Dan Smith

On February 3rd, 1959, the Big Bopper, Richie Valens, and Buddy Holly died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, IA. After driving down a few unpaved roads and following a fence line a half mile into some farmer’s field, I arrived at the exact spot where the plane hit the ground. There was a small metal guitar and several 45s fashioned as a memorial, along with a few fake flowers, records, and several plastic cars from the 1950’s. Steve grabbed the coordinates: 43 degrees and 13.223 minutes N, 93 degrees and 22.886 minutes W. We walked back towards the car, but were stopped by several police officers with hands on their guns. Apparently the Joice Bank was just robbed, and the officers thought we may have had something to do with it. The officers checked our “identification papers” like in an old WWII movie. To add to the chaos, the police also confused Steve’s license plate and thought our car was stolen. They later blamed the “dispatcher” for the mix-up; the buck stops there. In the end it turned out that we really didn’t rob the bank, and that we were just looking for the place the music died.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 11th, 2005 at 10:29 pm and is filed under Music, Road Trip!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.