The Night The Music Died

Morning dawned fresh and clear and was such a wonderful change from the humid heat of Florida. By early morning the heater was coming on about every ten minutes, and since it is below the bedroom it was waking me up frequently. It had good reason to be coming on since it got down to 39 overnight!

We went in to the town of Clear Lake to the farmer’s market and a walk down Main St. While small, unlike in the Orlando area, this market had farmers and their produce. We went in search of corn on the cob, but came away with peach habanero jelly! I would say, “COOL”, but the lady that canned it says the opposite.

Barbara found a wonderful antique store on Main St. and picked up some cute wooden boxes. Main St. runs right down to the lake where there is a nice park and band shell. Clear Lake is really a wonderful little town, but while peaceful now, it is very busy during the summer.

My main interest in coming here was to visit the Surf Ballroom, which the older folks will know as the site of the last concert of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper. After the show they departed in an aircraft that crashed a few miles from the airport. The ballroom eventually fell into disrepair, but was restored in 1998. It has been a successful venue for top acts ever since.

The lobby area walls are filled with autographed photos of the people that have played there. Every rock, country, and big band group that you can think of has played here. It is a real historical place. The Green Room of the stage where the acts would wait their turn to take the stage bears the signatures of all the acts since the renovation. Pretty interesting. I was impressed at the size of the facility. 

There is a large dance floor and seating for hundreds at tables on three sides of the ballroom. Sorry the picture of the ballroom is a bit blurred, but the phone camera can only capture so much.

You can visit the site of the crash. We drove out into the corn and soybean fields and parked along side the road near the trailhead that leads to the site. At some point the farmer evidently became tired of people wandering through his bean fields and fenced in a path to the site. Someone has marked the trailhead with a large pair of Buddy Holly’s trademark black rimmed glasses. It is about a half-mile walk through the soybean field to the site, which is marked by some small steel sculptured memorials. It looks like many people that visit leave little memorial items, but they evidently are not cleaned out very often so things do look a bit shabby.

We returned to the campground to watch the Virginia Tech game, but found we did not get ESPNU. Rather than go out again we decided to just relax in the wonderful clear air. Our next event was to watch America’s Cup racing, but it was delayed and eventually cancelled due to unfavorable wind. New Zealand only needs one more win to rap this up, so we will tune in again tomorrow to see what unfolds.

Tomorrow we will be in Forest City at the Winnebago factory for service starting Monday.