Established 2010 - Moline Memories Blog Reached 300,000 Views Today

 This photo shows how tough the Moline teachers were. 

I started the Moline Memories blog in 2010. I thought some recollections might be interesting for our grandchildren in the distant future. Writing creates a need for research, so I learned a lot about our area: John Deere, the celebrities born or raised in Moline, the important leaders of the past.

I report on our the Moline High Class of 1966 - The Class the Stars Fell On. We have a growing list of Golden Wedding Anniversaries, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Views were very few at first, a few dozen a day. Now they average several thousand a month. I enjoy the shift in most seen for the week, which shows readers picking up on topics from the past and reading them.

It helps that my mother was one of the best teachers in an excellent school system and my father was a legendary baker. Classmates have asked me to re-start Melo-Cream and make more long johns and cinnamon fries for them.

A 2010 Moline Memories Post -

On February 3rd, 1959, a small plane took off in a winter storm and crashed immediately, killing Buddy Holly, J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper), Ritchie Valens, and the pilot.

On a Winter Dance Tour, their last concert was at Clear Lake, Iowa, near Mason City, hometown of the Music Man, Meredith Wilson.

Holly's early death was especially tragic, because he was a musical pioneer with great talent and a young wife. She was expecting but lost the child.

Don McLean coined the term the day the music died in his song "American Pie." The song became a perennial hit, encouraging the fad of inexplicable lyrics. One attempt to decode the song is located here.

Holly's songs are classic pop, simple and evocative.

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Dave Coopman has left a new comment on your post "February 3rd - The Day the Music Died":

The Winter Dance Tour played the Capitol Theater in Davenport on January 29, 1959. It was sponsored by KSTT, and for this appearance it was called the Concert of Stars, since it was the only venue where dancing could not take place. There was an ice storm in the Quint Cities that night, but the show was still sold out. 

Strangely, no pictures of that night have ever turned up. There must be some somewhere.

Winter Dance Party Dates:

January 23 - Milwaukee, WI
January 24 - Kenosha, WI
January 25 - Mankato, MN
January 26 - Eau Claire, WI
January 27 - Montevideo, MN
January 28 - St. Paul, MN
January 29 - Davenport, IA
January 30 - Ft. Dodge, IA
January 31 - Duluth, MN
February 1 - Green Bay,WI
February 2 - Clear Lake, IA

 Ken Berry, Moliner, recently celebrated his 85th birthday.
He was known for Mayberry RFD, F Troop, and guesting on the Carol Burnett Show.

I used to walk, bike, and drive by the Bartlett Insurance Agency, near my father's donut shop, little realizing that Bonnie Bartlett would team up with her husband William Daniels in St. Elsewhere, a show we watched all the time, many years later.

The shortest guy in gym class at Moline High earned the Medal of Honor in Viet Nam, John Baker.

 They named this bridge after Sgt. John Baker.