I had to be at the church at noon, so Amy and I weren't able to do a whole lot on Saturday morning. We did check out Target in nearby Mason City and stopped at Kohl's department store to pick out a wedding gift. Apparently, our southern accents are all the rage in northern Iowa. I can only imagine what people are going to think when I start talking at the wedding ceremony.

The wedding went on just as it should. I will have to say that it was unusual to step back into an actual "sanctuary,"--complete with pews, chandeliers, hymnals, communion table, and two pulpits. It was a Congregationalist church, and seemed to have been architecturally plucked out of Massachusetts. Everywhere I looked I saw pictures of the Mayflower and pictures of Pilgrims. To be honest, it looked like someone had decorated the church for Thanksgiving. Even the weathervane had a New England look. In the middle of northern Iowa, a thousand miles from the Atlantic, the wrought iron weathervane had been molded into a Mayflower replica.

After the wedding, we had the opportunity to experience Clear Lake in a way that few take time to do. For those of you who may need reminding or for those of you who never knew, Clear Lake, IA holds the distinction for being the site of Buddy Holly's final concert in February 1959. Along with several other early rock-n-roll acts, most notably, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (aka "The Big Bopper"), Holly played Clear Lake's Surf Ballroom on the evening of February 2, 1959. In the course of their Midwest tour, the performers' bus had already broken down several times. When the bus broke down, there was no heat in the exceptionally cold winter. The performers were increasingly frustrated by the bus, and Holly decided to charter to Fargo, ND, the tour's next stop. Holly reasoned that they could take the flight and spend the night in a warm hotel, while the rest of the tour caught up to them. At the airport, Richardson convinced Holly's bandmate, Waylon Jennings, to give up his seat and Valens, who had never flown on a small plane, won a coin flip that gave him the final seat. In the early morning hours of February 3, Holly, Valens, and Richardson climbed aboard the small plane. Shortly after takeoff, in the early morning hours of February 3, the plane crashed into an Iowa cornfield killing all four aboard.

The Surf Ballroom is still there. In fact, The Doobie Brothers were playing the Ballroom on Saturday night. We couldn't go in, but we could visit the crash site. The exact spot is about five miles north of town off a gravel road. The site is not well-marked, and anyone who finds it would have to be looking for it. Amy and I parked the car just off the dirt road and began walking along the barbed wire fence. We walked about half a mile until we reached a modest memorial. It's really not much... just a stainless steel guitar with the victims' names and the crash date, along with three metal discs inscribed with the Holly's, Valens', and Richardson's biggest selling singles. It's obvious that a few continue to visit--they place toy guitars, picks, old record jackets, beads, and pairs of Holly's trademark horn-rimmed glasses--but from what I can see, those who come to pay their respects grow fewer and fewer each year. We went late on a Saturday afternoon, and it was pretty obvious that no one else had been there that day. I suppose pilgrimages to the site may spike on the anniversary of the crash.

It's been more than 48 years since "The Day the Music Died," as Don McLean immortalized the tragic day in his 1971 classic "American Pie." But I wonder... how long will it be before "the place the music died" will be forgotten?