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Larry Lehmer

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Pressing on with Midwest Express project

It's been six months or so since I resumed my project of writing a book about Midwest Express Airlines. In that time, I've learned (or re-learned) two important lessons: 1) The story of "The Best Care In the Air" is a compelling one that needs to be told and 2)... Continue reading

Posted Dec 3, 2024 at Life In the Slow Lane

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It was a good trip ... before the media got wind of it

My dad was a Union Pacific Railroad lifer. He started his career on the grimy side of the railroad business, wrestling boxcar knuckles into place, bleeding brake lines and looking for hot boxes and flat spots. Then, he was supervising... Continue reading

Posted Feb 18, 2024 at Passing It On

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She came, she captured my heart and now it's forever broken

She arrived on one of the coldest nights of the year, in the middle of the night, bawling her little eyes out. I couldn’t be happier. We’d waited years for this moment, her mother and I, more than five years,... Continue reading

Posted Aug 16, 2023 at Passing It On

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Memories of a legendary bicycle ride across Iowa

Where are they? I've driven up and down these roads for quite a spell and I can't find them. How hard can it be to find 2,000 people in shorts and t-shirts tooling around on their bicycles? That was the... Continue reading

Posted Feb 8, 2023 at Passing It On

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The kai pad med ma muang was very good but the storytelling was even better

I don't remember the name of the place. It was a Thai restaurant and they had a really good lunch buffet. It was in one of those ubiquitous strip malls in West Des Moines; you would probably only notice it if you were looking for it. In the late 1990s... Continue reading

Posted Jan 17, 2023 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Bandstand was far from a sure thing when Dick Clark took over

In 1956, NBC introduced Bandstand to America. But this wasn't the Bandstand that was so popular in Philadelphia. NBC's Bandstand originated in Studio 6A in Rockefeller Center in New York City, featured big band-era music and aired weekday mornings on radio stations from coast to coast. Veteran announcer Bert Parks,... Continue reading

Posted Dec 27, 2022 at Bandstand Beat

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It's time to say farewell to Iowan Rod Powell: Lawyer, social justice advocate, writer

When The Mouse That Roared, the mid-1950s best-selling novel by Leonard Wibberley, made it to the big screen in 1959, British comedic star Peter Sellers assumed the lead role. When the same play made it to the stage of tiny Strawberry Point High School in Iowa in the spring of... Continue reading

Posted Sep 26, 2022 at Life In the Slow Lane

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I didn't know what to do. So I wrote something.

It was the spring of 1966 and I was struggling. I was in the second semester of my third year of college and I had no idea where I was heading. I was still officially a math major, but I had dropped my lone math course that semester, Probability &... Continue reading

Posted Jun 20, 2022 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Buddy Knox talks about recording "Party Doll" at Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, N.M.

Being a reporter can be a frustrating job. Getting information from sources who don't want to talk to you can be a major hurdle in reporting a story. On the other hand, reporters view sources who eagerly share their stories with a certain amount of skepticism. "If your mother tells... Continue reading

Posted Apr 20, 2022 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Remembering San Francisco's Fillmore West

One of the best things about being a young person stationed in the San Francisco Bay area from 1970 through 1972 was the easy access to quality music. Bill Graham was the ever-active promoter who ran the famed Fillmore West, among other venues. Linda and I went to the Fillmore... Continue reading

Posted Apr 10, 2022 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Examining my peculiar relationship with guns

I have a peculiar relationship with guns. To clarify, it's my experience with firearms that I'm really writing about. I know that, technically. rifles and pistols are not guns in an historic sense, despite the way they are usually described. I learned the difference on the rifle range in basic... Continue reading

Posted Jun 30, 2021 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Everybody loved my maternal Grandpa, Jens C. Andersen

Ellen and Jens Andersen in their living room, 1965 I wrote my first story while in kindergarten. I don't remember it, but my mother told me it was called "The Go-Away Dog." Despite that sketchy information, I have a pretty... Continue reading

Posted Jun 25, 2021 at Passing It On

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An important life lesson learned while just trying to scrape up money for college tuition

The summer of 1964, as it turns out, was a pretty important time in my life. I had a year's worth of college experience by that summer and my Dad made sure I had a good job with the railroad. I didn't have a car but my good friend, Gene... Continue reading

Posted Apr 17, 2021 at Life In the Slow Lane

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John L. French: Nearly made St. Louis the U.S. auto capital

August 5, 1900 The noise was deafening. Much different than the sounds usually heard on racing day at the St. Louis Fair Grounds, where thousands of horse-racing fans would fill the grandstands surrounding the half-mile oval that was the site of many of the biggest races of the day, like... Continue reading

Posted Mar 16, 2021 at Before Their Time

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Paying attention to the wonder around us

Remember how big and wonderful the world was when you were a kid? How you'd go bonkers over something you'd just discovered while the grown-ups around you just reacted with amusement, barely containing their worldly smugness? That's what happens to kids: adults just drain the wonder from their young souls.... Continue reading

Posted Feb 12, 2021 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Christine Chubbuck: A shocking end to a troubled life

Valerie Rubin wasn’t believing what she was hearing. Did the woman on her TV screen really say something about “blood and guts” and “suicide?” Up to that point, it had been a typical Monday morning for Rubin, a reporter with the Herald-Tribune newspaper in Sarasota, Fla. She was sipping a... Continue reading

Posted Feb 3, 2021 at Before Their Time

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One man's memories of watching and meeting Hammerin' Hank Aaron, the epitome of cool

Hank Aaron sauntered to home plate and took a couple of practice swings. It was the 1958 World Series between Aaron's Milwaukee Braves and the New York Yankees. Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, as amiable a character that ever squatted behind a plate, chatted up the young Braves outfielder, trying to... Continue reading

Posted Jan 23, 2021 at Life In the Slow Lane

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The sad, bright line between who got a seat in the press box and who swept the press box

Maury White and Allen Ashby had a lot in common. Both were Iowa high school football stars and big names in their communities. Their love of sports led each to jobs as sportswriters and both men landed jobs at Iowa's greatest newspaper, The Des Moines Register. But, while White built... Continue reading

Posted Jan 22, 2021 at Life In the Slow Lane

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The song may be about Willie Mays, but I'm thinking about my old friend Harold Webster

Funny how the mind works. When the song "Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song)" came up on my computer while I was wasting time, my mind immediately went to Harold Webster. And, of course, Mays' rookie baseball card. In my mind, the two are inseparable. Harold was one of my... Continue reading

Posted Jan 19, 2021 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Promo man Gunter Hauer was key to Dick Clark, Bandstand's early success

When Dick Clark took over hosting duties for the program that would become American Bandstand, he was fully aware that his broadcasting success relied on playing the type of music that would attract throngs of enthusiastic dancing teenagers to the studios of WFIL-TV. He also knew that he would have... Continue reading

Posted Dec 14, 2020 at Bandstand Beat

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Here's a newspaper even an ink-stained ragamuffin (or My Neighbor Walt) might enjoy

Wow! A newspaper. A really good newspaper. It's been a long time since I felt that way about a newspaper, even though I started my own newspaper career way back in 1968. It was sometime in the mid- to late-1970s, though, before I truly fell in love with a newspaper.... Continue reading

Posted Jun 7, 2020 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Dick Clark's path to Bandstand TV glory included overcoming lousy radio ratings

Before Dick Clark succeeded Bob Horn as host of TV's Bandstand in 1956, there was some question among WFIL management whether he was the right man for the job. Even after giving Clark's radio show the same Bandstand name, Clark's ratings were not very good. This excerpt from Bandstandland picks... Continue reading

Posted May 25, 2020 at Bandstand Beat

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Dick Clark's Bandstand duties didn't keep him from hosting record hops as well

In early 1957, Dick Clark had been the host of Bandstand (still a local show in Philadelphia) for less than a year but his star was clearly on the rise, as this excerpt from Bandstandland shows: "As Bandstand continued to grow in popularity, the demand for Clark’s appearances at record... Continue reading

Posted May 16, 2020 at Bandstand Beat

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High school flashback: Class prophecy for Council Bluffs TJHS, Class of 1963

CLASS PROPHECY FOR THE CLASS OF '63 Thomas Jefferson High School Date: June, 1983 Place: Space Needle Seattle, Washington Time: You name it. It has been twenty years since the best class Tee Jay ever had performed its graduation exercises. Today, we find most of these grads heading for a... Continue reading

Posted May 12, 2020 at Life In the Slow Lane

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Lessons learned from an early morning train station conversation with a transient

In an earlier post, I wrote how I spent many early morning hours of my college years in Omaha's Burlington Station, usually writing bad poetry or short stories in a succession of stenographer's notebooks. I also had many interesting conversations with the kind of colorful characters you'd expect to meet... Continue reading

Posted Feb 8, 2020 at Life In the Slow Lane

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