The Day the Music Died

We have just left Minnesota on a trip to Colorado and Utah. It is a rainy Friday morning, October 2, 2009. The satellite radio is tuned to the '50s station and we are cruising south on Interstate 35 toward the Iowa border as Buddy Holley and the Crickets are playing.

"Hey!, we've never stopped at Clear Lake, to visit the site of the crash in 1959," I think. Let's check it out.

It's easy to recognize the Iowa boarder. The visitor center is in the shape of a barn.


Even the casinos here look like a barn with a machine shed.



The helpful man at the visitor center gives me directions to the memorial at the Clear Lake crash site. He warned us that "it's pretty muddy today out in the field."

I remember the day in February, 1959 when I learned about the accident. I was in the eighth grade. A classmate, Bill Dibellis (spelling?) had heard about it - perhaps he had a "transistor" with him, perhaps he heard it about it before leaving home. He lived close to school. This was a sad day for many of us.



We found the site. It is a few mile north of Clear Lake on a gravel road at the corner of 315th and Gull. You could easily pass by without noticing it except for those glasses.

From the glasses marker it's a half mile walk along the fence line to the crash site memorial.




It is smaller than you might expect.


People leave memorabilia. This hat tells it all for those of us old enough to remember.


And let's not forget the pilot who lost his life that day too.

Menahga Minnesota

I'm a relative newcomer to Minnesota, having moved here just 42 years ago. (Minnesotans are well known for taking time to accept strangers!) Back in the late 1960's I soon discovered The "Good Morning Show" on WCCO-AM. 'CCO still had about a 50% share of the audience at that time (No, that is not a misprint!)

Every March 16th, hosts Boone and Erickson would tell the "ancient story of how St. Urho drove the grasshoppers out of Finland." I was not a believer. St. Patrick and snakes in Ireland, maybe, but St. Urho and the grasshoppers? Surely, a myth!

Now, as I pulled into Menahga, Minnesota, I noticed a large statue and commemorative plaque set in a carefully landscaped park. What's this? I pulled around behind the statue and walked up to have a look at this neat little monument.

Well, here he is! St. Urho complete with a grasshopper impaled upon his trident.


The story is recorded in bronze.


And for more details, there is a full museum.


Moral to the story? Don't be a skeptic when you hear the locals describing their cultural background. This monument even rates an entry on the marvelous Roadside America site.

North From Sauk Centre

After breakfast and a walk around Sauk Centre, it was time to head north toward Bemidji and The Lost 40.

While Sauk Centre shows us main street in small town America, highway 71 shows us agricultural America in some unique ways. While you see the conventional fields of corn and grain, the things that really catch your eye are the sunflowers and gladiolas.

This field of sunflowers appeared a bit sad and pessimistic.


While this one was full of vigor and optimism.


But this field of Gladiolas got me to backtrack a bit and stop.


The towns that I passed through included Round Prairie, Long Prairie, Eagle Bend and Wadena. Several had beautiful churches. This area was, in large part, settled by Polish immigrants in addition to the usual Scandanavian and German mix found in much of Minnesota. The Polish left their mark in the form of large Catholic churches such as this one at Browerville.


Founded originally as St. Joseph's it was combined with St. Peter's , a German parish also of Browerville, and given the neutral name, Christ the King.

A Visit to Main Street, Sauk Centre, Minnesota

I was headed for northern Minnesota, Thursday. I was on my way to "The Lost 40," the last surviving significant stand of White Pine in a three state area that was once covered with pine. It's about a three hundred mile drive from the Twin Cities to our destination and, of course, we'll make a few interesting stops along the way.


Turning off I-94 at Sauk Centre to head north about an hour and a half into the drive, I immediately noticed a Sinclair Lewis Interpretive Center. Now when Sinclair Lewis descibed "Gopher Prairie," a thinly disguised Sauk Centre, in the novel, Main Street, he used some colorful language:

It was not only the uninspiring, unapologetic ugliness and the rigid straightness which overwhelmed her. It was the planlessness, the flimsy temporariness of the buildings. . . . Each man had built with the most valiant disregard of all the others.

Clearly, Sauk Centre has forgiven its famous son.

In fact, Sauk Centre celebrates Lewis with some pride. You will find a Main Steet Cafe, a Main Street Theater and other references to the man and his prize-winning novel. Not the least would include this street sign.


Since it was about time for breakfast, I looked for a parking place in front of the Main Street Cafe. With good fortune, I found none. By the time I rounded the corner, turned around and parked, I was facing the Palmer House. The Palmer House is an imposing three-story hotel and displayed twin Cafe signs. "Worth a closer look," I thought.


As luck would have it, Lewis worked at the Palmer House as a substitute night-clerk and later captured the flavor of the place as Minniemashie House in Gopher Prairie. The covers of the menu in the cafe provide a good historic context for the Palmer House. The lobby has been "remodeled" to an appropriately "old" era.



Breakfast was excellent. Service outstanding. And if you wanted a newspaper, payment is on the honor system.



The town is tidy; shopowners are friendly. The two or three blocks of downtown Sauk Centre are well preserved.


If you are on Interstate 94 traveling beween the Twin Cities and the Dakotas, plan to stop. This could be a half-hour or a full day depending on your interest in literature. This article on Unsual Tourist Sites, originally published in The People's Encyclopedia fills in more details.

Black Beauty and the Mouse

Putting this on our Travel Blog is a bit of a stretch. But here we go!

About seven years ago, I was fortunate to find a Ford F-250 pickup truck available for $50. Mind you, it wasn't perfect. A broken windshield, slipping clutch, broken anti-pollution air pump. O yeah, one of its two gas tanks leaked and was disconnected, and the tires were bald. And a few other problems, too.

But it was love at first sight:


She had to have a name. "Black Beauty," I thought, and so it has been for seven years.

I had the clutch replaced, made a few minor repairs - like pulling out a couple of large dents with a toilet plunger - and she proudly took up residence in a garage stall at the lake. Each spring, she takes the boat down to the landing. In the summer she makes a few runs to the town dump. In the fall, it's back to the boat landing and she gets her tank topped off as a reward.

About the third spring after our initial startup , I noticed the clutch slipping again! This time it was bad. I though I had made a bad investment. For the new clutch to be slipping we could only have a major problem. Maybe a bad rear seal was leaking oil into the clutch assembly? Unwilling to spend major money again, Terry and I took out the clutch for a look. No easy task! Drop the drive shaft, remove the (4-speed manual) tranny and take off the clutch housing:

Hey! What's this fuzzy stuff under the clutch spring? How did that get in there?


OK, pull the pressure plate, slip off the clutch disk and clean out lots more fuzzy stuff. Lay it out and let's have a good look!


Say, is that a mouse? Inside the clutch? Can't be!

But, yes it is!

There is a narrow slot on the bottom of the F-250 clutch housing. It might be 3/8" wide at the most and a couple of inches long. Big enough for a mouse to crawl in and build a nice little nest. Probably very comfortable over the long Wisconsin winter.

A mouse in a clutch? I've asked a lot of professional and amateur mechanics about this over the past few years and no one has ever heard of it happening. But sometimes life is stranger than fiction.


Sadly, after seven happy years together, Black Beauty and I must split up. Congress has passed and the president has signed the "Cash for Clunkers" bill creating the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) This increases Black Beauty's value to $4,500 from July 1 (or whenever the NHTSA figures out how to implement it) until November 1.

A Visit to Hayward, Wisconsin

We spent the Memorial Day weekend up on the St. Croix Flowage near Gordon, Wisconsin. See my post on Pagac's Pines Resort for more information about our summer place.

We arrived on Thursday and spent Friday driving about thirty miles east to Hayward, Wisconsin and touring that area.


Hayward is the "big city" in Northwest Wisconsin. While the population posted on the sign coming into town isn't very large, there are many seasonal visitors and a walk down Main Street makes it feel like a much larger city. A glance around town makes you quickly aware that this isn't Milwaukee or Madison. Your first clue might be when you spot the McDonald's:


If you walk into the Walgreen's pharmacy, you will certainly notice the fishing poles in a barrel by the door. Close by Walgreen's and McDonald's you may see the signs for Pastika's bait shop. Stop in. This is the oldest bait shop in Wisconsin. "Since 1921." You will notice that we don't waste much in this part of the country. Not even our leeches!


This is cabin, lumberjack and fisherman territory!

Now, Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe, roamed the northern part of Minnesota. But, they probably fished right here near Hayward. Just check out the size of this Muskie!


Or the nearby sunfish.


Hayward is the home of the Freshwater fishing Hall of Fame. If you have any interest in old lures, motors or fishing records, this is a must see place for you.


Hayward began as a lumbering and sawmill town like many others in what were once known as "the Pineries." Tall White Pine trees ranging up to six feet in diameter grew in dense forests across Michigan, Wisconsin and Eastern Minnesota up until the second half of the 1800's when they were harvested for the lumber to build Chicago, St. Louis and many other Midwest cities. The story of the local mill is told briefly on this historical marker.


That is the short form. For the longer version, we will go to Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Volume IX, published in 1901:

The North Wisconsin Lumber Company was organized October 28th,
1881, with a capital of $450,000, in six equal interests, namely:
W. H. Laird, M. G. Norton, and J. L. Norton, of Winona, Minn.;
F. Weyerhaeuser, of St. Paul, Minn.; R. L. McCormack, of Waseca,
Minn.; and A. J. Hayward, of Chippewa Falls, Wis.

The mill began operations June 4th, 1883, and has continued for
sixteen seasons through 1899; total cut, up to 1899, 540,000,000 feet.

In a letter from B. L. McCormack, vice president of the Wisconsin
Historical Society, he says: "If any other data are desired, I will
be at your service; for I fully appreciate the fact that the vast
wealth of the timber country will in a few years live only in the
history you and others may write."

Sadly, McCormack was correct. There is only one place in the Minnesota-Wisconsin area that we can get a glimpse of the magnificent White Pine forests that covered this area. That is at "The Lost Forty." A subject for another post later this summer.

Like the Hayward lumber company, you will find Fred Weyerhaeuser's name on the ownership lists of a large number of Minnesota-Wisconsin mills although not prominently featured on the mill itself.

While most traces of big timber lumbering are now long gone from the Northwoods, Hayward has found a way to continue to make money from the lumbering trade. Each summer, the Lumberjack World Championships are held in Hayward. You may have seen parts of the championships on ABC Wide World of Sports, many years ago. This year's event is the 50th anniversary show. The locals have adapted well to the new environment. Here one is using his chainsaw to help an eagle escape from the interior of a large log.


Hayward has an eclectic group of restaurants. We used to note that it was difficult to find an ethnic restaurant in northern Wisconsin. Here Yanny tries to do it all in one shop!


But here are several places easily overlooked, but worthy of a stop.

The Norske Nook is a well known place to stop for pies along Interstate I-94 in Osseo, Wisconsin. They also have a branch here in Hayward. And yes, that is the Norwegian flag flying just below the Stars and Stripes.


Just a couple of miles north of town, toward Cable, you will find Turk's Inn. Turk's is a classic Wisconsin supper club. Worth the stop just to look it over and remember dining out in the 1950s give or take a couple of decades. They are only open in the evening.


Head east of Hayward on "B" and after about eight miles, you will come to the original Famous Daves. Dave Anderson, founder, now has a chain of 170 Famous Dave's restaurants around the United States. Read his biography and you'll learn a great lesson about not giving up after your concept initially fails. Order the Georgia Pulled Pork!


Are there souvenirs available? Yah, youbetcha! How about a windmill? This famous Hayward landmark (built in 1980) contains about 2,226 square feet of space and is available fo$219,000. How about opening a dutch restaurant?


If that doesn't feel right, then how about a dance hall? The Smith Lake Pavilion is for sale just a bit west of town on Wis. 77 on the road toward Minong. I think I could hear an accordion playing a shadish as we drove by. (All together now: 1-2-3-hop, 1-2-3-hop, 1-hop, 2-hop, 3-hop, 4-hop)

It's for sale, although the Realtor doesn't list his website on the sign. Just go here and take a look at the interior shots. Only $299,999 and this one comes with 86 feet of lake shore too.


Why the Old Style sign might be worth that much some day.


I would also have a link here to Al Capone's Hideout located about fifteen miles southwest of Hayward. Roadside America reports it closed at this time. This place is worth a trip if it should reopen. In the meantime, you will just have to accept the notion that Turk's, referenced above, was one of Capone's favorite spots and visit them for a great steak.

More About Traffic in Egypt

I've written a couple of previous posts about Egyptian traffic. Anyone who has visited Cairo has traffic stories to tell.

The wonderful blog Whazzup Egypt just alerted me to this article by a BBC reporter on the traffic situation. And a recent accident on the Ring Road was so horrendous that friends even called to report on it. Initial reports put the death toll at four but I saw later reports rising much higher.

One should always use caution when traveling within Egypt. This recent report from Luxor confirms thoughts that I have had when considering the balloon rides available there.

Part of the reason that I urge caution in Cairo is because you must always walk in the street:


A good part of the reason for walking in the street is that cars park on the sidewalk:


Be especially cautious at intersections where the traffic may be heavy. You can't wait for the cars to stop!


Sometimes you just have to get out of the way of a vehicle. Yes, this is a picture of a delivery truck making a run down a street that you might think is for pedestrians only:


But if the traffic seems like too much for walking, I suppose you can always just get on a bus. This one seems crowded but the next one might be worse: