Buddy Holly and Other Reasons To Love Lubbock, Texas
Published June 9th, 2024
Photography by Jennifer Bain unless otherwise noted
Two of the best things about Lubbock are united on murals at Avenue J and 5th Street in the Cultural District — the much-loved Buddy Holly and the often-reviled prairie dog.
On the side of Two Docs Brewing, the bespectacled musician who was born here in West Texas sticks out his tongue (an image inspired by a photo booth series) as three spaceships — one piloted by a prairie dog — float overhead.
“I went with Buddy for obvious reasons but decided to use a picture that doesn’t get used much in murals,” Eugene, Oregon artist Bayne Gardner explains. “Had a little more time and added the UFOs to honor the Lubbock Lights, and the Eazy-E prairie dog is a tribute to a beer brewed by the brewery (Prairie Dog Porter).”
Who knew that unusual lights seen here in 1951 were investigated as UFOs?
Anyway, over on the side of the LHUCA Icehouse, a larger mural shows a robot studying Holly’s trademark glasses as more prairie dogs ponder a futuristic medley of steel creatures. That mind bender was designed by Pete Goldlust and painted by Gardner in 2021.
“I had a blast during my stay and it’s great to see the murals still getting some attention,” Gardner tells me.
I, too, have a blast in this city of 260,000 where I come to pay homage to the singer/songwriter who pioneered rock and roll but was killed in an Iowa plane crash when he was just 22. That tragic day — Feb. 3, 1959 — inspired Don Maclean’s 1971 hit “American Pie” and the iconic line “the day the music died.”
But Charles Hardin Holley — aka Buddy Holly — lives on here.
The small but mighty Buddy Holly Center has the world’s largest collection of artifacts relevant to Lubbock’s most famous native son. It’s on Crickets Avenue, a nod to Holly’s band that gave the world hits like “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.”
There are giant black glasses outside for photo ops, and a real pair inside that was recovered from the crash site and eventually rediscovered in an evidence room. Holly’s optician found the signature Faosa spectacles during a Mexico vacation. Music geeks should save time for the J.I. Allison House — on the centre grounds — to see where the Crickets drummer lived as a teenager and where he and Holly wrote many hits.
The centre is across from the West Texas Walk of Fame, an outdoor exhibit in the Buddy and Maria Elena Holly Plaza that’s anchored by a statue of the man who sparked a cultural revolution in the 1950s with his music and heavily influenced the Beatles.
The plaza is close to a mural — this one showing its age — of glasses painted in the crosswalk at Crickets and 18th Street.
All this is just steps from the Cast Iron Grill, which makes memorable pies (order them for breakfast), a mean chicken fried steak and the kind of cinnamon toast that takes me back to the 1970s. “If you know, you know,” owner Teresa Stephens, a stay-at-home mom turned restaurateur, says of her homestyle toast.
Oh, and there’s another notable mural nearby on the side of Texas Discount Furniture on Buddy Holly Avenue. Holly and the Crickets are on it. So is Peggy Sue, a schoolmate of Holly’s who married Allison. The final two men on the mural appear to be from the local radio station (KDAV 1590 AM) that played Holly’s songs as he shot to fame.
Fun non-Buddy Holly fact about Lubbock — its airport code is LBB because LBK was taken by Liboi, Kenya. That irks locals, so you’ll see LBK all around town.
At Brewery LBK, Ralph Kennedy urges me to try the smashburger and serves me a Chilton, a vodka, fresh lemon and soda cocktail served in a salt-rimmed glass with a lemon wedge (this variation made with ruby red grapefruit vodka).
“It’s a local special,” says Kennedy. “It just kind of creates that sourness, tart, and then you’ve got to have a nice beautiful lemon. It’s very simple, but very delightful.”
Hmm, I could say the same about Lubbock.
Then again, there’s nothing simple about The Nicolett, chef Finn Walter’s fine dining spot with a focus on High Plains cuisine. It was named one of Bon Appetit’s 50 Best New Restaurants in America in 2022. That same year, Walter was a James Beard Foundation semi-finalist for Best Chef: Texas.
Under stormy skies punctuated by streaks of lightning, I dined in the downtown restaurant’s brick greenhouse, enjoying four courses that ranged from caviar on fried yucca to Hill Country venison with broccolini.
Also downtown were my boutique digs — the Cotton Court Hotel, which drew on Lubbock’s cotton warehouses and heritage for design inspiration.
Despite these big city touches, Lubbock can be unapologetically rural.
I took Bill Castor’s trolley tour of the National Ranching Heritage Center, a museum/historical park on the Texas Tech University campus, and admired a barbed wire collection as well as the original 6666 horse barn from the Guthrie, Texas ranch made famous in the hit Paramount+ series Yellowstone. There’s also a temporary exhibit called 1883: A Ranching Origin Story about the prequel.
To be honest, though, I really went to Lubbock to see Prairie Dog Town.
Back in the 1930s, a fellow named K.N. Clapp was so disturbed by ranchers poisoning pesky black-tailed prairie dogs that he and his friend Ross Edwards captured four of the burrowing ground squirrels and helped build the first protected colony of its kind.
Prairie Dog Town became world famous — or so the story goes — and Lubbock created a goodwill ambassador mascot called Prairie Dog Pete.
Clapp tended to the town until his death in 1969. Today, the “town” in Mackenzie Park is really a field in front of a pavilion, viewing area and two interpretive signs.
Visit Lubbock folks gave me a sweet sticker of a cowboy hat-wearing prairie dog saying “howdy,” and I bought a plush prairie dog named Chubs wearing a “Lubbock Music Now” bandana at the Buddy Holly Center.
After eating an unspeakably delicious lunch at Evie Mae’s Pit Barbecue, I planted a prairie dog-shaped seed in owner Mallory Robbins’ mind.
See, the Wolfforth restaurant is on a Texas-sized suburban Lubbock lot. Despite important accolades from barbecause aficionados, it’s off the beaten path and needs to attract more customers. Surely building the world’s largest prairie dog statue would lure hungry roadside attraction hunters its way?
Robbins promised to give the idea some thought, but agreed that when you visit Lubbock, you “have to go see” Prairie Dog Town.
Over at Llano Estacado Winery for a tasting — West Texas has a grape-growing climate — I peppered hospitality director/sommelier Matt Bostick with prairie dog questions. “If you talk to farmers, they might say it’s a nuisance,” he allowed, “but it’s a cute little thing and I love the fact it’s the unspoken mascot of Lubbock.”
Lubbockite Doug Stapp assured me he loves prairie dogs but then asked “do we even have a Prairie Dog Town? Where is it? Shows you how much I get out of my hole.”
Stapp has been working at Ralph’s Records since he was a teenager and took over from retiring owner Ralph Dewitt in 2017.
I visited on a hunt for Buddy Holly moments outside the downtown core. Stapp’s collection of Holly memorabilia wasn’t on display, but he gamely took a framed and gold-plated “Peggy Sue” record off the wall to show me.
From there it was over to the Holly Hop Ice Cream Shoppe to listen to Holly on the jukebox, and then to Lubbock City Cemetery to see his grave.
“In loving memory of our own Buddy Holley,” reads the simple grave marker that’s engraved with musical notes and a guitar. No it’s not a typo — Decca records put Holly instead of Holley on the original contract and it stuck.
Anyway, Holly’s grave was scattered with coins, trinkets and guitar picks. Speaking of picks, they were part of my last Lubbock moment.
Brad Oldham Sculpture Buddy Holly Guitar Pick Donor Wall - CREDIT Visit Lubbock.
I wanted to see the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, open just three years, because it was the work of Toronto’s Diamond Schmitt Architects and because Dallas sculptor Brad Oldham’s guitar wall anchors the lobby.
The installation — 30 feet by 120 feet — acts as a donor recognition wall and weaves together 9,000 aluminum brushed bronze guitar picks in 11 sizes to recreate an iconic image of Holly playing his Fender Stratocaster.
By day, you can see it up close. But by night, lit up and viewed from the parking lot across the street, it’s really something. Holly, who would have turned 88 this year, may be long gone but he’s in no danger of being forgotten.
Jennifer Bain
After a career at daily newspapers, Jennifer began travelling the world in search of quirk in 2018. She goes wherever the story is, but has a soft spot for Canada and has been to all 10 provinces and all three territories. Jennifer has won multiple awards and written two cookbooks and three travel books. She lives in Toronto but has a vacation house on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, which some cheekily say is one of the four corners of the supposedly flat earth.