ve been well rested, and they would’ve had plenty of time to do laundry before their gig at The Armory in Moorhead. But those three guys were young; and they likely felt invincible. As Marshall Crenshaw’s ‘Buddy Holly’ said in the movie ‘La Bamba’ just before the plane was about to take off: “Hey Ritchie, relax man. Everything’s cool. Besides, the sky belongs to the stars, right?”
With our hotel set for the night, the three of us headed for the final scheduled stop on our Winter Dance Party tour of the day – and it was a place where Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had stopped for a final time on their tour as well. No, I’m not talking about the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake. Instead, we were headed to the Hogan-Bremer-Moore Colonial Chapel Funeral Home in Mason City, Iowa. In early 1959, however, that place was known as the Hogan-McKee Funeral Home, owned by Marvin McKee.
Shortly after the plane’s wreckage was discovered in the field owned by Albert Juhl, Marvin McKee got a call to come to the crash site. The bodies of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens were taken to McKee’s funeral home where the funeral director prepared the corpses for transportation, funeral, and ultimately, their burial. Big Bopper and pilot Roger Peterson’s bodies were prepared by another funeral director in Clear Lake. In a 2004 interview, McKee talked about The Day the Music Died: “They certainly were my most famous patients.”
As my photographer carried me to a few prime locations near the front of the funeral home while Vicki remained in the Jeep, I shook my head and hoped Tom wasn’t planning on going inside. It’s one thing to visit a gravesite or see a place where a famous or historical person died, but it’s another thing to force me to pose at a funeral home. In my mind, it’s not only weird; it’s borderline macabre. What was next? Would Tom go inside and collect a vile of embalming fluid, similar to the stuff used on Holly and Valens? For some bizarre reason, that wouldn’t have surprised me.
Even though it was still daylight, I was very glad when we left the Hogan-Bremer-Moore Funeral Home behind and headed for the hotel. Thankfully, Tom didn’t want to see that place at night; I would have been totally creeped-out if I was forced to get anywhere near that place after dark. Back in the Jeep, Vicki drove through a section of downtown Mason City before we headed west along 4th Steet; which was the main thoroughfare that we will take into Clear Lake the following morning. The three of us arrived at the Holiday Inn Express at precisely 6:00pm; we were unpacked and in our room fifteen minutes later.
Tom and Vicki decided to “Head for the Border” for dinner; and that border was located adjacent to our hotel’s parking lot. The Las Palmas Mexican Restaurant turned out to be a great choice, at least according to my two companions. Vicki slurped at her margarita and ate her chicken fajita with no problem, while Tom wolfed-down several tacos and a healthy serving of seasoned rice. Just as their food was nearly devoured, I heard some disturbing news – my photographer’s wife had read on Samantha Busch’s Instagram page that there was a shooting two hours earlier at the Mall of America while her husband, Kyle, and their son Brexton, were having fun on the rides at Nickelodeon Universe. Samantha added that she and her husband Kyle Busch, the famous NASCAR driver, and their son Brexton, were shaken up but unharmed. Although it seems random acts of gun violence are everyday occurrences around our country, that shooting hit close to home – the three of us were at the Mall of America only 24 hours earlier. While it was a relief to Vicki and me that we were 150 miles south of the mall when the shooting occurred inside the Nike store, Tom had a lame brain approach to the news – “Dang, we missed meeting Kyle Busch by only a day. That would’ve been so cool to see him and Brexton riding the rollercoaster and Log Chute ride at Nickelodeon Universe.”
The three of us returned to our room at roughly 7:45pm; my companions watched the news of the MOA shooting on television. Luckily no one was injured when one of the two thugs fired three shots into the Nike store at the mall. Both the shooter and his accomplice were still at large. When I heard that, I wondered what the odds were of the two fugitives fleeing south into Iowa and hiding out at the Surf Ballroom. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to find out.
At roughly 8:45pm, I was standing alongside the television set in our room when I heard Tom tell his wife he wanted to photograph the Surf Ballroom at night. My photographer’s reasoning for the late-night excursion was because he wanted to see the Surf the same way Buddy Holly saw it when the singer left for the airport in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959, albeit without the snow. I thought it was a great idea and I looked forward to seeing the Surf lit up at night as well; the “on the lam” fugitives were no longer a concern of mine.
Vicki stayed at the hotel, snug in bed with her pajamas, while Tom and I made the 7.5-mile drive to the Surf Ballroom. Twelve minutes and three turns later, the two of us were parked along Ritchie Valens Drive just 200 hundred feet or so east of the historic ballroom. The Surf Ballroom looked amazing illuminated against the black night sky; the marquee over the front entrance featured the wording ‘The Music Lives On, Welcome Rock N Roll Fans!’ Tom carried me to a handful of places all along the exterior of the building where I posed for pictures. Even though the place was empty, there was a moment when I thought I heard ‘Peggy Sue’ emitting from somewhere inside; the song was barely audible over the screams of the ecstatic teenagers.
Shortly after ten o’clock, it was time to make our way back to our hotel in Mason City. Tom kept me out of the camera case during the ride back because I wanted to see the same route taken by Surf manager Carroll Anderson when he chauffeured Buddy, Ritchie, and The Bopper to the airport after their show had concluded around midnight. There wasn’t much traffic during our three-mile drive to Mason City Municipal Airport; and I imagined there was even fewer people on the road during that blustery cold night in February 1959. As my photographer passed in front of Runway 17, I envisioned the Beechcraft Bonanza as it flew directly over the road before it banked left and then onward to the northwest for a little over five miles where it crashed into the frozen ground.
Back in our room, Tom placed me back alongside the television set and then he immediately extinguished the lights in the room. Alone with my thoughts, the sights and sounds of the Winter Dance Party performers filled my head. Our day had begun on the stage of the Kato Ballroom where Buddy, Ritchie, and The Big Bopper thrilled the Mankato teenagers with their hit songs; their whole lives still ahead of them. Our Thursday ended 100 miles to the south at the Surf Ballroom where the three stars performed their final show before an estimated 1,110 fans. Moments after Buddy Holly played ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’, all of the stars returned to the stage and performed together for roughly 15 minutes. The night ended as Ritchie Valens, who owned the Surf stage that night, sent the teenaged crowd into a frenzy with his second rendition of ‘La Bamba’. In between the two Winter Dance Party venues, the three of us spent roughly 45 minutes in a cornfield where three stars crashed to Earth.
August 4, 2022 was truly a day filled with energy, electricity, and emotion. For Tom and me, it was the Day the Music Lived!
** This post is dedicated to the music, the memories, and the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson – The Big Bopper **
