It was 1988 and I was a part-time air personality named "Rob Mikels" at All Oldies 940 KIOA in Des Moines, Iowa...living my dream of being on the radio thanks to the mentoring of some fine individuals...namely Steve Mathews and Dic Youngs. But there were others to show me the way, like Lee Githens, Jay Weiss, Scott Kaye, Les Howard and others.
My good friend Kyle Martin, who also was working part-time at KIOA (and later became the overnight host), and I hopped in my little `80 Pontiac and decided we were going to see the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa where Buddy Holly played his last show on February 2, 1959. Kyle and I were college radio partners at Drake, and we met each other in a college class called "The World of Rock Music", taught by "The Professor" Mike Frisbie (whom I would be privileged to work with at KFMG for a few years). Mike mentioned Buddy Holly in class, and this guy and I started talking about a common interest in Buddy Holly. We made plans to go to Clear Lake before we even knew each others' names. After making plans, I said "I don't even know your name and we're going to drive across the state. He said, I'm Kyle Martin." Even more coincidental, our friend Kelli Lawrence had arranged a few days before for us to do a radio show together at Drake's KDRK and we just hadn't met yet.
So with cassettes ready on the dashboard for when KIOA's daytime signal faded out, we drove up I-35 toward Mason City and the Minnesota border. We wanted to see where Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens played their last show. They were riding around the midwest on a bus for the Winter Dance Party Tour with Frankie Sardo and Dion and the Belmonts. The heater on the bus had broken, and it was a cold, uncomfortable ride. That night they all played at the Surf Ballroom, and this has been fictionalized in several movies including "The Buddy Holly Story" with Gary Busey and "La Bamba" with Lou Diamond Phillips. The street out in front of the Surf is called "Buddy Holly Way", and there was a newly erected monument in front of the ballroom to the three performers and their pilot Roger Peterson.
Kyle and I decided to visit the Mason City airport after seeing the Surf. It was at the Mason City Airport that Buddy Holly chartered a plane to get to the next stop on the tour and avoid riding the bus. The story is that he wanted to get to Fargo, North Dakota early so he could do some laundry and get some sleep. He was going to bring his band with him...namely Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings. Much has been written about how Tommy & Waylon gave up their seats. Before take off, Buddy yelled to Waylon "I hope your bus freezes up" to which Waylon replied "I hope your plane crashes." 19 year-old Waylon Jennings was haunted by that for the rest of his life. But that is a story you can read elsewhere.
We went to the Mason City Airport...we were truly on a quest. We wanted to see where Buddy last walked around. Just as we were leaving, I noticed the name of the air freight company on the wall (very small regional airport) where Buddy chartered his plane. At this point you're calling Kyle and me obsessive...go right ahead. I don't recall the name of the company as I write this, but I summoned up the courage to ask the rather obsessive question of the guy working there "does anyone ever come around here asking about the Buddy Holly plane crash?" The fellow behind the counter called out the manager, an old-timer, who came out and told Kyle and me what we were after. "Where is the crash site?" He told us where to find it..."it's a couple of miles northwest of here...you have to take such and such down about a mile, turn off the black top and take a road straight north until you get to...." and so on. We got really lost.
At one point...and I kid you not...Kyle and I both got this chill as we were driving down a gravel road, completely lost and just wanting to get the hell out of there and back on the highway to Des Moines....we both even remarked to each other about the chill. I told Kyle we would stop at the first farmhouse and ask directions back to a highway. It was winter and there were no crops in so at least we could see where to go...if we knew where to go. So we pulled up to a farmhouse...two guys in the middle of nowhere in a car with out of state plates. I told Kyle to come with me so the farmer wouldn't be suspicious. Kyle grew up in Denver and I was from a farm town. This is just what you did.
We went to the door of the house and knocked. A man came to the door, very much an old Iowa farmer and the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet, and I told him who we were, why we were on his porch and what we were looking for. He said something like "not too many people have come around here looking for that these days." I asked him if he knew where the crash site was, and he turned to his right and said "right over there...down that fence row a quarter of a mile or so...it's not marked and you won't know it except it's sort of across from where you'll see a white farmhouse in the distance." We couldn't believe what we were hearing...not only could this man give us directions to the highway, but he could give us directions to the crash site.
I asked the man how long he had lived there. Now this is 23 years later that I'm writing this, but I recall he said "since 1956". Well that means he would have been there at the time of the crash and I remarked as such. He went on to say that he saw and heard the crash...his daughter had left the hall light on that night and he awoke to a racket outside...a plane heading straight for his house in the falling snow. His guess was that the pilot saw the light in the window and realized he was not climbing but descending...he pulled up and over the house and crashed in a field beyond the farmhouse. Much has been written about the pilot not being certified to fly on instruments (he generally flew by landmarks) and the gyroscope was the opposite of what he had trained on. That is all in keeping with what the man told us.
We thanked the man and trudged through the mud and the snow down a fence row to look for what we would eventually just have to guess would be the spot. Kyle and I stood and reflected, and I took a few pictures. We hiked back through the muck to my car. I remember asking Kyle to take off his muddy shoes and knock them off before getting in the car...I think he had one of those moments where your shoe goes all the way down into the mud and it got sucked off his foot. As Kyle did that, I said "I wonder if we can get KIOA all the way up here." I tuned to 940 AM and got static. And here my friends I shit you not, KIOA started to fade in and then both Kyle and I heard a song play that stopped us in our tracks, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" by Buddy Holly. If that wasn't remarkable enough, Buddy didn't play that song that night at the Surf.
So we drove back to Des Moines and directly to the KIOA studios at 215 Keo Way in downtown Des Moines. Lee "Baby" Githens was still on-air, and we were excited to tell him that he had played that Buddy Holly song at that exact moment in time and so forth. He was amused at the two of us, all excited and out of breath telling him this story. He looked back on the music log, and found the song...written at the bottom of the page where we wrote songs we played on our own or as requests that hour. The song hadn't been programmed...Lee played it on his own.
And that chill? We had driven right by that white house across from the crash site.
And this all actually happened, and this is the first time I've written any of it down, because it all seemed sort of surreal at the time. And my good friend Kyle, who still works in radio today, went to the Surf Ballroom for the 50th anniversary Winter Dance Party show two years ago and told me all about it. There is now a marker at the crash site, and there are yearly pilgrimages people make the night of February 2nd.
And the picture I took at what we could only guess was the crash site? It was the exact crash site...I've compared the picture against pictures of the crash.
Except my picture was taken from the opposite direction. I was standing on the spot where the plane crashed. Where Buddy's body was laying.
Rest in Peace, Charles Hardin Holley. His music made a difference...so much so that the day he passed is called "The Day the Music Died."
My good friend Kyle Martin, who also was working part-time at KIOA (and later became the overnight host), and I hopped in my little `80 Pontiac and decided we were going to see the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa where Buddy Holly played his last show on February 2, 1959. Kyle and I were college radio partners at Drake, and we met each other in a college class called "The World of Rock Music", taught by "The Professor" Mike Frisbie (whom I would be privileged to work with at KFMG for a few years). Mike mentioned Buddy Holly in class, and this guy and I started talking about a common interest in Buddy Holly. We made plans to go to Clear Lake before we even knew each others' names. After making plans, I said "I don't even know your name and we're going to drive across the state. He said, I'm Kyle Martin." Even more coincidental, our friend Kelli Lawrence had arranged a few days before for us to do a radio show together at Drake's KDRK and we just hadn't met yet.
So with cassettes ready on the dashboard for when KIOA's daytime signal faded out, we drove up I-35 toward Mason City and the Minnesota border. We wanted to see where Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens played their last show. They were riding around the midwest on a bus for the Winter Dance Party Tour with Frankie Sardo and Dion and the Belmonts. The heater on the bus had broken, and it was a cold, uncomfortable ride. That night they all played at the Surf Ballroom, and this has been fictionalized in several movies including "The Buddy Holly Story" with Gary Busey and "La Bamba" with Lou Diamond Phillips. The street out in front of the Surf is called "Buddy Holly Way", and there was a newly erected monument in front of the ballroom to the three performers and their pilot Roger Peterson.
Kyle and I decided to visit the Mason City airport after seeing the Surf. It was at the Mason City Airport that Buddy Holly chartered a plane to get to the next stop on the tour and avoid riding the bus. The story is that he wanted to get to Fargo, North Dakota early so he could do some laundry and get some sleep. He was going to bring his band with him...namely Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings. Much has been written about how Tommy & Waylon gave up their seats. Before take off, Buddy yelled to Waylon "I hope your bus freezes up" to which Waylon replied "I hope your plane crashes." 19 year-old Waylon Jennings was haunted by that for the rest of his life. But that is a story you can read elsewhere.
We went to the Mason City Airport...we were truly on a quest. We wanted to see where Buddy last walked around. Just as we were leaving, I noticed the name of the air freight company on the wall (very small regional airport) where Buddy chartered his plane. At this point you're calling Kyle and me obsessive...go right ahead. I don't recall the name of the company as I write this, but I summoned up the courage to ask the rather obsessive question of the guy working there "does anyone ever come around here asking about the Buddy Holly plane crash?" The fellow behind the counter called out the manager, an old-timer, who came out and told Kyle and me what we were after. "Where is the crash site?" He told us where to find it..."it's a couple of miles northwest of here...you have to take such and such down about a mile, turn off the black top and take a road straight north until you get to...." and so on. We got really lost.
At one point...and I kid you not...Kyle and I both got this chill as we were driving down a gravel road, completely lost and just wanting to get the hell out of there and back on the highway to Des Moines....we both even remarked to each other about the chill. I told Kyle we would stop at the first farmhouse and ask directions back to a highway. It was winter and there were no crops in so at least we could see where to go...if we knew where to go. So we pulled up to a farmhouse...two guys in the middle of nowhere in a car with out of state plates. I told Kyle to come with me so the farmer wouldn't be suspicious. Kyle grew up in Denver and I was from a farm town. This is just what you did.
We went to the door of the house and knocked. A man came to the door, very much an old Iowa farmer and the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet, and I told him who we were, why we were on his porch and what we were looking for. He said something like "not too many people have come around here looking for that these days." I asked him if he knew where the crash site was, and he turned to his right and said "right over there...down that fence row a quarter of a mile or so...it's not marked and you won't know it except it's sort of across from where you'll see a white farmhouse in the distance." We couldn't believe what we were hearing...not only could this man give us directions to the highway, but he could give us directions to the crash site.
I asked the man how long he had lived there. Now this is 23 years later that I'm writing this, but I recall he said "since 1956". Well that means he would have been there at the time of the crash and I remarked as such. He went on to say that he saw and heard the crash...his daughter had left the hall light on that night and he awoke to a racket outside...a plane heading straight for his house in the falling snow. His guess was that the pilot saw the light in the window and realized he was not climbing but descending...he pulled up and over the house and crashed in a field beyond the farmhouse. Much has been written about the pilot not being certified to fly on instruments (he generally flew by landmarks) and the gyroscope was the opposite of what he had trained on. That is all in keeping with what the man told us.
We thanked the man and trudged through the mud and the snow down a fence row to look for what we would eventually just have to guess would be the spot. Kyle and I stood and reflected, and I took a few pictures. We hiked back through the muck to my car. I remember asking Kyle to take off his muddy shoes and knock them off before getting in the car...I think he had one of those moments where your shoe goes all the way down into the mud and it got sucked off his foot. As Kyle did that, I said "I wonder if we can get KIOA all the way up here." I tuned to 940 AM and got static. And here my friends I shit you not, KIOA started to fade in and then both Kyle and I heard a song play that stopped us in our tracks, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" by Buddy Holly. If that wasn't remarkable enough, Buddy didn't play that song that night at the Surf.
So we drove back to Des Moines and directly to the KIOA studios at 215 Keo Way in downtown Des Moines. Lee "Baby" Githens was still on-air, and we were excited to tell him that he had played that Buddy Holly song at that exact moment in time and so forth. He was amused at the two of us, all excited and out of breath telling him this story. He looked back on the music log, and found the song...written at the bottom of the page where we wrote songs we played on our own or as requests that hour. The song hadn't been programmed...Lee played it on his own.
And that chill? We had driven right by that white house across from the crash site.
And this all actually happened, and this is the first time I've written any of it down, because it all seemed sort of surreal at the time. And my good friend Kyle, who still works in radio today, went to the Surf Ballroom for the 50th anniversary Winter Dance Party show two years ago and told me all about it. There is now a marker at the crash site, and there are yearly pilgrimages people make the night of February 2nd.
And the picture I took at what we could only guess was the crash site? It was the exact crash site...I've compared the picture against pictures of the crash.
Except my picture was taken from the opposite direction. I was standing on the spot where the plane crashed. Where Buddy's body was laying.
Rest in Peace, Charles Hardin Holley. His music made a difference...so much so that the day he passed is called "The Day the Music Died."
