You’ve heard the
story.
Or maybe you haven’t. The one
about Rod Stewart?
Well, back in the late seventies,
Hot Legs let his good time run a bit off course one night.
He found himself stretched across a long metal table in some
emergency room. Doctors worked frantically to pump nine pints
of semen from his stomach before the whole frothy mess leaked
into the rest of his body and brought the intricate workings
of his organs to a grinding halt. He paid everyone involved
to keep hush hush. Someone must have breached that contract,
though, because here I am bringing it up.
Crazy, I know, but that’s the
story I was told.
And surely you’ve heard about
listening to Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral while
staring at your reflection in a mirror.
No? Well, don’t do it!
Basically, there was this girl
in Massachusetts—must have been sometime during the mid-nineties—who
decided to crank the album while studying her face in the mirror
of her parents’ candlelit bathroom. She concentrated hard,
letting the features of her face blur into muted angles while
tiny flames dragged distorted shadows over the walls. Sometime
around “Closer”, a snake emerged from her right ear. It flicked
its tongue against the sticky air and coiled around her neck
like a noose. Maggots fell from her nose and collected in the
deep ceramic sink. The girl reached for her throat, clawing
at the pregnant veins throbbing underneath her skin.
What she’d heard was true. She
was seeing herself as she would look in Hell.
The album played on. Trent’s
voice snarled over the grinding, sawing music. The girl’s mind
snapped like a fishing line. A fist went through the mirror.
She seized a long shard, staggered up the hall, and spilled
her sister’s guts all over a tasteful flowered bedspread.
The police found her outside
behind some bushes. Her wrists were slashed to the bone, her
blood black and syrupy under the soft glow of a magnificent
new moon.
Or so they say.
And then there’s the story of
Creeping Bonanza.
Just after midnight on February
3, 1959, right outside of a town in Iowa called Clear Lake,
a small aircraft fell from the sky at an alarming speed. The
plane smashed into the frozen earth of an abandoned field and
skidded across the ice-slicked ground until it lost momentum
and settled a few feet short of an old wire fence.
The pilot died instantly; his
limp body hung askew against the cold, tight embrace of his
seatbelt.
The other three passengers, torn
and tattered and shattered into different stages of disassembly,
crawled from the wreckage and moved toward the snarled, rusty
fence.
Once there, Ritchie Valens rolled
onto his back and brought a shaking hand to his face. Blood
seeped through his fingers in soft pulses.
The Big Bopper arrived and managed
to get to his knees, his left arm moving around lifelessly
like a piece of pulled taffy.
Buddy Holly was the last to get
there. He inched along the crunching ice, dragging his guitar
behind him, until he met the others at the fence. A piece of
his skull had been carved away upon impact, and his glistening
brain began to frost over from the caress of a frigid Midwestern
breeze.
They looked at each other with
the collective knowledge that it would be their final performance.
Valens pulled a harmonica from his coat pocket. The Bopper
cleared the blood from his throat and began gurgling scales.
They drew upon the dwindling energy pulsing through them, between
them.
And they played. Holly’s guitar
sounded sickly. He strummed the strings with his busted hand,
each note an off-tune requiem. Valens blew into his harmonica
through chipped teeth and frozen lips. The Bopper’s voice was
alien, frightening.
They finished their song and
surrendered to fate. Their still-warm bodies melted the ice
and snow. The water, along with blood and splinters of bone
and bacterial fizzes and flecks of skin, pooled together where
the ground sank into a shallow dip between them.
They were discovered later that
morning. Their bodies were removed, the wreckage cleared away.
The first crop was chanced upon
three years later by two brothers in the exact spot where the
musicians’ runoff had settled. They knelt in front of the plant
and studied its outlandish appearance. The flowers were yellow
and pointed. Small blue buds clung to thin stems like rock
candy on strings. The whole sprawling mess was a strange and
menacing blight on the otherwise vanilla farmland that stretched
out in every direction.
One of the boys cut a piece of
the plant with his pocket knife. They brought it back to the
barn, packed a few of the blue buds into a corncob pipe lifted
from their father’s top dresser drawer, and took turns pulling
long drags of thick, rank smoke.
Bright flashes needled their
eyes. An odd rushing sound filled their heads; it resembled
the din of a thousand people hemorrhaging excitement and applause.
The boys felt good, great, and began fidgeting with the buttons
and zippers on their clothing.
Their mother returned home some
time later to be greeted by the scratchy sounds of a Ricky
Nelson record playing at an unacceptable volume. She burst
into the house and found her sons in the living room.
The older boy was naked from
the waist down. He was playing guitar on one of her brooms.
Lipstick and rouge were smeared across his face in colorful,
uneven ribbons.
The younger boy was stretched-out
on the sofa. He used two wooden spoons to play drums on a throw
pillow. He saw his mother, put a hand out, and shouted over
the music, “No autographs!”
Their mother dropped her armload
of groceries. Her face twisted. The older boy walked up to
her and said something, but she didn’t hear him. The rope that
kept her tethered to reality had snapped when her youngest
son, the apple of her eye, rose from the sofa to reveal a long,
curved zucchini sticking out of his ass.
The poor woman would never be
the same again.
Rumors of the plant and its origins
surged through the town. A group of teenagers combed the field,
but by then all traces of the plant had been removed. For years
people visited the field each spring, hoping to find some blooms.
They never did.
The story became embedded in
folklore. Occasionally, a townsperson would visit or relocate
to another part of the country, bringing with them the tale
of a plant named after the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza
B35 that ushered three irreplaceable talents to their untimely
demise.
Creeping Bonanza.
So the story goes.
Lonnie drummed on the steering
wheel as the first thunderous notes of Meatloaf’s “Bat Out
Of Hell” raged through the Ford’s crackling speakers.
Will watched him from the passenger
seat and swallowed the last swig of his Pepsi. He shook his
head and smiled. A small CD wallet sat on his lap, and he began
to flip through it.
“The Loaf, baby!” Lonnie cried. “Ever
see that fucker perform live? He’s up there for like five minutes
and he’s already dripping sweat. No shit.” He reached between
his legs and retrieved a Sierra Mist. “They used to have some
guy follow him around onstage with a mop.”
Will turned to him, fingering
the pages of the wallet. “I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”
Lonnie finished his soda and
tossed the bottle out the window.
“Man, I wish you wouldn’t do
that,” Will said. “This is hick country. They pull us over
for tossing bottles out onto the road and next thing you know
we’re in some musty police station back room getting ass-raped
by Sheriff Bubba and his friends.”
Lonnie laughed hard and threw
his head back. “Where do you come up with this shit?”
“Hey, joke of you want,” Will
said. “But you’d be surprised what goes on out here when no
one’s around.”
IA-27 stretched out before them,
a long grey coil that looked wavy from the heat. They were
eleven-hundred miles into their trip, a long way from Massachusetts,
heading toward some town in Iowa in search of a crazy mythic
plant.
Will ejected Bat Out Of Hell and
replaced it with The Best of Ritchie Valens. “La Bamba” came
on, and a discomfort stole over them, killing their excitement.
Lonnie glanced over. His face
was pallid. “Maybe we outta take that out. I don’t know, it’s
too morbid or something.”
Will agreed. He ejected the disc
and placed it back into the wallet.
Lonnie and Will had been introduced
to the story of Creeping Bonanza at a party. They were sitting
together on one end of a sectional sofa when a scruffy boy
sat across from them with a beer in each hand and a cigarette
smoldering between his lips.
The boy looked out of place;
his haircut was fifteen years out of style, and his muscled
arms threatened to rip through his faded flannel shirt. He
explained that he was in town visiting relatives while his
parents sorted through a divorce back in Iowa.
He moved closer and began rattling-on
about a tractor he was rebuilding. Lonnie and Will dismissed
him as a simple, backward farm boy. They were about to excuse
themselves from his company when David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs came
on the stereo. The boy lit another cigarette, sat back, and
launched into an enlightening and entertaining commentary on
what he felt were the album’s more complex pieces. He explained
how Bowie had successfully married glam rock with George Orwell.
Lonnie and Will were transfixed.
The dexterity with which the boy dissected each song engaged
their love of music and rescued them from an otherwise humdrum
evening.
They spent the next three hours
with the boy as he critiqued everything that came on the stereo.
The three of them lamented the deficiencies of the current
music scene, the extinction of real rock stars, and how the
Internet had killed so many delicious untruths that once provided
fodder for wonderful, stoned discussions.
“Dude, I remember all those urban
myths,” Will said. “Remember the one about Mama Cass choking
to death on a ham sandwich?”
Lonnie and the boy laughed and
nodded between swigs of beer.
“I went on believing that shit
forever,” Will continued. He lit a cigarette and shook his
head. “It was stupid. But it was cool, you know? It got people
talking about music at least.”
“Hear that,” the boy agreed.
“But then the Internet came around
and completely discredited everything,” Lonnie said. “Mama
Cass, the one about Marilyn Manson being that kid from The
Wonder Years—Paul Piper, or whatever it was. All of it,
gone.” He stubbed his cigarette directly on the coffee table,
adding to the collection of butts and burns. “Fucking Wikipedia.”
The boy sat up, reached into
his back pocket, and retrieved a joint. He held it out for
Lonnie and Will to see. It was large, expertly rolled, and
looked like the black sheep cousin of the cigarettes they’d
been smoking. “Any interest?” he asked.
Lonnie’s eyes widened. “Does
a bear shit in the woods?”
The boy flicked his lighter and
produced a shimmering blue flame. He touched it to the end
of the joint and puffed until a glowing red cherry appeared.
Smoke obscured the features of his hardened country face as
he held in his hit and passed the spliff to Lonnie.
Lonnie inhaled long and hard.
A quarter of the joint transformed into a cylinder of ash.
His face took on the hue of a ripe tomato.
The three of them made quick
work of the joint. The boy took one last hit, snuffed the cherry
with two wet fingers, and placed the roach inside his cigarette
pack.
“Primo,” Lonnie said. He lit
a cigarette. “You boys from Nebraska know how to party.”
“Iowa,” the boy said, scanning
the beer bottles on the table. He picked one up, shook it,
and took a swig. “That stuff’s nothing compared to what else
they say is growing up in my neck of the woods.”
“What do you mean?” Will asked,
sinking into the plush upholstery of the sectional.
The boy shared the story of Creeping
Bonanza with Lonnie and Will. He spoke of its origins and the
bugged-out effect it had on the human brain. The two brothers
were cousins in his version of the story, and the younger one
had a corn cob up his ass instead of a zucchini. Also different
was that the mother had committed suicide in front of them.
Minor details had changed over the years, had been sliced and
diced and glued back together en route to the present. A decades-long
game of telephone. Even the location of the field was unclear;
supposedly, records had been altered at some point. Only the
description of the plant remained the same, the yellow leaves
and blue rock candy buds left untouched by the hands of time.
The boy finished his story and
got up. He gave Lonnie and Will a lazy salute, turned, and
walked away.
Lonnie and Will sat in their
nest of microfiber and watched the boy poke another cigarette
between his lips and disappear up the staircase. They turned
and looked at each other through their collective stoned funk.
They never did catch his name.
Later on, they went back to Will’s
place and scoured the Web for information on the boy’s mysterious,
intoxicating plant. Their searches yielded nothing. Not so
much as a message board post. It was as if the boy had concocted
the story on the spot.
“Look at us,” Will said. “Fooled
by Tractor Jack. Jesus, we must be high.” He fell onto
the bed and drew the covers over his head.
He was about to submit to the
sandman’s call when Lonnie’s voice breached the confines of
his blanket cocoon.
“Hey, man, look at this!”
Will zombied over to the computer.
Lonnie had landed on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
website. On the screen were photographs of a new exhibit honoring
deceased music legends. Portraits of Elvis Presley, John Lennon,
and Joey Ramone hung from the gallery walls. Lonnie scrolled
down the page to reveal photos of a smashed Jimi Hendrix guitar
that had been pieced back together and glued to a large plate
of glass.
At the bottom of the page, right
below the Hendrix guitar, was a photo of Buddy Holly, Ritchie
Valens, and The Big Bopper. The caption below the photo read:
THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED. BACKSTAGE AT THE SURF BALLROOM, FEBRUARY
3, 1959.
Lonnie and Will studied the details
of the picture.
Buddy Holly sported his signature
horn-rimmed glasses and what appeared to be a faux leather
jacket. It was a bright canary yellow and fell loosely against
his crisp white t-shirt.
Ritchie Valens’ thick black hair
was combed into a perfect wave of curls. He wore blue jeans
and a white collared shirt. Small blue pompoms tumbled down
the length of the tie looped around his neck.
And The Big Bopper stood in the
middle. His face beamed. A sly smile complemented wide, youthful
eyes. He cradled a bouquet of wild flowers. The colorful blooms
spilled over his large arms and fell against his legs. The
bouquet was untamed, defiant. Long leaves of baby’s breath
crept up Holly’s jacket and coiled around a zipper.
Lonnie shut off the computer
monitor. Will sat on the bed and rubbed his face as if pushing
through the first few moments after waking from a long, deep
sleep.
They said nothing for a while.
The sputtering ceiling fan and Lonnie’s creaky revolutions
in the office chair served as a sparse soundtrack to their
foggy, confused thoughts.
The whole thing was ridiculous,
irrational, but that picture had ignited a small ember of belief
within them. If it was out there, they could find it. It would
be the score of a lifetime. The possibilities…
“Dude, I know what you’re thinking,
and I’m right there with you,” Will said. He kept his eyes
closed and ran a sweaty hand through his hair. “But let’s be
reasonable. It was just some bullshit story he told to impress
us. I mean, c’mon.”
Lonnie kept quiet. He used his
finger to push around a pen cap on the desk.
“You’re not really buying it,
are you?” Will asked.
A long pause, and then Lonnie
said, “No way, man. Just spacing out, you know.” He walked
over to the radio and turned on the oldies station. The Lovin’ Spoonful
were singing about being in a daydream.
“Crazy hick,” Will said as he
kicked off his shoes.
“Hear that,” Lonnie said. His
words were dressed in a spot-on Midwestern accent. He started
laughing, and Will joined in. He turned up the volume on the
radio.
Crazy talk, that’s all.
Dead rock stars, fucked-up plants,
suicides, vegetable penetrations.
Just insane.
Five days later Lonnie and Will
stuffed their backpacks full of clothes and headed out on I-190
toward the Massachusetts Turnpike and, eventually, Clear Lake,
Iowa.
The original plan
had been to drive around Clear Lake and just walk through any
field that resembled the one in the story. Large field, wire
fence, possibly abandoned and overgrown. Simple enough. They’d
do it up like Red in The Shawshank Redemption when he
went trolling around hayfields looking for Andy’s black rock.
Fate threw them a bone, however.
They met an old man while filling the gas tank at a run-down
service station. He sat on the rickety steps of the small convenience
store that stood behind the pumps. The man was sun-beaten and
resembled a withered turnip. He noticed the out-of-state license
plates and asked where they were going. They told him they
were college students researching the local histories of small,
rural towns.
The man’s wrinkled face bunched
into folds of cold, stern contemplation. He pulled a tin of
dip from his shirt pocket and pressed a pinch behind his lower
lip. “Uh huh. You boys are lookin’ for that tired old weed,
aren’t you?” He spat a string of brown saliva into an old coffee
can. “Yep, know just the place you’re lookin’ for, too.”
“You do?” Lonnie asked, trying
to remain calm.
The old man pointed toward the
road. “Just up yonder, ‘bout five miles. The old Juhl farm.
Albert Juhl, that’s the fella who used to own the place.”
A car pulled out of the gravel
lot and issued a cloud of dust that consumed the three of them.
The old man coughed into a handkerchief.
“So, what happened to this guy…Juhl?” Lonnie
asked. “You said he used to own the place.”
“Just up and left one day, and
nobody heard or seen him since,” the old man said. He spat
again, this time wiping his mouth on his shirt and leaving
a long brown streak on the sleeve. “Place stood empty for…oh,
guess it musta been close to forty years. Was damn near ready
to collapse ‘til some fella from Wisconsin bought it ‘bout
ten years ago and started fixin’ it up. Done a good job with
it, too.”
“Oh,” Will said, disappointed. “Probably
no sense going out there then. I mean, if that field’s been
cleared.”
The old man fished around in
his dip tin and placed a little more in his mouth. “Well, that
decision’s up to you. Don’t matter to me one way or the other.
But that field ain’t been touched for a long while. That new
fella prettied-up most everything from the house to the barn.
Hell, even the busted old tractor that was rusting away out
back. He ain’t done nothin’ with that field, though. Musta
heard the stories. Probably superstitious.”
Will took a glance up the road,
and then turned to the old man. “So, you say this place is
pretty close?”
“Yep, like I said, just up the
road a stretch. Can’t miss that old field, there’s a whole
lotta commotion goin’ on where it meets the road. Some sort
of shrine put up by the new fella. Keeps it lookin’ neat and
all.” The old man pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and
lit it. “You boys ain’t gonna find nothin’, though. Musta been
dozens of folks sniffin’ around up here lookin’ for that plant
over the years. All left empty-handed. Figure you boys ‘bout
to spend all night and tomorrow pokin’ around for somethin’ that
ain’t there.” He took a drag, blew it out.
The sky was becoming darker;
the universe was dimming the house lights.
“As I said,” the old man continued, “don’t
matter to me either way, but you look like a couple nice boys,
and I feel I gotta warn someone when I see them ‘bout to go
off on some wild goose chase.”
“Duly noted,” Lonnie said. He
looked into the old man’s milky eyes. “I mean, thank you. We
appreciate the advice…and the story.”
“Yes, thanks,” Will added.
The old man puffed his cigarette,
looking off at the sky. “Wasn’t nothin’. You boys take care
now.”
Lonnie and Will got in the car
and pulled back onto the road.
They drove in silence. The sun
was sinking in the sky like a lemon drop in a pool of melted
orange sherbet.
Will held a cigarette between
his fingers. Wind circled through the car and carried flecks
of ash into the air. He had the seat back as far as it would
go, and his feet rested on the dash.
Lonnie chewed on an empty Skittles
wrapper. He checked the GPS unit that was suction-cupped to
the dusty windshield. The tiny blue car crawled up the screen,
heading out into nowhere.
Will lowered his feet to the
floor and flicked his half-smoked cigarette out the window. “I
think we should have our heads checked when we get back home.”
Lonnie looked at him and grinned. “It’s
a plan.”
Something glinted in the distance.
They got closer and saw a collection of objects arranged behind
a wire fence just off the side of the road. Lonnie pulled over,
and they stepped out onto the dusty shoulder.
The old man had been right; it
did look like a shrine. Two long stakes supported a guitar
fashioned out of a single piece of stainless steel. The names
of the three musicians were etched into the steel, right above
the date 2-3-59. Behind the guitar, also attached to thin stakes,
were three metal discs decorated to resemble records. Each
musician was represented with a record bearing the title of
their biggest hit: “Peggy Sue” for Holly, “Donna” for Valens,
and “Chantilly Lace” for The Bopper. Towering above the guitar
and records was a cross made from two metal bars that had been
welded together. Surrounding all of this were flowers of various
persuasions; they formed a lush circle of color around the
monuments.
Lonnie and Will climbed over
the fence. They stood in front of the display, held by nostalgia
and an odd feeling of loss. Lonnie knelt down and ran a finger
along the dusty surface of the guitar. A gentle wind passed
over them, and the flowers did a little dance.
The sound of tires crunching
along the shoulder brought Lonnie to his feet. A red pickup
truck pulled in behind the old Ford. The engine quieted, and
a large man stepped out of the cab.
“Hey there, guys.” His voice
was warm, welcoming.
Lonnie and Will moved toward
the fence and began to climb back over it.
The man put a hand up. “You’re
good, stay right there.” He walked over and joined them on
the other side. “Admiring my little tribute, are ya?” He removed
his gloves and extended a hand. “Name’s Ken.”
Lonnie shook his hand, then Will.
“Yeah, an old man down the road
told us about this place,” Will said. “Did you do this?”
“Indeed,” Ken said. “I put up
this memorial when I moved in back in ninety-nine.” He stuffed
his gloves in the pocket of his shirt jacket. “Been through
different looks over the years, but it’s been here for as long
as I have.”
“It’s cool,” Lonnie said. “Very
detailed.”
“Thanks,” Ken said. He smiled
and crossed his arms at his chest. “Keeps the ghosts away,
you know. Good juju and all of that. I’m sure you guys know
the story of this place. I mean, that’s why you’re here, right?”
“Well,” Lonnie said. He rubbed
his neck, a bit embarrassed now. “Sort of.”
“Came to pay your respects, huh?” Ken
said. “Well, there isn’t anything wrong with that.”
“Actually, there was something
else,” Will said, and chuckled. “You’ll think we’re nuts, but
we heard this story—I mean, it’s ridiculous, I don’t know how
my friend and I let it drag us this far—but we heard about
some weird plant growing up here in your field.”
Ken laughed. “I don’t think you’re
nuts. If I had a dollar for every person who came snooping
around here over the years, I’d be loaded.”
“So we’re not the only fools
kicking around?” Lonnie asked.
“No need to feel foolish,” Ken
said. “Nothing wrong with going on a little road trip and having
some fun. You guys are young, you’ll be chasing after all kinds
of things in your lives. Some will work out, some won’t.”
Lonnie and Will felt the knots
of embarrassment loosen in their chests. The trip had been
fun, despite the anti-climax they had secretly anticipated
all along. They stood with Ken and marveled at the first shades
of night that streaked across the horizon.
“Thanks for not shooting us,” Lonnie
said, laughing. He lit a cigarette and pulled a drag. “I bet
people around here love their guns.”
“Yes, they do,” Ken said. “And
that’s why we’re standing here right now.”
You’ve heard the story.
Or maybe you haven’t. The one
about the day the music died?
Well, contrary to popular belief,
it wasn’t pilot error that sent Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens,
and The Big Bopper to the pearly gates. It wasn’t faulty instruments.
It wasn’t even the relentless, driving snow that plagued the
early morning hours of February 3, 1959.
Nope, it was a series of rifle
shots fired by a farmer named Oscar Moffett. He had been drinking—was
totally cocked, actually—and when the sounds of the Beechcraft
Bonanza’s small engine found their way to Moffett’s ears, he
burst out into the snowy night clutching his peacemaker in
his sweaty, trembling hands. He followed the plane’s lights
and began firing. A few seconds later there was a loud pop,
some sputtering, and the lights went dark.
A flash of clarity stole over
Moffett’s main control center a moment too late. He darted
back into his house and locked himself in the basement. He
heard the ungodly sounds of shattered earth and twisted metal
as he cowered on the floor next to a pantry full of corn.
The plane went down in the field
of his neighbor Albert Juhl. The aircraft was so mangled that
bullet holes were never found. The crash was eventually attributed
to pilot error. Oscar Moffett made no effort to add his personal
account to the official report.
Juhl found Moffett a week later
with half his face missing. His body had been picked-over by
birds. Next to him was his peacemaker, caked in blood and dirt.
This was in Juhl’s field, right where the plane wreckage had
settled and the grass no longer grew.
A few years passed, and Juhl’s
wife took ill. Her health degraded quickly. She died in the
spring of 1962. Juhl’s two sons found it hard to adjust. They
fell in with the wrong crowd, and we all know how that goes.
Juhl eventually decided that there was nothing left for them
in Clear Lake. He packed-up his boys and left town.
Juhl had sold his farm to some
developer from Texas. Shortly before the Texan was to install
a small strip mall on the land, he fucked-over the wrong person
and was offed in a nasty fashion. They found him with his balls
in his mouth. A shame. The property would be tied-up in probate
for the better part of four decades.
What the developer hadn’t known
was that the Juhl boys had planted a small patch of marijuana
out in the field where Moffett and the plane had been decommissioned.
The vacant farm attracted local
youth as a place to party undisturbed. It wasn’t long before
the brothers’ crop was discovered and smoked summarily. Details
of the Juhls and Moffett, and of course Holly, Valens, and
The Bopper, were tossed into a blender and pureed into a highly
imaginative, albeit fantastic tale that lurched forward like
Frankenstein’s Monster and took on a life of its own.
It started out as a story about
Holly’s spirit seizing control of Moffett and ordering him
to kill Juhl’s wife as she tended her garden, then morphed
into a strange incest story involving Juhl, the boys, and an
old record player they kept in the barn. Eventually, a photo
of Holly, Valens, and The Bopper was discovered—the same photograph
that would be restored, enlarged, and displayed on a wall at
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame decades later—and the musicians’ colorful
clothing planted the seeds for an outrageous story that played
on the brothers’ small ganja enterprise. They even gave the
crop a name: Creepy Bonanza. In later years this would become
Creeping Bonanza.
The old Juhl place was scooped-up
at auction in the late nineties by a guy from Milwaukee with
a love of fifties music and the desire to start a new life
as a farmer. His name was Ken.
As it turned out, Moffett’s nephew
still ran the general store in town. He sat down with Ken one
day and told him the story of the farm’s history. Ten years
later Ken would meet two boys who had driven out to Iowa in
search of something outside the conventions of their small
town, and share with them the truth behind the lies.
Information is cheap these days.
It doesn’t take much to get to the bottom of things. I miss
all those old stories, as foolish as they were.
Every once in a while, though,
you’ll stumble across something untouched by the Internet’s
cold, skeletal fingers. And that’s what happened to Lonnie
and me. That trip was five of the best days of my life.
Creeping Bonanza. Another myth
torn apart. At least I was the one doing the tearing.
But the one about Ronnie Van
Zant being buried in a Neil Young t-shirt, I’m pretty sure
that’s true. The burial workers slipped it on right before
they closed the casket and lowered him down. There’s a photo
of it floating around out there, if you can find it.
At least that’s what I’ve been
told
# # #
The Creeping Bonanza
Music Tour by
Paul Edmonds
originally
published April 19, 2010