As we’ve found out so many times in our relatively short tenure in this Full-Time Motor Home Traveling lifestyle, you’d better look around because something ALWAYS becomes significant!
Well, the nickname of Mason City is the River City, as is in,
“Well, Ya got trouble, my friend,
Right here in River City, trouble with a capital “T”
And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool!
You guessed it, Meredith Willson was born and raised “Right here in River City” and wrote the Music Man with his hometown in mind. He started his thinking process in 1948 and shopped it around producers in New York, with varying amounts of success, until (after tweaking it a bit) it hit Broadway in 1957 garnering 5 Tony Awards including Best Musical. Later, in 1962, the premier of the Warner Brothers Musical was held at the theater here in Mason City.
As if that were not enough, Mason City boasts one of the best collections of Frank Llyod Wright’s Prairie School Architecture in the world. Including the only hotel, The Park Inn, designed by Frank left standing. A short walk around town, especially in the Rock Grove section, yields many examples of his work. These are all the homes of some very lucky folks!
I have some photos of the hotel and homes attached, but unfortunately, the “76 Trombones leading the Big Parade” were not available for photo’s when we were there!
So, our traveling lesson for this week ends here.
But who would have guessed ….
Little ’ole Mason City, Iowa …..
Buddy Holly, Frank Lloyd Wright, and The Music Man, all here for your traveling pleasure!
It doesn’t get any better than this!
Historic Park Inn
Notice that when Frank Lloyd Wright designed a place he also designed the furniture and fixtures within.
Looking down from Balcony/Piano Lounge
Out towards Lobby
No explanation needed!
The windows also bore his signature style
The Stockman House, centerpiece of Rock Grove
Private Residence
Private Residence
Private Residence
Private Residence
Private Residence
Please note the window on the opposite side of the building, Classic Frank!
People still come, even after 62 years have passed.
When we were there, a middle-aged couple helped an older man, probably one of their fathers, walk over to the roadside tribute. He was too frail to be able to walk the quarter mile into the cornfield to visit the actual crash site.
He looked sad.
I’m sure that he was a fan, and this was the only way that he could pay his respects to someone who meant something to him.
But contrary to the current catchphrase coined by one of the best lyricists in the modern rock era, Don McClean in his 1971 song, American Pie, “The day the music died”, the music of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) still lives on and is as important today as it was then.
I know, because we built a business around it.
The only other artist from that era that had as much influence was of course, The King, Elvis Presley. Mind you, this in no way diminishes any of the work or other artists from that era, but it seems that these two just rise to the top.
I don’t know of any other era that sparked any kind of themed restaurants. As fun as the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s were, the anchor seems to be the 50’s and I’ll let it go at that.
So here I find myself the northwest corner of Iowa, having the motorhome worked on in a little town called Forest City.
I know the story; it was a cold snowy night in the winter of 1959. The concert ended and the buses that carried the headliners and musicians from some god-forsaken city to the next night after night, were drafty and had no heat. Buddy Holly got fed up with this and chartered a small plane for himself and three others. The story varies a bit but either by chance, coin flip, or necessity, the other two passengers found themselves the ‘Lucky” ones with the extra seats.
They weren’t found until the next morning, only 5 miles away from where they took off.
So, I said that I knew the story.
What I didn’t know was where it all happened. I knew it was somewhere in the Mid-West, but this place is huge and if anything defines the Mid-West, it’s ‘corn fields’.
When I found out that it was near here that it all occurred those may years ago, I knew that we needed to visit.
Near doesn’t do it justice, in reality it’s here.
The town of Clear Lake, where they played their last concert and the airport where they took off from are right next door. The field is in between.
It seems fitting that the day was not perfect. Cloudy, windy, and cool, although not wintery, seemed to be more fitting for a visit to both the crash site and the venue, the Surf Ballroom.
From the beginning the crash site has been visited by thousands and thousands of people. The farmer who owns the land keeps a path to the site mowed and free of crops, so that folks can come and visit. The Surf Ballroom, which looks like a small high school gymnasium, is now on the National Register of Historic Places and thankfully still holds small music gatherings. It’s hard to believe that back in the day that this type of place was standard issue for promoters to showcase national talent.
Path to the Crash Site
Small Memorial on Site
May as well have been 1959, nothing has changed
No Madison Square Garden.
No Giants Stadium.
Nothing larger than a high school gym.
Filled with screaming kids dancing their feet off.
He looked sad as we passed him on our way to the crash site.
No more lollygagging around nice, warm, Texas anymore!
Time to do an oil change, kick the tires, and clean the windshield because it’s time to get out of here and head North, then West, then a little Southwest, and finally start to come East on the
Great Eastward Summer Migration of 2021!
Texas is waaaay too hot and humid in the summer, so off we go, and we won’t be back until we hear that great ‘60’s group from Paterson, New Jersey, singing ‘See You in September’!
This means that new posts to this blog should be forthcoming on a more regular basis. I’m fairly sure that no one needed or wanted to hear about the day-to-day drivel that encompassed my life while just sitting still in the Great State of Texas.
Which was very comfortable (most of the time).
Except for the Once-in-a-Hundred-Years-Freeze-and-Ice-Storm-Event that was well documented on these pages a few months ago.
Now our Travels will take us on a circuitous route back to New Jersey for the summer.
Starting in Iowa where our big baby will get some much-needed TLC from its Birth Mother in the maternity ward of Winnebago General.
From there we plan to drive westward, with some stops in the Badlands, Yellowstone National Park, and finally meet Paula’s friend Nancy in Missoula, Montana for lunch. Just because Nancy will be there for a few days and, most importantly, we can.
From there we will head south to the Great Salt Lake and a few other sights in Utah before landing in Durango, Colorado for a visit.
When that concludes, we drive Eastward, maybe stop in Nashville, Tennessee and Charleston, South Carolina to visit friends before heading up the Eastern Seaboard to Annapolis to visit Mr. Ritter, my friend and former owner of Ritter Food and Sysco. We finally roll into New Jersey around the third week of June where we will set up camp using Sussex County for a base while visiting family in Maine, Vermont, and Boston with the requisite ‘Down the Shore’ excursion planned for August.
September sees us headed back west to Texas and points further West until it’s time to park for an extended period.
Darcy from Kid Stuff Marketing and a representative Kid Car
What do Kid’s Cars and Motorhomes have in common?
They both break at times.
The Kid’s Cars were used at the Chatterbox to serve the kid’s meals in. Made out of cardboard and needing to be folded into their shape, they sometimes met their fate, and had collisions, complete with ketchup drizzled about for realism. When they came apart, my always awesome staff would “repair” the cars for the little kid that was about to have a meltdown because their car came apart.
Problem solved.
The motorhome is a different animal. I do a lot of the maintenance myself, but there are some issues that I am not even remotely qualified to attempt.
Like the really big, 24-foot slide-out that has a motor and track problem.
This requires the slide to be entirely extricated from the body of the motorhome.
Which requires a really big forklift type thing to hold it.
It also requires making a several days trip to where it was born.
Off to Forest City, Iowa, just this side of the Minnesota border!
It is here where the folks at the factory have both the expertise and equipment to handle a job like this. Believe it or not, the price to do this at the factory was reasonably low. They will also fix a few other issues for us while we are there.
So, today is Monday, April 26 and this adventure starts our Great Eastern Summer Migration of 2021!
A short, but very important, back pedal if I may. You probably noticed the photo of a young lady and me at the top of this post.
This is Darcy from Kid Stuff Marketing in Topeka, Kansas. Darcy and I have been friends for over 17 years, but we have never met until today. Darcy was my contact at Kid Stuff, and I would call her at 7:31 every Monday morning (they opened at 7:30) for all the years we had the Chatterbox. I was always her first caller on Mondays. We talked about our children and families, heard about each other’s vacations, graduations, and weddings. I told her years ago that someday I would get out there and visit in person.
Someday.
So, when this trip to Winnebago Land came up and I realized that Topeka was just a (relatively speaking) short detour, we decided that if everything looked good in the morning, that I would give Darcy a call and invite ourselves up for a visit.
I called her at 7:31 today 😊
She was surprised.
Darcy told me that when she saw my name pop up on the caller ID, she was like….. “Nahh, couldn’t be.”
But when I said, “Hi Darcy, It’s Don!” she knew it was for real.
We arrived at lunchtime, Darcy came out to the motorhome and we had great visit. A chance to get caught up on family news, (we couldn’t believe how big the kids got), you know, all the important stuff.
Just one of those ‘Someday’ bucket list type things that usually never get done.
But meeting nice people that you’ve known forever should get a higher place on that list.
